Women of the Night

1948 film by Kenji Mizoguchi

  • Yoshikata Yoda (writer)
  • Eijirō Hisaita (novel)
Produced byHisao ItoyaStarring
  • Kinuyo Tanaka
  • Sanae Takasugi
CinematographyKōhei SugiyamaEdited byKanji SugawaraMusic byHisato Ōsawa
Production
company
Shochiku
Distributed byShochiku
Release date
  • 28 May 1948 (1948-05-28) (Japan)[1][2]
Running time
74 minutesCountryJapanLanguageJapanese

Women of the Night (夜の女たち, Yoru no onna-tachi) is a 1948 Japanese drama film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi starring Kinuyo Tanaka.[1][2]

Plot

In early post-war Osaka, three women - war widow Fusako, her sister Natsuko, and their sister-in-law Kumiko - descend into prostitution, all for their own individual reasons.

Fusako begins the film struggling to take care of her infant child. She sells her possessions to buy food, but cannot afford her child's vaccinations. Although Kumiko's self-centered husband allows Fusako to live with them, he pleads that he also cannot afford to pay for the vaccinations. Fusako angrily rejects a shopkeeper's suggestion of becoming a prostitute to make ends meet. Her baby dies of illness.

After hearing that Fusako's husband died in the war, Kuriyama, a wealthy businessman, offers Fusako a job as his secretary. His real goal is to seduce her. After Kuriyama tells her that he truly cares for her and will support her, Fusako reluctantly agrees to become Kuriyama's mistress. Fusako moves out of Kumiko's house, and Kuriyama, who has turned to opium smuggling, uses Fusako to hide his contraband. However, Kuriyama develops an interest in Fusako's sister Natsuko, who was repatriated from Japanese-occupied Korea after the war, and works as a hostess at a dance hall that Kuriyama frequents. Kuriyama begins sleeping with Natsuko. Devastated and betrayed, Fusako becomes a prostitute.

Struck by her conscience, Natsuko tries to find Fusako, but that night, the police raid the Osaka brothels. They mistake Natsuko for a prostitute, arrest her, and bring her to a prison hospital. A representative from a "purity association" visits the hospital, but her condescending manner alienates the prostitutes, who rhetorically ask her how Japanese society proposes to feed them if they can no longer resort to sex work. Natsuko finds Fusako in the hospital, but Fusako scolds her for stealing her paramour and declares that she intends to revenge herself on the men of Japan by infecting them with syphilis.

During a medical exam, the prison doctors inform Natsuko that she is pregnant with Kuriyama's baby and that she has contracted syphilis herself. (It is implied that Kuriyama has been cheating on both sisters.) After Natsuko is released from the hospital, she has a heated conversation with Kuriyama, who callously minimizes his treatment of Fusako and orders an unwilling Natsuko to get an abortion. Before Kuriyama can drag Natsuko to the abortion clinic, the police coincidentally arrest him for opium smuggling.

Meanwhile, Kumiko steals money from her husband and runs away from home. Concerned that Kumiko's husband will blame her for the theft, Natsuko turns Kumiko away. Looking for a man to support her, Kumiko is deceived by a gangster who rapes her and robs her of her money. His accomplices steal her possessions and clothes, but offer to let her join them. Unwilling to face her husband's wrath, Kumiko also reluctantly agrees to become a prostitute.

Having learned from the prison doctors that her baby will die unless she receives treatment for her syphilis, Natsuko desperately tries and fails to find another wealthy lover. She enters premature labor, and Fusako takes her to a medical clinic at a reformatory for former prostitutes. During the delivery, Fusako converses with a disapproving clinician. She explains that she does not want to be a prostitute, but men treat her as an object, and she has no options left. She reaffirms her desire to get revenge on men, but when the clinician asks whether she has been successful, she is unable to respond.

Due to Natsuko's untreated infection, the baby is stillborn. A devastated Natsuko expresses hope that someday, she will get married and bear a healthy child. Horrified by the effects of syphilis, Fusako resolves to quit prostitution. Although the clinicians urge Fusako to join the reformatory, she decides to go her own way.

While walking outside, Fusako sees a rival group of prostitutes beating up Kumiko (who has been soliciting clients on their turf) in the ruins of a bombed-out Christian church. Fusako tearfully convinces Kumiko to quit, explaining that revenge and disillusionment will only destroy herself. Insulted by Fusako's rejection of prostitution, the prostitutes' leader savagely beats Fusako, but she is eventually restrained by the other prostitutes, who urge Kumiko and Fusako to leave the red-light district and never return. The two women leave, heading for an uncertain future.

Cast

  • Kinuyo Tanaka as Fusako Owada, the protagonist
  • Sanae Takasugi as Natsuko Kimishima, Fusako's sister
  • Tomie Tsunoda as Kumiko Owada, Fusako's sister-in-law
  • Minpei Miyamoto as Kōji Owada, Kumiko's husband
  • Umeko Ōbayashi as Tokuko Owada, Fusako's mother-in-law
  • Mitsuo Nagata as Kenzō Kuriyama, an opium smuggler who solicits both Fusako and Natsuko for sexual favors
  • Kumeko Urabe as madam of the brothel
  • Kimie Hayashi as Kazuko, a prostitute
  • Kenzō Tanaka as Shuichi Hirata
  • Fusako Maki as the representative of the Purity Association, an anti-prostitution activist group
  • Kikue Mori as the shopkeeper who encourages Fusako to become a prostitute

Production

Still image of the film

Censor Harry Slott of the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) Motion Picture Office endorsed the film's subject of women who resort to prostitution, and several health and welfare organisations announced their support for the production.[3] Women of the Night was filmed on location in Osaka,[4][5] including a scene in a hospital ward for prostitutes.[6]

Reception

Contemporary reactions to Mizoguchi's film were mixed, ranging from condemnation for being sensational to praise for its realistic depiction of women struggling to survive in post-war Japan.[3] In his 2005 biography on Mizoguchi, Mark Le Fanu titled Women of the Night, although a minor film in his opinion, one of the director's "most outspokenly engaged denunciations of the oppression of women in society".[7] Reviewers, including Le Fanu, Donald Richie,[8] and Dudley and Paul Andrew[9] also drew comparisons between Mizoguchi's film and Italian neorealism.

Awards

Mizoguchi's film reached number three on Kinema Junpo's list of the ten best Japanese films of 1948,[10] and Kinuyo Tanaka received the same year's Mainichi Film Award for Best Actress (for Women of the Night and A Hen in the Wind).[11]

Legacy

Women of the Night was screened at the Harvard Film Archive in 2014 as part of its retrospective on Mizoguchi,[12] and by the British Film Institute in 2017 as part of its Tears and Laughter: Women in Japanese Melodrama special.[13]

References

  1. ^ a b "夜の女たち". Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  2. ^ a b "夜の女たち". Kinenote. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  3. ^ a b Hirano, Kyoko (1992). Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945–1952. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 1-56098-157-1.
  4. ^ "Women of the Night". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  5. ^ Brody, Richard (2 December 2009). "Women of the Night". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  6. ^ Shindо̄, Kaneto (director) (2001). Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (DVD). Japan: Asmik Ace.
  7. ^ Le Fanu, Mark (2005). Mizoguchi and Japan. London: BFI Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84457-057-7.
  8. ^ Richie, Donald (2005). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (Revised ed.). Tokyo, New York, London: Kodansha International. p. 116. ISBN 978-4-7700-2995-9.
  9. ^ Andrew, Dudley; Andrew, Paul (1981). Kenji Mizoguchi, a Guide to References and Resources. G.K. Hall. p. 211. ISBN 9780816184699.
  10. ^ "キネマ旬報 ベスト・テン 1948年・第22回". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  11. ^ "毎日映画コンクール 第3回（1948年）". Mainichi (in Japanese). Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  12. ^ "Women of the Night (Yoru no Onnatachi)". Harvard Film Archive. Retrieved 29 August 2023.
  13. ^ "Tears and Laughter: Women in Japanese Melodrama". Electric Shadows. 11 October 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2023.

External links

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Films directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
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