The Life of Oharu (Saikaku Ichidai Ona)
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Written by Kenji Mizoguchi and Yoshikata Yoda from a novel by Saikaku Ihara
1952/Japan
Koi Productions/Shintoho Film Distribution Committee
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
Katsunosuke: Lady Oharu, a human being – no, woman – can only be happy if she marries for love. Rank and money don’t mean happiness.
This story of a woman in medieval Japan made a beautiful film. It also made me really angry.
It is 17th century Japan.The 50-year-old Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka), a streetwalker, sits in a temple. The faces of the Buddha statues remind her of the men in her life and we segue in flashback.
Oharu begins life as a pretty teenager whose parents are attached to the the court. A lowly retainer (Toshiro Mifune) in love with her. She resists his advances at first but then succumbs and the two are caught together. Since it is taboo for the higher classes to associate with the lower classes, Oshiro and her entire immediate family are exiled from Kyoto. The lover is beheaded. Needless to say, Oharu’s parents are not happy with her. But their opinion changes when a court retainer selects her as the ideal candidate to be the Daimyo’s concubine and bear him an heir, something his wife has been unable to do.
Oharu has a healthy son, from whom she is immediately separated. Then the Daimyou falls for her and his advisors decide he is “sapping his strength” in the bedroom so Ohayu is sent back to her parents only a tiny bit richer. In the meantime her father has taken out a large loan in hopes that the match would make him rich. He decides her to sell her to a high class brothel as a courtesan.
Poor Oharu can’t catch a break. She is eventually dismissed from the brothel for insubordination. She has some happiness as a fan-maker’s wife but he is soon killed by robbers. She ends up traveling with a thief until the thief is caught. Finally, some prostitutes see her begging in the street and take pity on her.
This is a very sad movie but it made me more angry than anything else. The suffering that these women went through while they were basically chattel is mind-blowing. Although depressing, it is very beautiful to look at and Tanaka is one of the really great actresses in cinema history and does wonderfully with her role. I just read that Mizoguchi’s sister was sold as a geisha. I had not known that before. It explains the themes of a lot of his films, which tend to focus on the plight of women.
In the absence of clips from the film, here is a clip about Tanaka’s visit to Hollywood
