Sisters of the Gion (1936)

Sisters of the Gion (“Gion no shimai”)
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Written by Kenji Mizoguchi and Yoshikata Yoda based on the novel “The Pit” by Aleksandr Kuprin
1936/Japan
Daiichi Eiga
First viewing

[box] O-Mocha: If we do our jobs well they call us immoral. So what can we do? What are we supposed to do?[/box]

This sad but beautiful film by Kenji Mizoguchi is quite thought-provoking.

O-Mocha (Isuzu Yamada) and Umekichi are sisters.  They barely make ends meet working as geishas in the Gion, the pleasure district of Kyoto.   The gentle Umekichi’s patron has gone bankrupt and she feels an obligation to take him in and look after him.  O-Mocha’s philosophy is that men are the enemy and should be taken for everything that can be gotten out of them. She plots to rid the household of Umekichi’s patron and find rich patrons for both of them.  Like a Japanese Scarlett O’Hara she will stop at nothing to get her way.  Ultimately, neither sister’s philosophy of life emerges victorious.

I thought this was rather fantastic.  Isuzu Yamada was even better than she was in Osaka Elegy and the cinematic storytelling is stunning.  Once again, there are few sympathetic characters here.  O-Mocha in particular is heartless in the extreme.  However, the film really made me think.  What, indeed, were they supposed to do?  O-Mocha finds herself in a tragic state of affairs at the end and her sister says she would not have suffered her fate if she had been nicer to men.  But O-Mocha says, even when she is broken, that being nice would mean giving in and she will never give in.  And Mizoguchi makes it clear that the nice sister doesn’t get anything for her pains either.  The system is stacked against the geisha and by implication against women in general.

And that concluded my viewing for 1936!