Dis­cov­er this sweet-toothed Japan­ese cor­po­rate satire

At the begin­ning of Yasu­zo Masumura’s Giants and Toys, an ado­les­cent work­ing-class woman named Kyoko (Hit­o­mi Nozoe) stretch­es and smiles, expos­ing her crooked, rot­ten teeth. And then her image freezes and is repro­duced in mono­chrome minia­tures that form a tile pat­tern across the screen, like a suite of ear­ly Andy Warhol silkscreens.

What we are wit­ness­ing here is an ordi­nary girl being ele­vat­ed to art, and also being com­mod­i­fied, as part of the pack­ag­ing to sell caramels. This is the same world of adver­tis­ing that was explored the year before in Frank Tashlin’s Will Suc­cess Spoil Rock Hunter?, a world where image is every­thing, and where authen­tic­i­ty is manip­u­lat­ed, mass-pro­duced and marketed.

After a title sequence, we see Nishi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), undis­tin­guished but for his cen­tral­i­ty in the shot, walk­ing in a sea of oth­er suit­ed salary­men all head­ed into work – ​“A flood of human­i­ty!”, as the CEO of World com­ments, watch­ing from high up in his office as he holds a meet­ing with his head of adver­tis­ing, Yashiro (Kin­zo Shin), and Yashiro’s son-in-law Goda (Hideo Taka­mat­su). Much as Goda has mar­ried into his exec­u­tive posi­tion, and will soon, through sheer ambi­tion, dri­ve and cun­ning, dis­place his anx­ious, out­mod­ed father-in-law, so too Kyoko and Nishi are about to be rapid­ly raised above their sta­tion in the chang­ing Japan of the 1950s, where the old mod­els of class and blood­line, and the ethics of bushi­do, are fast going out of fashion.

This may be the post­war era, but World is engaged in a bru­tal ongo­ing war with arch-rivals Giant and Apol­lo to secure the largest piece of Japan’s high­ly com­pet­i­tive con­fec­tionery mar­ket. As he devel­ops World’s lat­est cam­paign, Goda recruits Nishi from the adver­tis­ing pool to be his per­son­al assis­tant, as well as his occa­sion­al spy. Nishi uses his old col­lege con­nec­tions to try to ascer­tain what the oth­er two firms are plan­ning, while Goda scouts Kyoko in a café, and is able to see past her ugli­ness to a fresh pro­le­tar­i­an look which, if prop­er­ly man­aged, could be the new pop­u­lar face for their line of caramel sweets. Nishi is also expect­ed to serve as Romeo to Kyoko – whom he can­not stand – ensur­ing her con­tin­ued alle­giance to World.

Yet as all of these char­ac­ters crawl their way to the top, we can see their fall inscribed in their rise. If Goda exploits Kyoko for her saleable gen­uine­ness, trans­form­ing her into a star with help from sleazy, cyn­i­cal pho­tog­ra­ph­er Harukawa (Yuno­suke Ito), he also cre­ates from her a Frankenstein’s mon­ster whom he is soon no longer able to con­trol, and whose con­struct­ed arti­fice, under­min­ing her authen­tic­i­ty, will also even­tu­al­ly be her down­fall. And in case the point is missed, Kyoko’s now side­lined pre­de­ces­sor as ​‘face of the moment’ tails her like a ghost, embody­ing the fate of fail­ure that inevitably awaits Kyoko too.

Mean­while, erst­while ​‘pub­lic­i­ty demon’ Yashihi­ro, in post for being the CEO’s cousin, has fall­en behind the times, and is now reduced by the con­stant pres­sures of the work­place to crip­pling dys­pep­sia and oth­er ail­ments. When Yashihiro’s now more tal­ent­ed son-in-law Goda takes over, the cam­paign may shift in a more mod­ern direc­tion (fea­tur­ing imagery and toys from the space age), but Goda too soon suc­cumbs to the stress­es of the job, dan­ger­ous­ly mix­ing uppers and down­ers, and even­tu­al­ly – in an act both lit­er­al and sym­bol­ic – cough­ing blood all over his actu­al let­ter of promotion.

Adopt­ed as Goda’s pro­tégé with­in a week of start­ing at World, Nishi may belie the prin­ci­ple, artic­u­lat­ed by a col­league, that ​“if you aren’t a rel­a­tive, you’ll nev­er get on”, but nonethe­less he comes to regard his height­ened posi­tion as more trap than tri­umph, in a sys­tem where every­one is both enslaved to the bot­tom line and forced to fight a treach­er­ous, dis­hon­ourable war (against each oth­er and against time itself) that can nev­er be won.

Adapt­ed by Yoshio Shi­rasa­ka from a short sto­ry by Takeshi Kaiko, Giants and Toys focus­es – like TV’s Mad Men avant la let­tre – on adver­tis­ing as a way to explore a nation’s chang­ing self-image in chang­ing times. As the cul­ture of the recent Amer­i­can occu­piers becomes a dom­i­nant local influ­ence, as tele­vi­sion arrives, as new-fan­gled plas­tic mate­ri­als appear and as the moral val­ues inher­it­ed from the samu­rai era are phased out (“We aren’t liv­ing in feu­dal times any­more,” Goda tells Yashiro), Masumura’s film uses its plot about rival con­fec­tionery com­pa­nies to anatomise Japan’s pro­found metamorphosis.

Among all these char­ac­ters being swept along until they are wiped out by the end­less waves of progress, Kyoko proves an adept crea­ture of trans­for­ma­tion (more so than the out­sized, stunt­ed tad­poles that she keeps as pets), and she alone is left by the film at her peak, before being over­whelmed. But her arc traces the fick­le nature of celebri­ty, and ulti­mate­ly even she seems aware that she is mere­ly along for a fun, lucra­tive ride that will even­tu­al­ly come to a thud­ding stop. Accord­ing­ly this satire, despite its pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with can­dy, comes with a decid­ed­ly bit­ter­sweet flavour which, if it makes you smile, might just also be rot­ting your teeth.

Giants and Toys is avail­able for the first time any­where in the world on HD Blu-ray with its orig­i­nal uncom­pressed Japan­ese mono audio, via Arrow Video from 10 May.