The Depiction Of Women In The Classical Japanese Cinema Of Ozu and Mizoguchi.2

Kenji Mizoguchi and Ozu Yasujiro are two of Japan’s most famous film direc­tors. Both of which are renowned for hav­ing women as cen­tral sub­jects in their films. This essay aims to briefly explore the com­mon themes in these respec­tive direc­tors’ works, in order to under­stand the impor­tance of the roles that women played in their films. Geishas were depicted fairly often in Mizoguchi’s films. Perhaps this stems from his hum­ble back­ground, which played a major role in the devel­op­ment of geisha themes in his films. In 1905, his father went bank­rupt after a failed busi­ness ven­ture at the end of the Russo-Japanese war. Film his­to­rian Le Fanu (2005) states that “the fail­ure neces­si­tated a child­hood move from a rel­a­tively mid­dle class area in Tokyo to a more plebian dis­trict close to the the­atre and brothel quar­ters” (pg.22). This move coin­cided with the birth of his younger brother and the dis­ap­pear­ance of his elder sis­ter, Susumo, who was a drain on fam­ily finances. It was shortly dis­cov­ered that she was sold into­geishadom. However, Susumo con­tin­ued to play a huge part on Mizoguchi’s young life, enabling him to acquire his first job through her pro­fes­sional contacts,and bring­ing Mizoguchi and his brother under her shel­ter when their mother passed away. There is a “par­al­lel between the tra­jec­tory of Mizoguchi’s ado­les­cent life and the plots of numer­ous melo­dra­matic shimpa dra­mas” (LeFanu, 2005, p.23), which recount the sac­ri­fices made by geishas on behalf of the men they are involved with. This aspect of Mizoguchi’s ado­les­cent life is extremely apt because the sub­ject of women’s suf­fer­ing is fun­da­men­tal in all his work; while “sac­ri­fice – in par­tic­u­lar, the sac­ri­fice a sis­ter makes for her brother” –has a ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence in many of his films in the 1930s. (Le Fanu, 2005, p.25) Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion are two Mizoguchi films worth a men­tion. Although the milieus depicted in the two films dif­fer greatly (only Sisters of the Gion is specif­i­cally set in the world of Geisha), their spir­i­tual affin­ity is obvi­ous when observed closely. Both films are cen­trally con­cerned with what it means to scrab­ble for patron­age. In the pre-war Kyoto Geisha world depicted in Sisters of the Gion, Omocha and her sis­ter search for an elderly rich client to sup­port them finan­cially. This search for patron­age is not quite as for­mal­ized in Osaka Elegy, where Ayako, the hero­ine is a lowly com­pany employee, rather than a “bird in a gilded cage” (Le Fanu, 2005, p. 71). But in a way, she is a bird in a cage too as her quest is the same. In these two films, Mizoguchi explores cir­cum­stances, which force beau­ti­ful yet des­per­ate women to exchange free­dom for money. Mizoguchi thus seems to pos­sess a fond­ness for reveal­ing the true nature of dis­tressed women in times of tur­moil in a male-dominated soci­ety, main rea­son being that his sis­ter her­self fell vic­tim to fam­ily cir­cum­stances and soci­etal norms. To many crit­ics, Mizoguchi is an impas­sioned defender of women’s rights who feels that women have lit­tle choice under the Japanese patri­archy but to sac­ri­fice them­selves. Their only way out is to “develop spir­i­tual strength to tran­scend their oppres­sion” (Noletti & Desser, 1992, p.32). One such film, in which this occurs, is The Life of Oharu. The hero­ine, Oharu, falls from a high posi­tion in soci­ety and even­tu­ally becomes the low­est type of street pros­ti­tute. In accor­dance to authors Noletti, Jr. and Desser (1992), crit­ics have fre­quently asserted that Oharu has “attained tran­scen­dence by the end of the film” (p.33). It is inter­est­ing to note that because of Japan’s deep-rooted patri­ar­chal sys­tem, Mizoguchi could explore the repressed plights of women com­pared to Japanese men, as men’s plights could never be as inher­ently piteous. Ozu Yasujiro is another famous Japanese direc­tor whose films often encom­passed the role of aver­age Japanese women. His most acclaimed film, Tokyo Story, exam­ines the dis­union between a stereo­typed “traditional”Japanese female and the char­ac­ter­is­tics that embod­ied the “mod­ern” Japanese women in the early 1950s. The film’s main theme cen­ters on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the fam­ily spurred on by post-war urban­iza­tion, demon­strat­ing how this shaped the demeanor of the female pro­tag­o­nists, com­plex in their intri­cate fusion of Japanese and Western, emo­tional and prag­matic, mod­est and inde­pen­dent. (Sato, 2003, pg.3) One exam­ple of this com­plex­ity of the fem­i­nine is Shige, the eldest daugh­ter and impu­dent wife. She fits the stereo­type in some ways, but in other ways she does not. Working at home as a hair­dresser, her “domes­tic occu­pa­tion has been prac­ticed by women since pre-modern times”. (Sato, 2003, pg.6). However, her casual behav­iour around her par­ents indi­cates the blasé atti­tude fre­quently asso­ci­ated with latter-day wom­an­hood. A clear exam­ple of this would be in one scene where Shige delib­er­ates with Koichi, her brother, con­cern­ing an immi­nent visit to their debil­i­tated mother. Shige, still unsure of the crit­i­cal state of their mother’s afflic­tion, placidly asksKoichi whether they ought to pack mourn­ing gar­ments. Surprised at her insen­si­tiv­ity, Koichi hes­i­tates before reply­ing unen­thu­si­as­ti­cally. Shige imme­di­ately responds with “Settled. Let’s pack them in case”. Despite her pur­ported fil­ial piety, her judg­ment of the cir­cum­stances dis­turbs the fre­quently expressed per­cep­tion of Japanese women. (Sato, 2003, p.7). Film Historian Sato (2003) states that Shige’s unem­bell­ished servi­tude of fam­ily claims to the demands of her work makes Shige a “dis­qui­et­ing image of domes­tic­ity” (p.7). In spite of that, Shige occa­sion­ally embod­ies a hybrid of ‘old’ and ‘new’, and par­takes in an effort to place her­self within broader social cus­toms, such as those of urban and pro­fes­sional work­ing women. It is the work­ing daughter-in-law Noriko who osten­si­bly reveals the attrib­utes of an inde­pen­dent woman, pro­fes­sion­ally indus­tri­ous in a broader soci­ety, and not Shige her­self. And yet, Noriko com­plies with befit­ting female tra­di­tions within the fam­ily. While Shige and Koichi are too self-absorbed to per­form family-related activ­i­ties, Noriko pre­vails as the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of fil­ial piety, uncom­plain­ingly leav­ing work in order to enter­tain her parents-in-law dur­ing their Tokyo visit. Subsequently, also stay­ing by the father’s side after his wife’s death, long after the rest have paid their desul­tory respects and left. Noriko’s image as the “pre­vail­ing stereo­type of the mod­ern sin­gle woman” (Sato, 2003, p.9), con­tra­dicts her behav­ior, as it is she who resides inde­pen­dently in a mod­ern apart­ment, trav­el­ing daily to her desk-bound cler­i­cal job. Ultimately, Ozu wanted to show the con­flicts that Japanese women faced as they emerged from the tra­di­tional and rigid old-world cus­toms to the more lib­eral eman­ci­pa­tion of work­ing women. In con­clu­sion, the por­trayal of women in Mizoguchi’s and Ozu’s films are starkly dif­fer­ent, both car­ried out in a dif­fer­ent fash­ion, with dif­fer­ent styl­is­tic devices and dif­fer­ent approaches in dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances. However, one sim­i­lar­ity between the two direc­tors lies in the need to show­case the plight of Japanese woman in a patri­ar­chal old-fashioned soci­ety, and also as not just an object of desire and sub­servience, but also what it means to pos­sess an indomitable spirit. Written by Suzie Knight List of References LeFanu, Mark. Mizoguchi and Japan, Londo: Cromwell Press, 2005. Mizoguchi, K. (Director) Fujiwara, T. (Writer) & Osaka, S. (Writer) & Yoka, Y. (Writer) (1938) Osaka Elegy. [Film DVD]. Japan: Daiichi Eiga. Mizoguchi, K. (Director),. Kuprin, A. (Novelist) and Mizoguchi, K. (Writer). (1938). Sisters of the Gion [Film DVD] . Japan: Daiichi Eiga. Noletti, Jr. & ;Desser,D. Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History. Indiana University Press, USA, 1992. Mizoguchi, K.(Director), Ihara, S.(Novelist) & Mizoguchi, K. (Writer). (1952). The Life of Oharu [Film?DVD]. Japan: Koi Productions Sato,B. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan. Duke University Press, USA, 2003. Ozu,Y.(Director), Noda,K.(Writer) & Ozu,Y. (Writer).? (1953). Tokyo Story.[Film DVD]. Japan: Shochiku Kinema Kenkyûjo