Eclipse Series 48: Kinuyo Tanaka Directs

Released a year after the American occupation of Japan ended, Kinuyo Tanaka’s directorial debut explores the professional and personal conflicts of Reikichi (Masayuki Mori), a repatriated veteran who searches for his lost love (Yoshiko Kuga) while translating romantic letters from Japanese women to American GIs. Adapted from a novel by Fumio Niwa, Love Letter depicts with incisive complexity Japanese soldiers struggling to adapt to a changed society, as well as the moral condemnation of Japanese women who became involved with the enemy.

For her second film, Kinuyo Tanaka directed a script by legendary filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, one of her mentors. Though informed by Ozu’s singular take on familial relationships, The Moon Has Risen also possesses Tanaka’s lively and elegant comic sensibility in its portrait of a widower (Chishu Ryu) who lives with his three daughters (Hisako Yamane, Yoko Sugi, and Mie Kitahara). Kitahara shines as the spirited youngest sister, whose matchmaking schemes force the family to confront—with amusing bewilderment—Japanese society’s rapidly evolving mores.

Generally regarded as Kinuyo Tanaka’s masterpiece, as well as her first personal film, Forever a Woman tells the story of a recent divorcée (Yumeji Tsukioka) who is diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. In adapting the real-life story of poet Fumiko Nakajo, Tanaka and screenwriter Sumie Tanaka (a longtime collaborator of Mikio Naruse’s, though of no familial relation to Kinuyo) investigate issues of mortality, sexuality, and female independence with a frankness and audacity unprecedented in postwar Japanese cinema.

Kinuyo Tanaka’s first film in both color and CinemaScope is an epic about a woman caught in the torrents of history. Based on the memoirs of Hiro Saga, The Wandering Princess tells the story of Ryuko (Machiko Kyo), an aristocrat who, at the outset of World War II, enters an arranged marriage with Futetsu (Eiji Funakoshi), the younger brother of a soon-to-be-deposed monarch. With the story of Ryuko’s enmeshment in the Japanese colonization of Manchuria, Tanaka realizes with startling depth her ambition to relate a historical saga from a critical female perspective.

With Girls of the Night, Kinuyo Tanaka reunited with screenwriter Sumie Tanaka to explore Japan’s attempted reformation of former sex workers. The film follows Kuniko (Chisako Hara), who enters a rehabilitation center after the Prostitution Prevention Law prohibits her line of work. But creating a new life proves treacherous—wherever Kuniko goes, the past catches up with her. In once again taking on challenging subject matter, Kinuyo Tanaka paints an empathetic portrait of a fragile community of outcasts.

Kinuyo Tanaka’s final work as a director is a large-scale, sixteenth-century-set costume drama in the style of the golden age of Japanese cinema. Produced by the independent production company Ninjin Kurabu, Love Under the Crucifix centers on the forbidden romance between Ogin (Ineko Arima), daughter of a famous tea master, and Ukon (Tatsuya Nakadai), a married samurai. The ruling power’s prohibition of Ukon’s Christian faith forces the lovers to fight against the prejudices of an oppressive society while finding their way to mutual devotion.