Bank Managers and Mistresses (Part 2)
This is part 2 of the ongoing series. Part 1 is here. In postwar Japanese films, you may find many stories of salarymen engaging in various forms of adultery: from flirting with young female coworkers to secretly building a love nest for his lover. Some films used such setup as a motive for crime, others as comedic interludes. Since bank employees, particularly managers, were considered as successful elites in upper crust milieu, some writers and filmmakers thought such an elite could make a good fall guy. Seicho Matsumoto’s novelette “Kanryu (Cold Current)” depicts a middle aged bank manager trapped in …