Old Japanese
movie the woman in the rumor/Carlos Pueblo
Kenji
Mizoguchi, another old deceased director of the past in Japan, directed this
1954 film
about a brief life occurred at a geishadom in Kyoto. The original title of
the film in
Japanese, uwasa no onna, means the woman in the rumor which is
interested
to me due to the use of a classical Kanji uwasa, means gathering talk,
rumor, or
gossip. I watched the movie twice to make sense to the title in English
translation.
It is about a story of a whore house during the hard time of Japan after
WWII.
The daughter
is brought back home from Tokyo after a suicide attempt due to her
fiancée
abruptly ended the relationship. It is because that he learns her mother is
operating a
geishadom at home which is considered a low class business in Japanese
society. The
girl can’t take it anymore of her life. The mother, a widow herself, asks
her younger
lover, a physician, to help to see the depressed daughter. It starts with a
very slowly pace
among them.
One day, one
of the employee comes back sick at the mid-term of her duty. The
physician gives
a shot to release her pain temporarily and the daughter joins to help.
The rest of
young women are surprised of her kindness and come close to chat even
offer advice
about personal experience towards changed mind lovers. The house is
very busy in
business. Finally, the sick woman is diagnosis with cancer and is sent to
a hospital
for cure and dies.
The young
physician and the daughter have developed love affection and decide to
go to Tokyo
together. Mother finds the fact and tries to persuade him to stay to open
his own
clinic. He is not moved at all and she finally gives up. Instead, she gives him
prepared
loan for the clinic to him for his use of any purpose. The daughter learns
the
relationship between her mother and her new lover refuses to Tokyo with him
and even
posts a threat to stab him with a sharp successors. Mother disarms her in
time to
release the physician. It is very dramatic.
Mother is
ill after all and can’t operate daily business and the young daughter steps
in to help.
She feels that she has been live in this business for all her life and no
longer
resents the
business. The deceased woman’s younger sister comes back for a job as
a courtesan
intern because difficult life at the village with a sick father. The movie ends
there with a
busy business demands tied up with the young Madame.
This is a
typical life which people are suffering after they enter the world as described
In Buddhism.
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