Cinema year book of Japan (1937)

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GION NO KYODAI (Sisters of Gion) A Daiichi Production Director Kenji Mizoguchi, who showed in a previous picture, “Naniwa Elegy”, how in the modern industrial city of Osaka the daughter of a poor, obscure citizen was swept away by her own ignorance and the sheer irresistible forces of her environment into dens of corruption, has faithfully reproduced here the life and the rapacity of women who ply their trade in Gion — the licensed quarter of old Kyoto — and the grossness and imbecility of lustful men who gather about them. The sisters Umekichi and Omocha are both young geisha of Gion. They are precisely the opposite in character. Umekichi, the elder, is extremely old-fashioned and ignorant, but withal a good woman, generous and friendly. Omocha is an “ intellectual” with a middle school education, who has formed her own narrow philosophy of life out of her meagre brains. Thus, Umekichi takes her former “patron” Furusawa into her own home when he meets with financial ruin, and ministers to his needs. Her sister is entirely opposed to it, claiming that the male of the species is a selfish creature who treats the geisha — like themselves — as playthings and abandons them whenever it suits him and without any compunction whatsoever, so that there is no reason on earth why they should be faithful to his kind. Not only that, but Omocha makes deliberate use of her wits and her facial beauty to get the better of men. She employs all manner of wiles on lewd, dissipating philanderers. She twists them round her fingers. She extracts money from them. She cleverly manages to turn her sister’s man Furusawa out of their home, obtains a new “patron” for her, and tries to induce her to get the most out of life through means which are downright sordid. But there comes a day when her craftiness gets its due punishment — one of her paramours, whom she has deceived and betrayed, abducts her and thrusts her out of a speeding car. Lying seriously hurt in bed, she still pours out her challenge and anathema to all the menfolks of the world. The merit of this film lies in its withering realism, revealing as it does without mercy or restraint the most sordid, the most vulgar aspects of human nature. It has been voted by the film critics here as the best picture of 1936. Akira Iwasaki 25