DVD Review: Chikamatsu Monogatari / Uwasa No Onna (1954)

Released in the same year, these two minor gems from Japanese cinema grandee Kenji Mizoguchi are slow but graceful dramas which, though differing greatly in subject matter, share the auteur’s characteristic precision, high production values and humanist yen for emotion defying societal repression.

Set in 17 th-century Kyoto, Chikamatsu Monogatari is a tragic love story with a distinctly Shakespearean flavour. Osan, the wife of a corrupt and philandering printer, seeks help from Mohei, one of his employees. She needs money to pay off the debts of her foolish brother, and dare not ask her husband directly. Mohei tries to help her but through a series of betrayals the printer is led to believe that Osan and Mohei are having an affair.

They flee – the penalty for adultery at the time is crucifixion – and mustered by the danger of the chase their love, previously only imagined by Ishun the printer, becomes real. They soon realise, however, that capture by their ruthless pursuers is inevitable. After being denounced by both Mohei’s father and Osan’s ungrateful brother, they surrender and are put to death, but not before arranging a suitable come-uppance for Ishun.

The lazy pace of the script is not quickened by Mizoguchi’s trademark one-scene-one-shot approach, which uses single, long shots where most directors opt for cross-cutting and shot/reverse-shot techniques. As a result, the first half of the film is ponderous and a little dull.

This is atoned for in the second half though, which, as well as increasing momentum with the flight of the two fugitives, holds the film’s most moving and memorable scene. In a rare moment of weakness Mohei attempts to abandon Osan and save himself. Osan chases him down a forest path and falls in the dirt; he gives up his escape and lies beside her. In their muddy embrace, so far from the pristine, powdered neatness of Japanese wifehood, they vow never to leave each other again.

In many ways period drama is the perfect genre for Mizoguchi’s meticulous design philosophy and proto-feminist agenda of depicting strong female characters under unjust duress. Chikamatsu Monogatari is indeed a powerful piece of cinema, but the lackadaisical pace and stock plot are obstacles to its full enjoyment.

Uwasa No Onna (‘The Woman In The Rumour’) is also set in Kyoto, but this time in the contemporary 1950s. Hatsuko, the owner of a well-run geisha house, is concerned about her daughter Yukiko, recently returned from Tokyo where she attempted suicide after being spurned by her lover. Hatsuko asks her handsome young friend Dr. Matoba to examine her daughter and ensure she does not attempt suicide again.

Rather predictably, the cosmopolitan, sardonic and intelligent Yukiko (excellently played by Yoshiko Kuga) and Dr. Matoba fall for each other, though the Doctor’s liberal indifference towards prostitution contrasts with Yukiko’s vocal contempt for it. More surprisingly it emerges that Hatsuko is also in love with Dr. Matoba and the two had been conducting a May-December affair.

In the powerful, emotionally charged penultimate scene, Matoba rather cruelly rejects Hatsuko for her daughter. Finally, after a discussion prophesying radical changes in Japanese society, the immaculately gussied-up geishas troop ritually out of their house to start the night’s work, walking into an uncertain, mutable future.

Uwasa No Onna is as slow as Chikamatsu Monogatari, at least in the beginning. The lavish production design and Toshiro Mayuzumi’s interesting score, together with strong performances from all players, form a credible and intriguing window into the curious life of the geisha, but this historical accuracy comes at the expense of narrative strength.

Nevertheless, it is informative and amusing to see how the geishas’ customers behave. The men are portrayed as hopelessly puerile, to the point of throwing tantrums, scuffling with one another and regularly collapsing to the floor. Much of this is drunkenness, certainly. But there is also a wilful surrender into childishness at play here, a headlong escape from the strictures and circumscription of Japanese daytime etiquette. The geisha house is as much a fetish-fulfilment parlour as a traditional brothel.

When the pace finally quickens, and central trio’s relationships tragically unravel, the film is as powerful as any Japanese cinema. Hatsuko and Yukiko are splendidly drawn characters; Dr. Matoba less so, but then this is in keeping with Mizoguchi’s championing of womankind. As with the other piece in this set, the patience required to sit through the movie’s long preamble is rewarded with a moving denouement and some thought-provoking social commentary.

A note for Japanologists: Strictly speaking, geishas were historically not prostitutes, but chaste escorts who entertained in the more innocent sense. After World War II, when prostitutes dressed in traditional clothing and known as ‘geisha girls’ serviced American GIs stationed in Japan, the term became confused even within the country. The working girls in this film, therefore, should be called not geishas but shogi. However, it is likely that Mizoguchi and contemporary moviegoers would still have considered Hatsuko’s establishment to be a geisha house.

Sam Healy