Kenji Mizoguchi - A tragic filmmography on the suffering of women

The two titans of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa and Yashiguro Ozu, could not be more different -- one making complicated intense action films and the other small films about family dramas. However, they were not the only Japanese directors working at the time. If Kurosawa made violent films about samurais and policemen and Ozu made films about contemporary middle class issues, their contemporary Kenji Mizoguchi made films about the historical and modern oppression of Japanese women. Mizoguchi often gets lost in the shadows of these two, but his style is just as unique and his films just as invigorating. He died of leukemia at the age of 58 but not before making at least 90 films, the majority of which no longer exist.

Mizoguchi’s passion for depicting the plight of women in Japan surely comes from the influence his own sister had on him. Coming from a poor family, his sister Suzu was sold by his father to be a geisha, a type of woman who would become a recurring character in his films. After the death of his mother he and his siblings would move in with his older sister who took care of them and helped him find his first jobs. The perseverance and dedication his sister had despite her circumstances are qualities that can clearly be seen in the female characters in his cinema.

Film historian Phillip Lopate notes that critics read Mizoguchis films as either feminist in their concern for and depiction of female suffering, or antifeminist in their fascination and obsession of women’s suffering who never come up on top. It is understandable how some could see him as a sadist after watching sad ending after sad ending, but seeing as Mizoguchi worked primarily in melodrama I think the fate of his characters makes perfect sense. Also, his male characters either also suffer or are depicted as cruel, selfish, and incompetent as they take advantage of their status to protect their masculinity.




Mizoguchi would gain international recognition after three successive films went on to win main prizes at the Venice Film Festival between 1952 and 1954. These films, The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho the Bailiff would come to be seen as a type of trilogy of beautifully filmed tragic period pieces. When talking about this time in film history it seems impossible not to mention the writers of Cahiers du Cinema, including, of course, Jean Luc Godard, who would claim that Mizoguchi was one of the greatest Japanese directors, in other words, one of the greatest directors of all time.

Mizoguchi’s style could easily be compared to that of Orson Welles or the Italian Neorealists. He favors long takes shot in deep focus and almost completely avoids closeups. Many film historians also praise him for his mobile tracking, though I think just how much his camera moves is a bit over exaggerated, some saying it is almost constant. What is constant are Mizoguchi’s long takes, but his camera is still as often, if not more often, than it is in motion. With that said, in each of his films there are at least two or three spectacular shots using a tracking or crane shot. Perhaps these film writers overstate the use of the moving camera because of how memorable and impressive his tracking shots are.

For instance, 1936’s Sisters of the Goin opens at an auction. The camera gives us a side view of the auctioneer and tracks to the right at loud men bidding for items. It then turns and shows us packers loading up stuff to be shipped off. The shot is simple, but wonderful in the variety of objects, people, and actions it allows you to take in right at the beginning. But then the camera cuts to a series of still shots to show us the store owner who has gone broke and must sell his possessions. He has an argument and decides to leave to join his lover, a geisha in Kyoto’s Goin district. Even in still interior shots Mizoguchi’s control and sense of space and framing is always present, and the exterior still shots in the dark, narrow tunnel-like streets are incredibly striking.

The film’s plot is one typical of Mizoguchi. It tells the story of two sisters who are geishas. One is content with her bankrupt lover and offers him a place in her home. Her sister, more conniving, sets out to kick him out and capture a rich ‘patron’ to take care of her. In the end both sisters are left off worse than before. Umekichi is deserted by the man she loved and helped, and Omocha is violently attacked by a suitor she wronged. Thus by being a loyal geisha or an ambitious one you end up in the same place, alone and abandoned by men once they are done with you.

Mizoguchi would continue making films with similar themes that focused on the hardships of women whether they were part of high society or prostitutes. His fixation on the tragedy and women's issues would reach its melodramatic peak in 1952 in The Life of Oharu, whose titular lady in waiting ends up as a common street prostitute after making the mistake of falling in love with someone below her class. Of all Mizoguchi’s women, Oharu possibly suffers the most. When she is discovered with her lover she and her family are banished to a life in the countryside. When a lord is looking for a concubine to bear him a son, Oharu’s father sells her to him. After fulfilling her duty and giving birth, she is separated from her son and kicked out of the palace because of the Lord’s jealous wife. Her life gets continually worse and worse as she serves as a courtesan, servant, widow, shamed nun, and, finally, prostitute. What is worse is that she has no say in what happens to her. She made one ‘bad’ choice that leads to a life of endless suffering. She is looked down upon for her past, but she never chose to become a concubine, courtesan, or prostitute. She was forced into each situation, first by her father, then by other men in power and society in general.

Several beautifully composed long moving shots come to mind when thinking about the film. The first is the opening shot of a middle aged Ohauru walking alone down a dreary empty street. The camera slowly followers her from a distance. Right from the beginning we understand the long difficult life this woman must have led just from the body language of actress Toshiro Mifune, the bleak surroundings, and slow camera movement.

The second scene that comes to mind is also the most technically impressive. Oharu is kneeling next to her mother at the table when she is given the last words of her executed lover. Overcome with grief she howls and grabs a knife. These first movements are hidden from us because of two kimonos hanging in front of her. Her mother grabs hold of her to prevent her suicide and Oharu flies out the door and into the forest next to their house. Her mother chases her and runs through the tall thin trees. After several seconds she is finally able to stop her and wrestle the knife from her daughter’s hands. The camera captures all of this in a sweeping sing shat that goes from indoors to between the tight trees outdoors.

The final shot of the films shows a woman from a distance walking towards the door of a house. She asks for money as the camera moves closer and she is revealed to be Oharu. Leaving her life as a prostitute after being humiliated by a group of travelers and learning of the death of her father from her mother, Oharu has decided to dedicate her life to Buddha. As the camera follows Oharu we see a Buddhist temple pointing towards the heavens in the distance. Oharu looks towards it and bows in reverence. Oharu’s lovers last words were that she not marry for anything but love. Unfortunately Oharu’s life never gave her the option to do as she wished. As a disciple of Buddha wandering the landscape for offerings, hopefully she has achieved some sort of peace after such a long series of misfortunes.

Mizoguchi would follow The Life of Oharu with Ugetsu, the film considered to be his masterpiece. It tells another period tragedy of women who suffer, this time because of the greed and ambition of their husbands in wartime. What makes Ugetsu different is a level of ghostly fantasy which adds another poetic level of sadness and beauty and is not present thematically in his other films. In the film Genjuro, a potter, and his brother in law, Tobei, seek to make a fortune as war breaks out in their region, because ‘war is good for business.’ Blinded by greed, they leave their happy lives with their wives to the misfortune of all. Genjuro leaves his wife, Miyagi, and son behind and goes off with Tobei and his wife Ohama. Ohama becomes separated from them and is raped by soldiers and later becomes a prostitute, and Miyagi is murdered by men searching for food. Through their wives hardships both men revel in their success. Tobei, stealing the severed head of a general, takes credit for his death and becomes a famous samurai. Genjuro is seduced by the ghost of a noblewoman who lures him to her house where he lives spellbound by mystical pleasure.

Again, there are a number of scenes that are completely unforgettable whose beautiful black and white cinematography is used to give a sense of legend and fantasy. The first is a boat scene. We see a boat emerge from the foggy distance as it floats slowly over the still water towards us. It contains our 4 heroes with Ohama steering and singing. Suddenly another boat emerges from the fog. It comes straight towards them and there is a half dead man aboard. One of the women screams he is a ghost. He speaks and says he was attacked by pirates and gives them a warning before gasping his last breath. The entire scene is filmed in dreamlike misty clouds and sets the tone for the fate of the 4 protagonists who will live experiences that feel like a dream turned into a nightmare. They live out stories that exist, like the dying boatman, somewhere between life and death.

All of the scenes featuring Genjuro and his ghost lover Lady Wakasa are stunningly fantastical, especially a scene that begins in a natural bath pool. The two flirt in the beautiful pool and as they begin to kiss the camera tracks away, eventually capturing the sand on the ground and fading into another shot of dirt in a field. The camera continues in one fluid movement to show the lovers having a picnic in a field below a single barren tree. These two sweeping shots merged together by the fade give us the sensation of the timelessness one exists in when one is in love. However here Genjuro not only forgets time and place because of love, but also because of a spell cast upon him by a woman who died before she could know love herself.

After escaping from Lady Wakasa’s house and returning home he is visited by another spirit, his own dead wife. The camera shows him enter the front door of his house. Running through the empty house he exits through the back door and circles around to the front door and enters again. As he leaves, the camera stays in the room, tracing his unseen exterior movements by panning across the wall until capturing him enter again. Upon entering the second time he finds his wife cooking him dinner. It is another wonderfully magical sequence shot in one take that shows how the victims of war appear and disappear and are present in the land of the living in a supernatural way. After eating and falling asleep Genjuro wakes up the next day with no sign of his wife.

The final film of Mizoguchi’s Venice award winning trilogy is a family tragedy called Sansho the Bailiff. This time an entire family suffers, but it is the selfless sacrifice of a woman that allows for the reunion of mother and son. The suffering begins in another magnificent boat sequence. A mother is travelling with her daughter and son to meet up with their father. Kidnappers offer them a ride on their boats and the family unknowingly accepts. Before they know what is happening the children are removed from the boat and the boatman begins rowing the mother and her servant away from the shore. The camera captures the boat slowly but unstoppingly moving across the water separating the mother from her children who helplessly shout to each other. The servant grabs the boatman but is shoved into the water to her death. As the servant slashing in the water to the cries of the other the film brutally cuts. In a single, quick, heartbreaking scene we see a family ripped apart before our eyes.

The children are sold as slaves to the cruel titular character, and the mother is sold as a prostitute on an island. Sansho the Bailiff does not take place in the otherworldly landscape of Ugetsu, but there are scenes that nevertheless feel like it. One of the most beautiful is when the siblings, now adults, are collecting plants to cover a dying woman to keep her warm. It reminds them of doing the same the night before they were kidnapped when they collected branches and weeds to build a shelter and start a fire. They hear their mother calling them back to the camp, her sweet voice carried by the calm breeze. Now as adults they believe they hear their mother singing to them across the sea, like a spirit calling them back to her through time and space.

The memory of their mother and the song in the air gives them the courage to escape, but Anju, the sister, tells her brother to go alone so she can distract the guard. Once he has fled, to avoid torture she decides to commit suicide. In three simple shots we see her drown herself. She walks slowly toward the water, the camera framed by the overhanging branches of two trees. The camera cuts away to action elsewhere, and when it returns we see the same shot, only now Anju is gone and we only see a few bubbles rise to the surface of the water before it becomes still again. It is one of the most subtly beautiful suicides captured on film.

One of Mizoguchi’s final films, A Story from Chikamatsu, is another melodramatic love tragedy, but with a more straightforward story and aesthetic than his trilogy. Many of his films have a moral lesson to them. Oharu is told to only marry for love, Ugetsu tells us to be happy with what we have, and the son Zushio in Sancho the Bailiff believes he is reunited with his mother only because he followed his father’s advice of being kind to others even when others are not so to him. In a Story from Chikamatsu we see how a small mistake blows up into an overly dramatic tragedy. Osan, the wife of a wealthy but greedy and stingy publisher asks one of his trusted workers for a small loan. Mohei takes the amount from his bosses books, but is found out. Ishun, his boss, fires him and throws him out. But when his wife discovers he is trying to fool around with one of the servants she runs away with Mohei and they fall in love. The film ends badly for all involved, and it all began with a small insignificant case of fraud.

Before the drama begins we see a parade of people pass by the publishing shop following two lovers who are about to be crucified. The shop girls comment on the injustice that a woman who is unfaithful is crucified in public with her lover, while a man of status would not be punished at all. This will be the ultimate fate of our lovers Osan and Mohei, but it is almost seen as a kind of victory. The film is very critical of the environment of respect and honor in Japanese culture. The characters constantly bow and pay respects to each other, but the second someone steps out of line their life is ruined. The lovers, unable to live peacefully without running for their lives constantly, are at least able to share death together and express their feelings publically for all to see.

The film is wonderfully shot in Mizoguchi’s typical style. Much of it takes place indoors, the deep focus long shots giving the audience plenty of time to completely inhabit the space of clean blank white walls, screened doors, and minimalist furniture and decorations. There are also some spectacular outdoor scenes where the lovers hide out in Mohei’s father’s back shack, and when Mohei unsuccessfully tries to escape from Osan by running down a lush hill, only being drawn back to her by her desperate cries.

Many other unforgettable images come to mind when thinking about Mizoguchi’s films, the tracking shot of the slaves partying and destroying the Bailiff’s house, or Genjuro waking up in a field to see the mansion of Lady Wasaka is in reality nothing but burnt ruins. Mizoguchi's camera poetically visualizes the tragedy of his films’ content. Like his contemporaries Kurosawa and Ozu, he has a distinctive visual style and voice and a filmography filled with essential classic films that achieve the same level of greatness as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, or Tokyo Story. His preoccupation with women’s stories of Japan’s past and present may be difficult to watch at times, but they are extreme representations of the reality of women’s rights that has improved immensely, but, as I’m sure Mizoguchi would agree, there is still work to be done. His films may be highly stylized, but they are never without a message.