Ishiro Honda. Steve Ryfle

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      On location for Adolescence Part 2.Courtesy of Honda Film Inc.

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      Honda’s next feature revisited ideas explored in The Blue Pearl: conflict between traditional and modern values, anxiety about encroaching Western influence, and the impact of these pressures on a small, isolated group of people. The story again concerns a pair of star-crossed lovers subjected to the community’s harsh scrutiny, but this time the protagonists are high school students, whose problems are rooted in a generation gap that was widening fast in the years after the war. In Adolescence Part 2, Honda created a vivid snapshot of life in a small Japanese village amid the social, political, and economic changes of the Occupation. The film offers an interesting contrast to better-known works covering similar ground, for Honda had a more sympathetic view of Japan’s postwar youth than did some of his contemporaries.

      Adolescence Part 2 was a follow-up to Toho’s successful coming-of-age drama Adolescence (Shishunki, 1952), directed by Seiji Maruyama. Set in a small town surrounded by mountains, Adolescence focuses on a group of students at a high school located adjacent to a red-light district full of unsavory establishments, and some of the youths are lured down the wrong path. The film ends with a teacher leading a drive to clean up the town.

      The public response to Adolescence exceeded expectations, and Toho approved a second installment.¹⁶ During preproduction for Adolescence Part 2, high school students were asked about their problems and experiences, and their stories were incorporated into the screenplay by Toshiro Ide and Haruo Umeda. The cast includes veteran actors in the adult roles and members of Honda’s emerging stock company as the youths, including a young Akira Kubo (also in the original Adolescence, playing a different character), Ren Yamamoto, and Toyoaki Suzuki. Two roles were played by actual students after auditions were held across Japan.

      Adolescence Part 2, though set in a similar locale and featuring some of the same actors, is not a direct sequel to Adolescence. Shot on location during the hot summer months in Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture, the story concerns a group of high school friends in a small town located in a mountain basin. The group meets regularly for after-school study sessions, stoking gossip among teachers, parents, and locals. Some don’t like boys and girls staying out together at night, others wonder if the kids have left-wing leanings, and still others object to one of the group’s meeting locations, a girl’s house that doubles as a snack bar owned by her parents and frequented by seedy types.¹⁷ Toho’s promotional materials for Adolescence Part 2 lay out the film’s theme: “Puberty is a time where the young contemplate life and try to face it straight on, with all seriousness. However, the adults view this pubescent period as something dirty.” The youths wrestle mightily with pangs of sexual awakening and longing for self-identity, none more so than Keita (Akira Kubo), whose defining character trait is baka shojiki (honesty to a fault). This is evident when the boy costs his sumo team a championship trophy by pointing out an illegal move by a teammate.

      Keita and his classmate Reiko (Kyoko Aoyama) take a walk in the woods alone and become intimate. Afterward, both are racked with guilt; Reiko, walking in a stupor, is hit by a car. The local press calls it a suicide attempt, the result of teenage momoiro asobi (fooling around; literally, “peach-colored play”) gone too far; and because both teens’ parents are prominent community members, scandal erupts. The parents quell the uproar by pushing Keita and Reiko toward marriage, which further suffocates the youths. Keita goes into the mountains, seemingly intent on suicide, but is saved by a teacher. Cooler heads prevail and the two are given a fresh start. Reiko goes to stay with relatives, and Keita transfers to a school in Tokyo.