A film portrait: the flashbacks and present-day sequences, located on the same plane, reveal the different aspects of the character of Matsugoro, The Rebel, an almost legendary figure for the Japanese lower classes. Matsugoro embodies, in his modest condition, some eternal features of the national character: oversensitive pride, courage, devotion, adherence to tradition, respect for the moral code of the time, to the point of sacrifice. Beyond its few experiments (such as the linking sequences and the unfolding of time marked by the visual leitmotif of the ever-spinning rickshaw wheel), the film’s worth is in its spontaneity, its freshness, its bonhomie. In its modesty too, as it understates any character’s dismay, even despair.
Fifteen years later, Inagaki would shoot an extremely faithful remake of his own film, but in Cinemascope an colour: a more explanatory, more diluted, more outdated work, less touching and less convincing. It was the cuts made by the very strict censorship of the time, Max Tessier recalls (in Images du cinéma japonais, Veyrier, 1981) that pushed Inagaki to undertake the remake. However, everything had been said in the original, allusive and endearing in its form. In the 1958 version, Toshiro Mifune’s overly plodding and overly picturesque interpretation prevents the figure of Matsugoro from ‘coming across’ as well as in the first version. A third adaptation of Iwashita’s novel was made in 1965 by Kenji Misumi.

Jacques Lourcelles, Dictionnaire du cinéma: les films, Laffont, Paris 1992

Despite being cut down by both the wartime Japanese government and the post-war US occupation forces, the original 1943 version of Muhomatsu no issho survives as a masterpiece of humanist cinema from a dark time. Miyajima, longtime righthand to legendary cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, declared that he would restore Muhomatsu no issho even if it were his last act on earth – that was before the coronavirus. Wheels of Fate follows Miyajima’s quest to restore Muhomatsu no issho journeying between Tokyo, New York, and Lis- bon while recounting its fateful history using interviews, archival material, and animation. Director Hiroshi Inugaki won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1958 with a colour version starring Toshiro Mifune using the exact same script and storyboards. However, the unvarnished character of the original, made during the height of WWII by a cast and crew believing it would be their last work, has made it an irreplaceable piece of film history.