Directory of World Cinema
Osaka Elegy Naniwa Erejii Studio:
Daiichi Eiga Director:
Kenji Mizoguchi Producer:
Masaichi Nagata Screenwriter:
Yoshikata Yoda, from the serial ‘Mieko’ by Saburo Okada Cinematographer:
Minoru Miki Composer:
Synopsis Ayako is a young woman working in a menial, subservient job at a successful pharmaceutical company in Osaka. Her much older, married, boss pressures her to become his mistress and she seeks the advice of her boyfriend, Nishimura, a young co-worker who feels powerless as he is unable to help. With her brother away at college, Ayako lives with a younger sister and a father who has incurred a substantial and pressing amount of debt. After an argument with her father, she leaves her home and stops going to work. Giving in to her boss, she moves into a western-style hotel that he has arranged as a ‘love nest.’ This gives her a better lifestyle while saving her family from financial ruin but it also creates a dilemma as Nishimura proposes to her. Shortly afterwards, she is caught by the wife of her boss and their affair comes to an abrupt end. Now a free woman, Ayako encounters her sister who tells her that their brother’s future is dependent upon him finishing school and he is therefore badly in need of tuition. Once again she must choose between sacrificing herself and her dreams for the good of her family.
Koichi Takagi
Critique
Duration/ Format:
With Osaka Elegy, and later with the companion piece Sisters of the Gion (1936), Kenji Mizoguchi made the shift from Meji mono (Meji Era-based stories) to gendaigeki (modern story). Already a highlyregarded veteran of nearly 60 films, it was not until this point that Mizoguchi found the themes and the style that would eventually characterize his reputation both in Japan and abroad. Osaka Elegy was Mizoguchi’s first collaboration with screenwriter Yoshikata Yoda, who he would work with on nearly all other films. Together they established the themes most associated with the director’s work: human suffering (particularly from a woman’s point of view), the injustice of society, and the exploitative nature of inequitable traditions. In Osaka Elegy these social issues include urban economic hardship and the limited, demeaning options available to young women, such as the heroine Ayako. The backdrop is Osaka in a time of industrialization and modernization, which in pre-war Japan is aligned with, if not wholly synonymous with, Westernization. What is entirely Westernbased is the Japanese ‘moda’, or modern, girl: flighty, self-gratifying and materialistic, derived from the American flapper in style and attitude. As a ‘moda’ girl, Ayako is also a symbol of the pull between the traditional and the modern. The traditional is even less kind than the exploitative economic landscape, as the Confucian orders of family and patriarchy are destructive to her. The conflict between obligation and self-interest is magnified to become a matter of survival and selfpreservation. There are several references to going to the theatre and, in fact, a scene does take place there. It is not a coincidence that the play is about betrayal and manipulated love and that the performance is by bunraku puppets that are indigenous to Osaka. This is significant because, besides Ayako, who is played with wonderful nuance by a
66 mins./ B/W Cast:
Isuzu Yamada Seichi Takegawa Benkei Shiganoya Year:
1936
158 Japan