Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi, perhaps the greatest of Japanese film directors, made eighty-six films between 1922 and 1956 but the films still considered his best are those that he made in the twilight of his career - The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954). It is unusual for a filmmaker to produce his best work at the end of his career and since Mizoguchi’s last films are strikingly different from even those that he made in the late 1930s, the characteristics marking out his last films need to be examined and his transformation as a filmmaker enquired into. Japan suffered military defeat and endured Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the 1940s and underwent huge changes under occupation. A proposition which can be tested is that all these left a mark on Mizoguchi’s cinema. The War and its aftermath transformed Kenji Mizoguchi’s artistic vision in a fundamental way and this essay is based

Japanese cinema at the beginning
Kenji Mizoguchi is recognized, first and foremost, as a stylist with a penchant for the long tracking shot but, if this suggests similarities with a director like Max Ophuls, his style has different connotations in the Japanese context. Ophuls’ long tracking sequences can be defined as ‘realistic’ in the Bazinian sense. The French theorist André Bazin drew a distinction between what he regarded as the two sides of cinema. The first, (‘montage’) which he associated with editing, is primarily connected to the spectator filling in the unseen details as well as inferring the various relations in the narrative. The second (‘mise-en-scène’) which Bazin associated with the single shot - incorporating tracking and/ or panning - is more a matter of observation. Where relations are only implied in montage, mise-en-scène enables the spectator to actually see the relevant relations. Bazin argued that montage - because it forces emotional responses through associations instead of allowing the spectator to merely observe – was manipulative. Where ‘realism’ was - to Eisenstein - not only the world as it was, but also as it should be made, Bazin regarded Eisenstein’s films as ‘Expressionist’ because they did not respect ‘reality’ as it was, but endeavored to refashion it through montage. Bazin believed that ‘realism’ should respect reality instead of recomposing it according to the dictates of a political/ethical or aesthetic belief, which is what Eisenstein had essentially done. One can say that Ophuls subscribed to realism and achieved the same things with his tracking shot that Welles had with deep focus - maintain the integrity of space without dismembering it so that the spectator catches ‘reality’ and has the freedom to interpret it instead of only receiving the ‘interpretation’ provided by montage. If Ophuls’ tracking camera can be associated with realism as defined by Bazin, Japanese cinema - at least in its early years – had no use for ‘realism’ in this sense.

As in many other countries, Japanese cinema initially followed many of the practices of traditional theatre. It has been noted that since the mechanics of presentation of the performance were often as important part of the entertainment as the performance itself, the spectator’s interest in the film projector was initially almost as great as what was projected (1). Cinema simply captured performance together with the commentary. Performance in Japanese theatre was usually incomplete without a commentator. The Noh play had its chorus, the Bunraku puppet drama had the Joruri singer and Kabuki had its Gidayu chanter and silent cinema in Japan had the Benshi commentator. Imported films needed interpretation and the Benshi provided it (2). It has been said that films with different Benshis were completely different films – so much did the Benshi mediate in each screening. Overall, if in the West, cinema was an extension of photography, in Japan it was an extension of traditional theatre (3).

Since cinema originated in the West and the earliest experience of cinema for the Japanese came from Western films, a question is whether Japanese cinema was not influenced by the West. The general consensus is that Western storytelling methods were only adapted for their novelty and no justification was found for them. A characteristic of Japanese art is that it is not separate from the written or spoken word. Panting, dance and music – all of them are accompanied by a text to be read or heard (4) and this proved to be true of cinema as well. Instead of realist space as in Western cinema in which the action is mimetic, space in Japanese cinema is a playing area bound by conventions. One does not look through the screen into an illusion of space but at the screen itself. This accounts for the flat compositions of Japanese cinema, the painterly scenes of Ozu and Mizoguchi. As a noted theorist of Japanese cinema said, “A film can never become reality itself because film always takes place within a frame.” (5) This is in contrast to Western theorists who see the frame in realist cinema as a momentary one around an ongoing reality which existed before the camera focused on it and will exist after the film is over (6). What is crucial is catching a moment in an ongoing process, a moment which implies the process. The apprehended ‘real’ need not be a social/ political one but might even pertain to a moment in a human life in which a truth about it is abruptly laid bare as in Robert Bresson’s films (7).

Regardless of his concerns, which will be examined in due course, Mizoguchi was very much a part of the Japanese tradition and to him ‘realism’ was selective and reductive, and attributable to the will to aestheticize. “Beauty is the striving for realism. The realistic consists of a selection of what is considered beautiful, just as in the West, the real is defined by what is not,” Mizoguchi once declared (8) and this places him in a different category from Ophuls although their respective camera styles appear to owe to the same principles. Mizoguchi’s films therefore have a strong moral discourse which may sometimes make them appear sententious. But the important issue is that his moral/ ethical viewpoint, though ‘traditional’, does not remain undisturbed in his films and it is the difference between the pre-war and the post-war perspectives that is of importance here. This being the case, it will be useful to begin this enquiry with an examination of Sisters of Gion (1936) which, along with another 1936 film, is acknowledged as the earliest serious work of his career.

Sisters of Gion

Sisters of Gion (1936) This film is about two sisters Umekichi and Omosha, both geisha in Kyoto. When the film begins, Furusawa a once rich businessman is bankrupt and the furniture and antiques in his home are being auctioned. Furusawa moves to Umekichi’s house where she begins to look after him. Umekichi feels loyalty towards Furusawa who always treated her well but the pragmatic Omosha does not believe that her sister is indebted to him. In order to get rid of Furusawa, Omocha obtains money from an antiques dealer Jurakudo to ‘pay off’ Furusawa to enable him to leave. Since Umekichi cannot take on a

Mizoguchi sets up several sharp sequences – Kimura’s gift of the kimono is discovered by his employer Kudo who ‘forgives’ him because he is himself taken up with Omosha. Kimura is warned by his boss Kudo to stay away from Omosha but he returns to find Kudo there. Kimura, then dismissed from service, calls Kudo’s wife and tells her about her husband and Omosha. Another sequence involves Furusawa and Jurakado meeting at Umekichi’s place. Furusawa suspects Jurakado of having sold him fake antiques all his life and Jurakado is now buying them back at reduced prices. Jurakado is the rich man but he treats his bankrupt former customer with a tradesman’s courtesy even as he is gently easing him out of Umekichi’s home. But after Furusawa has been evicted, the loyal Umekichi runs into him again and the two take up quarters together – until Furusawa finds employment close to his wife’s home and abandons Umekichi. Kimura gets revenge when he kidnaps Omosha and pushes her out of a car. The film ends with Umekichi visiting Omosha in hospital. The two are now without patrons and Omosha expresses regret for their lot as geisha.

Central to Sisters of Gion is the contrast between the two sisters. Umekichi is traditional and exhibits all the virtues that the geisha is expected to including loyalty to her patron when he is in difficulties. Omosha, in contrast, seems to have embarked upon a more adventurous ‘Western’ path after she was educated in a public school; she smokes cigarettes and wears Western clothes except when she is working as a geisha. She is cynical and playacts, trying to take advantage of men by feigning ‘love’ and ‘loyalty’ when she is willing to give neither. Omosha is perhaps even the traditional geisha transformed by capitalism.

Mizoguchi is a much more ‘political’ filmmaker than Kurosawa or Ozu in that he is preoccupied with the interactions between different social groups. Sisters of Gion is often described as ‘feminist’ but where ‘feminist’ films are usually humanitarian laments over the ill-treatment of women Mizoguchi’s geisha are not individual victims of heartless or brutal men (9) but members of a group which is a victim of patriarchy. The geisha is a ‘professional’ but while providing ‘love’ and ‘loyalty’ as services, she has no recourse against clients as a professional might have. After Umekichi has convincingly demonstrated her loyalty to Furusawa, she does not demand reciprocation from his side and Mizoguchi does not suggest that she can expect it. It is significant that it is Omosha and not Umekichi who expresses resentment at the end.

At first glance Omosha seems more determined to deal with her lot as geisha but she hardly emerges triumphant. Omosha regarding her relationships with her clients as a strictly commercial one does not really help her. Mizoguchi is critical of patriarchy and sees social mores as skewed but his position is that of an insider. If every relationship in Sisters of Gion is circumscribed by hierarchical structure, Mizoguchi takes a wry look at it but does not try to wish it away. Mizoguchi’s own sister was sold as a geisha and this influenced his outlook enormously but his attitude - despite the sharp irony with which he approaches his subject - is one of acceptance although he is by no means an apologist for patriarchy and tradition. The apologist and the rebel are perhaps closer to each other than we imagine because both of them try to remake reality in their own image. The apologist tries to remake it as it was ‘intended to be’ while the rebel/ iconoclast tries to make it as it ‘should be’. Unlike the traditionalist, both of them flinch at portraying something ‘the way it is’. Mizoguchi - and this is true of his later films as well - is content with dealing with the world with patient understanding and accommodating its complexity within a single vision. His acceptance is not ‘approval’ as much as recognition that, while art must be clear-eyed about reality, it need not set about trying to transform it - a role which can perhaps be left to other agencies.

Mizoguchi’s camera style, as noted earlier, bears a strong resemblance to Ophuls’ mise-en-scene and the first sequence in Sisters of Gion bears testimony to it. But where Ophuls uses the tracking camera to explore space - as in the sequence from Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) in which Joan Fontaine watches Louis Jourdan’s furniture being moved – the space in the sequence from Sisters of Gion is demarcated by screens, which naturally suggest impermanence. The camera catches the damage wreaked by the auction – the objects scattered across a largely empty space as well as the noisy bidders - and when it finally rests upon the players in the sequence, they are positioned in a way that makes their hierarchical relationships apparent. Furusawa’s employee bows and kneels as he sincerely regrets what has happened to his employer and conveys it to him and his wife. The bankrupt merchant expresses the hope that when he is better placed he will be able to give the young man employment again but advises him to join a more successful competitor for now. The conversation and the gestures are important and being affirmed here is the stability of traditional hierarchy where the employee continues to honor his bankrupt employer. It may be recalled that this is the same employee who later supports Furusawa.

But Furusawa’s wife displays a different attitude when she indicates that much of the furniture just auctioned was part of her wedding trousseau. The merchant apparently married into a rich family and his wife is now sharing (bitterly) the depredations that misfortune wreaked upon her husband. The wife’s bitter response is caught through a cut which disrupts the tracking shot. Since the tracking can be associated with an affirmation of tradition, one could say that the opening sequence begins by setting the context of Furusawa’s bankruptcy and then affirms that traditional values can survive such a disaster although they can also be tested, the last qualification being formally linked to the cut. In Umekichi’s house as well, Furusawa is welcomed by Umekichi and there is a sharp disruption of the tracking by a cut when the cynical/pragmatic younger sister enters the frame.

Since Mizoguchi’s tracking shot has been linked to formal beauty there is the sense, in his filming, of ‘beauty’ being associated with traditional values in which loyalty, respect and the honoring of hierarchical imperatives reign supreme. The first sequence - with the implication that traditional values when adhered to sincerely are ‘beautiful’ - creates the social context for Umekichi’s unquestioning loyalty to Furusawa thereafter and her conduct is deemed more laudable. Although Mizoguchi does not judge Omosha, he still sees Umekichi as exemplary and formal devices are employed to make the moral affirmation. The fact that the two are left with only each other for consolation is significant because it suggests that the honoring traditional values - although nobler - may not translate into material advantages.

In the same year in which he made Sisters of Gion Mizoguchi made another film Osaka Elegy (1936) which contains few of the affirmations of the other film. In Osaka Elegy a telephone operator in a pharmaceutical company Ayako Murai consents to become her boss’ mistress because her father has embezzled money and will be arrested unless the amount is made good. After this debt is paid off she becomes the mistress of another workplace superior and some of her money goes to pay for her brother’s education. But desperate to marry an admiring colleague and settle down Ayako makes a wrong move which sees her being arrested, and her frightened boyfriend immediately disowns her. When Ayako returns home, she is ostracized by her family although they have depended on her.

Ayako in Osaka Elegy could well be Omosha from Sisters of Gion not only because both of them are played by Isuzu Yamada and are ‘Westernized’ women but also because of certain common character attributes. Omosha, it will be recollected, was curiously amoral in as much as she was prepared to break social codes in order to get ahead but it is also a fact that many of the things she does is done for her sister’s sake. Her ‘amorality’ goes, paradoxically, along with a certain kind of selflessness. If Omosha’s amorality gets emphasis in Sisters of Gion, Ayako’s selflessness gets more attention in Osaka Elegy; still, this should not distract us from the sense that Ayako loves the good life and, in her eagerness for marriage, humiliates the reasonable man who has been keeping her well-provided for. Both Sisters of Gion and Osaka Elegy can be described as being about women trying to gain independence in patriarchal society but failing because of the lack of a code outside that provided by tradition. Rather than valorizing tradition, it would be accurate to say that Mizoguchi sees patriarchy and tradition as providing stability to the social structure - that is skewed and oppresses but may also protect.

Osaka Elegy came when militarist Japan was expanding westward and was labeled decadent and eventually banned in 1940. But even without this information, this is a much more pessimistic film than Sisters of Gion - even more so than the brief description I have provided may indicate. Since dark irony is so much more in evidence in Osaka Elegy, Mizoguchi virtually eschews the long tracking shot and the film is also choppy with little or no emphasis on formal beauty. But Osaka Elegy seems to be an exception in Mizoguchi’s oeuvre and a more typical film is The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939). This film was made just before the advent of the War and its affirmations were more in tune with the nation’s efforts.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939) Unlike the other two films this film is centered on a male protagonist although it is about the sacrifices that a woman makes to help him succeed. The film is set in Japan in 1885 in a family of Kabuki actors. Kikunosuke Onoue is the adoptive son of a famous Kabuki actor Kikigoro and is training to succeed his father in an illustrious career. Kikunosuke is not the best of actors and, while hypocritically praising his acting to his face, the rest of his father’s troupe derides him behind his back. Otoku, the young nurse

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums is the antithesis of the other two films discussed earlier in as much as it is almost entirely without irony. As may be expected from what has been said about Mizoguchi’s camera style, this suggests long takes and exquisite tracking shots. Here are a few examples that help us understand the affirmations that the film makes. He first tracking shot occurs almost immediately after the title sequence with Kikigoro getting into costume and preparing to enter the stage. He is a star and there are a number of troupe members and helpers who attend to him reverentially and follow him down the stairs to the stage. There is a celebration of traditional performance in this sequence and a short while later we have another great segment in which Kikigoro dresses up for post-party celebration while his adoptive son stands uneasily in a corner of the room. Kikigoro exudes authority even as he combs his hair before a mirror - his chest out as he examines himself - while Kikunosuke seems to lack confidence, his head held less firmly and face turned downward. This sequence is not simply demonstrating Kikunosuke’s emotional condition because there is also an affirmation of hierarchy here - a novice acknowledging experience apart from a son honoring his authoritarian/ authoritative father. In a third sequence Kikunosuke is taken to task by his father for meeting Otoku after she has been dismissed. This is not a tracking shot but a long take with an immobile camera. Kikunosuke is being addressed by his father and chastised but we do not see Kikigoro who is apparently just beyond the top left-hand corner of the frame. Kikunosuke listens but when he replies finally, announcing his desire to leave the troupe, a man’s face enters the frame from the left and a woman till then obscured by his figure enters the space from behind Kikunosuke although Kikigoro remains invisible. Apart from this suggesting Kikigoro’s distance and inaccessibility, Kikunosuke has not been alone with his father when having to talk to him on such a personal matter and even intimate meetings with him are mediated by members of the troupe. This suggests the impersonal nature of the relationship between the two, which is simply not that between a father and a son. The two are as hierarchically placed in relation to each other as King and Prince might be.

All these sequences emphasize professional/family hierarchy and obedience but there are sequences involving the relationship between Kikunosuke and Otoku. An important aspect is that this relationship is also circumscribed by hierarchy – since the two come from different classes. Otoku is separated from him twice, and both separations involve his departure on trains – the first time when Kikunosuke leaves his father’s troupe to seek a career in Osaka when she is kept away from him by her parents (at his father’s behest) and the second time when he returns to Tokyo. In the second instance, Otoku sacrifices her own happiness by leaving him - she is not on the train that Kikunosuke is taking when she should be on it and he searches for her desperately. He hurries along the platform searching each compartment for Otoku while the camera tracks his movements from inside the train. When he hears the whistle, Kikunosuke climbs into his own compartment and joins his colleagues who are also proceeding to Tokyo who tell him about Otoku’s sacrifice. As with the filial relationship discussed earlier, his relationship with Otoku - although understandable as ‘love’ - is not an unmediated one between individuals. Otoku, rather than seek their happiness together, seeks out what is good for him in the social hierarchy. This hierarchical aspect gets emphasis when we learn that he is a good actor now but having the backing of his family name will still help his career. My argument here is that Otoku’s sacrifice is not to help him prove himself - which he already has - but to enable him to take his rightful place in a hierarchy from which she is excluded. I described The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums as taken up with affirmations but what is being affirmed here might even have appeared perverse in Western love story - although one can imagine a lowly born woman giving up her man because he will be King.

As indicated, Mizoguchi is often described as a ‘feminist’ filmmaker but these three key films made before the War all deal with women coming to grief because of hierarchical imperatives. The choice before the woman is only two, Mizoguchi suggests in these films, either affirm tradition and social structure - and one’s rightful place in it - in which case her suffering will at least be ‘beautiful’ i.e.: it will mitigated by the stature that her acceptance of social dictate imparts or, alternatively, disobey traditional hierarchical imperatives and be simply destroyed. Mizoguchi is deeply sympathetic to the lot of the woman but his indebtedness to tradition (regardless of how skewed he may regard it to be) is so enormous that he sees no possibilities for a life which chooses to negate it.

We have looked at three films made in the thirties and we may now go on to examine Mizoguchi’s great post-war work but before we do this, it is necessary to understand the effects of military defeat upon Japan and what follows is a brief recapitulation - to help us get a sense of how defeat changed Japan.

Japan after the surrender
At the end of World War II, Japan was occupied by the Allied Powers, led by the United States. Japan initially surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945, when the Japanese government notified the Allies that it had accepted the Potsdam Declaration. On the following day, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender on the radio. The inaccessibility of the Emperor may be gauged from the fact that this announcement was his first ever radio broadcast and the first time most citizens of Japan ever heard his voice. This date is known as Victory over Japan, or V-J Day, and marked the end of World War II and the beginning of a long road to recovery for a shattered Japan. On V-J Day, President Harry Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), to supervise the occupation of Japan. This foreign presence marked the first time in its history that the island nation had been occupied by a foreign power. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed on September 8, 1951, marked the end of the Allied occupation, and after it came into force on April 28, 1952, Japan was once again an independent country. It was in independent post-war Japan that Mizoguchi produced his greatest work.

The Occupation was not a simple experiment in democracy because with the intensification of the Cold War, SCAP reined in its reform initiatives. From late 1947, US priorities shifted perceptibly from liberal social change to internal political stability and economic recovery. During the occupation, many of the financial coalitions which had previously monopolized industry were successfully abolished although economic reforms were also hampered by the wealthy and influential Japanese who stood to lose a great deal. As such, there were those who consequently resisted any attempts at reform, claiming that the coalitions were required for Japan to compete internationally, and looser industrial groupings evolved. A major land reform was also initiated. Between 1947 and 1949, approximately 38% of Japan's cultivated land was purchased from the landlords under the government’s reform program and resold at extremely low prices to the farmers who worked them. By 1950, three million peasants had acquired land, dismantling a power structure that the landlords had long dominated.

In 1946, a new Constitution of Japan was promulgated as an amendment to the old Meiji Constitution. The political project drew much of its inspiration from the US Bill of Rights, New Deal social legislation, the liberal constitutions of several European states and even the Soviet Union. It transferred sovereignty from the Emperor to the people in an attempt to depoliticize the Throne and reduce it to the status of a state symbol. The 1947 Constitution also enfranchised women, guaranteed fundamental human rights, strengthened the powers of Parliament and the Cabinet, and decentralized the police and local government.

Since Mizoguchi’s films have dealt primarily with the woman’s position in Japanese society, it will be useful to examine the effects of occupation on women’s issues. It has been convincingly argued that the granting of rights to women played an important role in the radical shift Japan underwent from a war nation to a democratized and demilitarized country (10). Although there were views that this was an over-simplification, Japanese women were perceived as helpless victims of feudalistic traditions who needed Western guidance. American women assumed a central role in the reforms that affected the lives of Japanese women: they educated the Japanese about Western ideals of democracy, and it was an American woman who wrote the Japanese Equal Rights Amendment for the new constitution (11). Although their efforts were genuine for the most part and did bring benefits to Japanese women, the attitude of American women may have strengthened orientalist perceptions of Japan. The American women involved in reform perceived themselves as ‘feminist agents endowed with progressive and modern ideology and practice’ who had been appointed the mission of liberating Japanese women (12). We may surmise that all these initiatives had transformed Japan considerably by the time it became independent once again in 1951 and had lightened the baggage of tradition.

Mizoguchi’s films in the period 1945-51, although hardly dismissed, are not regarded as highly today as his later work. One could surmise that he was trying to cope with the changes wrought upon his society by occupation and its implications for the traditional way of life in his country. Many of these films are ‘socially committed’ works with Mizoguchi taking a fairly transparent stand. For instance The Love of Sumako the Actress (1947) revolves around a radical theatre group that wishes to break away from the Japanese tradition of Kabuki and start tackling the European classics; for their inaugural play, they choose Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, the archetypal feminist tract. To understand the more profound changes in his vision, therefore, we may proceed directly to the film that many consider his greatest - The Life of Oharu (1952).

The Life of Oharu

The Life of Oharu (1952) The Life of Oharu begins with Oharu as an old woman in a temple and goes back through the events of her life. This narrative commences with her love affair with a page Katsunosuke, the result of which (due to their class difference) is his execution and her family’s banishment. Oharu attempts suicide but fails and is sent off to be the mistress of Lord Matsudaira with the hope she will bear him a son. She does, but is then sent home with minimal compensation to the dismay of her father, who has become quite indebted in the meantime. He sends her to be a courtesan, but she fails there too and is sent home.

An achievement of The Life of Oharu is its conveying a sense of a ‘patriarchal society’ without the rancor that feminist films often display. As an illustration of what Mizoguchi’s film does, neither Lord Matsudaira nor Oharu’s son by him are shown to be uncaring and callous. But both of them are so cocooned and enmeshed in officialdom that they do not seem to have the freedom to act on their own. Lord Matsudaira’s establishment decides that Oharu should be sent away with a few measly coins after delivering his heir and the same establishment decides that it would be unbecoming for a Lord’s mother to be a common prostitute. When Oharu sees her grown son for the first time, she makes a move to talk to him but there are servants behind him and servants in front who are deciding where he should go and the pace at which he must walk and he is too preoccupied with protocol to pay attention to her. Oharu’s condition is pathetic but, by the end, but she has also grown as a woman somehow and is not a ‘victim’ - as a lesser film might have portrayed her. The episode with the pilgrims when the aged and garishly painted Oharu is exhibited as an example of the frailty of the flesh shows her to be grimly amused rather than hurt or offended and it is her acceptance of this condition without giving in to self-pity that is most striking. In fact, the elderly man who engages her describes her as a ‘goblin cat’ to his younger companions and Oharu, after accepting his money, mimics a ‘goblin cat’ before thanking them.

The strangest aspect of The Life of Oharu is its humor because it is about human degradation, and here are some instances: The qualifications required to become Lord Matsudaira’s concubine are high and strict standards of beauty and breeding are demanded. The woman, for instance, should not have wisps of hair at the back of her neck. The emissary deputed to look for suitable women is elderly - it would be difficult to trust a younger man on the return journey. When the bald woman who later employs Oharu discovers that she once worked in a high-class brothel she concludes that her husband had her installed at home on purpose. But the miserly husband, who protests his innocence vehemently to his wife, cannot also help wondering if employing a former courtesan does not entitle him to have her without paying. This humor, it must be noted, is very different from the irony which characterizes some of the earlier films - especially Osaka Elegy.

Both the dark irony in Osaka Elegy and the humor in The Life of Oharu come out of a critical scrutiny of social mores but, I propose, the irony in the earlier film comes out of faith in a given - traditional order. Underneath the cynicism of Osaka Elegy (if ‘cynicism’ is the correct word) is dissatisfaction with society for not conforming to standards set by tradition. Ayako conducts herself as she does because society does respect honor as it should. The Life of Oharu is different in that there now appears to be no expectation that Mizoguchi has of society. This being the case, virtually every social practice becomes fair game for humor.

Coming to camera style, The Life of Oharu is beautifully shot but Mizoguchi eschews both the sharp cut and the long tracking shot. I earlier associated the long tracking shot with an affirmation of tradition and there is little affirmation of tradition in The Life of Oharu. Where Mizoguchi never left us in doubt as to where his sympathies lay, the evenness of the filming here makes the film much more dispassionate than we were accustomed to in his films and it is this dispassionate quality that allows for so much humor in the most abject situations and leaves the humor gentle. Although this cannot be asserted with certainty, there may be some significance in Oharu’s story being related in flashback. As in many Hollywood films, this flashback is motivated by character memory (13) and begins when Oharu recollects Katsunosuke who loved her. After this we see many things that she could not have seen and the story does not correspond to her ‘point of view’. Still, the fact that the film hints at character subjectivity is unexpected because Japanese cinema (especially Mizoguchi’s films), being designed as ‘presentation of performance’, could not have allowed for point of view at all. This suggests a fundamental transformation in an important aesthetic principle and, like the other aspects just written about, can perhaps be attributed to the drastic changes made upon the Japanese way of life in the late 1940s (14).

If there is a single strong affirmation in The Life of Oharu, it resides in the love between her and Katsunosuke. Oharu initially rejects him because she is from the Imperial Palace while he is a mere ‘servant’. But she understands when he asks her if any Lord has ever looked at her with ‘sincerity’. He stresses the importance of ‘sincere love’ when he offers marriage to her and proposes that they run away together. When he is executed, his last words echo the hope that people will be allowed to love each other regardless of station and he wishes that Oharu will find a good man who loves her sincerely. One has only to compare this notion of love with the one valorized in The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums to understand how far Mizoguchi had come between 1939 and 1952 - as indeed had Japan.

There is another key aspect of The Life of Oharu which deserves comment, which is Oharu’s unrelenting downward trajectory. An aspect of the earlier films, as indicated earlier, is the sense that those who honor tradition will not be abandoned by it. Otoku, although she dies from tuberculosis in The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums finds posthumous acceptance when Kikunosuke’s father concedes her innate nobility and agrees to her as his daughter-in-law. Umekichi in Sisters of Gion is, similarly, perhaps victorious in defeat. Oharu, in contrast, is completely abandoned although she has been true to tradition. There is a sense in this film that tradition, although it makes huge demands, has nothing to offer in return. It is also significant that while loyalty is a cardinal virtue in the earlier films it is not invoked in The Life of Oharu. Implicating ‘loyalty’ in the narrative allows reverence towards a transcendental object – which may be the nation as in mainstream Hindi cinema, the ‘American way of life’ in Hollywood’s valorization of the nuclear family or tradition as in Mizoguchi’s earlier films - and the fact that it is not made an issue shows up the weakening of tradition, the growing sense that it has nothing to give, and it is the absence of ‘loyalty’ which shows up strongly in the comic sequences. It shows up once again in Ugetsu (1953), the film which made Mizoguchi famous in the West.

Ugetsu

Ugetsu (1953) The film is set during the Japanese Civil Wars of the Sixteenth Century near Lake Biwa in the Province of Omi, the potter Genjurô travels to Nagahama to sell his wares and makes a small fortune. His neighbor Tobei is a foolish who man who dreams about becoming a samurai, but he can not afford to buy the necessary outfit. The greedy Genjurô and Tobei work together at producing clayware, expecting to sell the pieces and become rich while their wives Miyage and Ohama are only worried about the army

As Genjurô is selling his pottery he is approached by two customers different from the villagers. They turn out to be an aristocrat Lady Wakasa and her elderly woman servant. They ask Genjurô to deliver their purchase at Kutsuki Mansion located some distance away in a scarcely inhabited region. When Genjurô reaches the mansion, he is welcomed and presented with an offer of marriage. His blue pottery is excellent and the lady has been taught to appreciate objects of beauty and their creators, is the explanation offered. Soon, Genjurô is having pleasures the like of which he has never experienced before. Time passes as if in a dream until he discovers that Lady Wakasa and her attendant are ghosts and that Kutsuki Mansion is a mere ruin on a hillside. Genjurô now understands that he must go home to his family just as, at about the same time, Tobei discovers that his wife Ohama has become a courtesan and gives up the life of a samurai to return with her to being a potter. When Genjurô returns home his wife welcomes him but, next morning, he finds that she too is a ghost because the real Miyage was murdered by Shibata’s soldiers and their son is being looked after by the village headman. The two men - understanding the advantages of an ordinary existence - resume their interrupted lives as potters.

There are aspects of Ugetsu which are almost Brechtian - the motif of small people trying to take advantage of war but coming to grief is the central one in Mother Courage and her Children (1939). The difference is perhaps that, being based on a folk tale, the male protagonists of Ugetsu eventually learn their lesson and decide to live their lives wisely. Needless to add, this means that there is great a deal of humor in the film - chiefly Tobei escapades, his pretense at being a great samurai warrior up to date in his scholarship of military strategy. The motif of the opportunistic samurai with no loyalties to any master is also a subversion of the mythical samurai figure. A key tale told traditionally in Japan is that of the loyal forty-seven Ronin (masterless samurai) who avenge their dead lord. In this story which has been made into several films (including one by Mizoguchi in 1941) the forty-seven plan their revenge for over a year, pretend to be dissipated and cowardly to put the enemy off-guard, kill him and then commit ritual suicide after their deed is accomplished. It is evident that Tobei is a samurai from a different mould than might have been traditionally upheld. The sub-narrative of Genjurô and Lady Wakasa, in being an erotic encounter between two people from completely different classes, anticipates Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976). In a rigidly hierarchical society such as Japan’s, eroticism introduces the notion of equality because, in submitting totally to pleasure, neither one submits to the other. Lady Wakasa being a ghost does not undo this. If one were to interpret the erotic encounter as an ‘aspirational fantasy’ on Genjurô’s part, it is still different from what might have been permitted in Mizoguchi’s pre-war films in which one may not aspire outside hierarchy. Even in Portrait of Madame Yuki (1950), Mizoguchi restricts eroticism to within marriage although Yuki secretly loves another man.

Ugetsu is more playful than The Life of Oharu and is certainly a lighter film. There is a moment in The Life of Oharu - when Oharu encounters the pilgrims - when one actually catches a glimpse of flesh grasping its own infirmity. Oharu has painted herself for her clients but it is evident that what she is being hired for is for the spectacle under her paint. This is a horrifying moment of clarity for her because she understands that what she has become will show through any amount of playacting. Ugetsu, being derived from a ‘fairy tale’, contains no such moment and its highpoint is perhaps the erotic interludes involving Genjurô and Lady Wakasa. The motif in The Life of Oharu brings it close to ‘realism’ because Mizoguchi apprehends a real moment that goes beyond performance. Performance, in fact, abruptly drops off when Oharu is confronted by the state of her flesh underneath the paint. If Mizoguchi is still true to the tenets of his craft one can imagine no such moment from early Japanese cinema. But the film which is most ‘realistic’ in this sense is Sansho the Bailiff (1954), perhaps the culmination of Mizoguchi’s filmmaking career.

Sansho the Bailiff

Sansho the Bailiff (1954) Sansho the Bailiff is set in feudal Japan. A virtuous governor who cares more for the poor peasants than those he is serving is banished to a far-off province. His wife and children are sent to live with her brother but are tricked on the journey by a deceitful priestess and sold into slavery and prostitution. The mother is sold to Sado as a courtesan. The children are sold by slave traders to a manorial estate in which slaves are brutalized, working under horrific conditions and are branded

The children grow to young adulthood at the slave camp. Anju still believes in the teachings of her father, who advocated treating others with humanity, but Zushio has repressed his humanity, becoming one of the sterner overseers in the belief that this is the only way to survive. Anju hears a song from a new slave girl from Sado - learned from a courtesan - which invokes her and her brother in the lyrics. This leads Anju to believe their mother is still alive. She tries to convince Zushio to escape, but he refuses, citing the difficulty and their lack of resources. Zushio is ordered to take Namiji, an older woman, out of the slave camp to be left to die in the wilderness due to her sickness. Anju accompanies them, and while they break branches to provide covering for the dying woman they recall their earlier childhood memories. Zushio asks Anju to escape with him to find their mother. Anju asks him to take Namiji with him, convincing her brother she will stay behind to distract the guards. However, after Zushio’s escape, Anju commits suicide by walking into a lake, drowning herself so that she will not be tortured and forced to reveal her brother's whereabouts.

After Zushio escapes in the wilderness, he finds his old mentor, Taro - Sansho’s son - at an Imperial temple. Taro writes him a letter as proof of who he is and advises him to go to go to Kyoto to seek redressal from the Chief Advisor. Although initially refusing to see him, the Chief Advisor realizes the truth after seeing statuette inherited by Zushio from his father. He then tells Zushio that his exiled father died the year before and offers Zushio the post of the governor of Tango, the very province in which Sansho’s manor is situated.

As Governor of Tango the first thing Zushio does is to pass an order forbidding slavery both on public and private grounds - although he has no authority to do so. Sansho offers initial resistance but Zushio orders him and his minions arrested, thus freeing the slaves. When he looks for Anju among Sansho's slaves, he finds out his sister sacrificed herself for his freedom. Zushio tells the slaves that they will be paid for their work henceforth. The manor is burned down by the ex-slaves, while Sansho and his family are exiled. Since he has flouted the law, Zushio resigns and takes leave of the subordinates who had once cautioned him.

Zushio leaves for Sado where he searches for his mother, who he believes is still a courtesan. After hearing that she died in a tsunami in another corner of the island, he goes to the beach where she is reported to have been killed. He finds a nearly blind, decrepit old woman in a shack singing the same song he heard at Sansho’s mansion, “Zushio, Anju… .” The tendons behind her knees have been brutally severed to prevent her from leaving Sado and she cannot walk without assistance. Zushio reveals his identity to her but Tamaki assumes he is a tormentor until he shows her the statuette. Zushio tells her that both Anju and their father are dead. He tells his mother he has been true to his father’s teachings.

The first aspect that strikes someone familiar with Mizoguchi’s work is how the virtues he upheld have transformed. Without this in mind, the tenets to which Zushio’s father subscribes - mercy, kindness and the basic equality of man - may sound clichéd. It is as if Mizoguchi was being abruptly exposed to these ordinary virtues because he was shut off from the rest of the world. This is comparable to The Life of Oharu pronouncing that people must have the freedom to love across barriers of class in the manner of making a discovery. Mizoguchi makes these commonplace assertions sound fresh but it is not this alone that gives Sansho the Bailiff its extraordinary power; the phenomenon needs a deeper investigation.

The focus in the film is mainly Zushio, whose adult inclinations are not to be merciful but to simply perform the duties set to him. Sansho himself is hardly ‘evil’; he is in charge of property owned by the Minister of the Right and is performing the duties entrusted to him. He admonishes his son for not being stern and attributes it to his weakness, Taro not having the stomach for difficult work. If Sansho is not kind or merciful, it is because these notions lie outside his moral vocabulary. On reflecting upon the film, we recognize that Zushio changes in his ways not because kindness and mercy are ‘right’ but because they were advocated by his father and it is correct that he follows his father’s teachings. It is significant that Zushio does not have a ‘moral awakening’ but simply decides to follow his father rather than Sansho. Memory of these teachings is brought to him by a family heirloom (a statuette) which also confirms his noble birth. When Zushio proceeds to Kyoto to meet the authorities, he does not reason with them but screams out his pleas, animal-like. A key moment in the film occurs when Zushio (as the Governor) and Sansho come face to face. Sansho does not recognize him until Zushio reveals his true identity. Sansho’s response is to express surprise that a slave could have ascended to such a level but it is significant that he sees no contradiction in his honoring a former slave because the slave, now having station and power, deserves such honor. It is only when Zushio begins to pass unlawful orders that Sansho protests, also asserting that Zushio cannot get away with acting beyond his powers.

Zushio’s ‘moral’ acts as Governor of the province are not thought out. His subordinates advise him against them and when Sansho is exiled for keeping slaves there is even disbelief on the bailiff’s part. The general sense to be gathered is that Zushio’s actions being unlawful, Sansho will have his position restored. If Sansho had been executed, the step would have been irreversible, but not so exile. Sansho is highly prized as manager of the Minister’s property and there is no way in which he can be punished, but Zushio ignores this. Also, when Zushio tells the slaves that they will be paid decent wages if they remain behind, his statement is patently false. When the former slaves are in the throes of an alcoholic frenzy and burning the mansion down, we are certain that their freedom will be short lived. Similarly, we are left apprehensive for Zushio’s subordinates in the Governor’s office for they have followed orders which they know to be unlawful. This suggests that Sansho the Bailiff is more complex than it is made out to be and is by no means merely ‘humanist’. If Mizoguchi is upholding broadly ‘democratic’ values, he still has less faith in their applicability than he had in the efficacy of Japanese tradition and patriarchy before the war.

Sansho the Bailiff, with its praise of simple virtues, begins as a kind of fable in which the initial state is restored but, in the course of the story, we begin to realize that Mizoguchi is putting in events which cannot be undone, moments which imply an irreversible process. The heartbreaking scene in which Tamaki is separated from her children by human traffickers is the first one and her being deliberately crippled after her failed escape from Sado is perhaps the next. Zushio promises Anju that he will return to fetch her but Anju kills herself immediately thereafter, confirming that even she has little faith in a release. These are events which drag the characters deeper into abjection but when Zushio is given the power to do some good – however unlawfully – it is ironic that each of his decisions is certain to be overturned. When Zushio resigns his position, the film’s brief dalliance with good fortune concludes and he is left alone with his hopelessly crippled mother, weeping for things as they might have been.

Japanese cinema began as a ‘presentation of performance’, a commentary on what was socially appropriate rather than an imitation of life. Mizoguchi’s earlier films therefore have discourses valorizing traditional values even while acknowledging the attendant distress. Sansho the Bailiff begins by making one expect its message to be reassuring in some way but, as it unfolds, the world intrudes so insistently that its moral affirmations are actually undermined. That Zushio screams out his pleas instead of articulating them suggests deafness of the traditional order to persuasion. In the final analysis, it would appear that the film attains extraordinary power not because of its righteous moral viewpoint but because it is unrelentingly ‘realistic’ - it admits that the real world will not submit to any kind of moral order, owing either to Japanese tradition or to the liberal-democratic West. It is this bleak perspective alongside its persistent moral affirmations that makes it such a devastating film.

Conclusion
Kenji Mizoguchi has a unique place in cinema: he was prolific over such a long period that he has made great films in every era. He belonged to a nation which underwent cataclysmic changes in the twentieth century - perhaps only comparable to Germany, Russia and China. But where the cultural history of each of these nations was so brutally interrupted that it is difficult to find any kind of continuity in their cinemas, Japan’s case is conspicuously different. While Yasujiro Ozu is another Japanese filmmaker who produced great work in more than one era, the scope of his work – restricted as it is to the family – is smaller and is therefore not as imprinted upon by political transformation as Mizoguchi’s films are. Mizoguchi’s great pre-war films make way for his even greater post-war work but, since his concern was Japanese society, his work has enormous political implications. The Japanese military establishment had made demands upon filmmakers before 1939 and even Mizoguchi yielded to these demands (15) although his artistic integrity was not compromised. Mizoguchi’s genius survived the post-war transformation of Japan but there is evidence that his moral vision and his aesthetic were both overwhelmed by new elements after 1945. Japanese cinema, as indicated earlier, existed in a hermetic environment till the War and Mizoguchi’s films provide as much evidence of this as those of any other filmmaker. Mizoguchi’s early films acknowledge the difficulties with Japan’s patriarchal tradition but, taking it as a given, they valorize it while acknowledging its tragic implications for individual lives. The War proved that tradition was not infallible and had led Japan to catastrophe. The post-war transformation of Japan perhaps made it necessary for Mizoguchi to reexamine his convictions and he emerged from it with his faith in the traditional order destroyed. But what is more important is that his great films of the 1950s have insights into the limits of human order itself and it is this aspect which gives his films a new profundity which being merely ‘humanist’ might not have imparted to them.