Seisaku no tsuma

This is a desperate story of how love can drive people to extremes to hold on to the ones they love and keep them safe. It's also a condemnation of Japanese militarism and small town bigotry. The violence when it comes is quite shocking but wholly appropriate to the story. It's one of the most real love stories you'll ever see on film.

Ayako Wakao was sold to a rich kimono merchant, who lavished everything on her. Now he's dead. She has returned to her village, where everyone despises her because of her past, except for Takahiro Tamura. They fall into lust and common-law marriage because his mother doesn't approve. He's the role-model soldier for village, and the Russo-Japanese War is about to begin. When he gets sent off to the assault on Port Arthur, the village goes back to treating her like dirt, until word comes that Tamura was injured, is in hospital, and will be given a week's leave She doesn't want him to go.

It's a movie that combines two two Japanese elements that look absolutely bonkers to a foreigner. First, of course, is the way everyone salutes the Emperor and is thrilled that Tamura has a chance to die; one of the characters says that a real hero is one who dies. The other is the sort of obsessive love that makes someone mutilate the object of their desire.

Well, it baffles me, if not all foreigners. Some people are weird.

It's stunningly performed and directed by Yasuzô Masumura, a leading light of the Japanese New Wave. As someone who decried Old Japan and New Japan, I think this expresses his disapproval of both.

An astonishing film in terms of it's relentless power to both shock and move. It has a quick and melodic pace, something rather uncommon for films of the time. It gets moving straight away and sets us in a world of misplaced honor and preconceptions. Wakao is simply stunning in both her looks and talent. She plays a beaten down woman with a lot of spite, but equal amounts of heart. After the death of her sugar daddy, she returns to her home village where she is seen as tainted goods. It isn't long before a role model soldier returns to the village and, against the wishes of the townsfolk, sets his sites on the outcast. The two both seem to be rebelling against society, but also do have genuine affection for each other. It isn't something that is easy to pull off. By the time the violent third comes around it is a disturbing act of love that perfectly sums up the complex themes running around. This film is unforgettable and I would even recommend it to those that find early Asian cinema a bit slow. Hopefully, this could open some doors.

A wild and fascinating melodrama full of passion, love, war, and hate.

Japan at the beginning of the 20th century. Okane, a beautiful girl from a poor family, must serve as a mistress to a much older rich man. When he and her father die, the young woman returns with her mother to their native village. The locals despise them because of Okane's past, the young woman meets them with arrogance and haughty behavior. But then everything changes when her mother dies and the handsome Seisaku, a young man who is regarded as a model soldier and the son-in-law of their dreams by the villagers, helps her in this difficult situation. The two fall in love and marry against the spite of the whole village (their passionate sexual relationship is emphasized during the whole film), but then Seisaku has to go to war against the Russians and their world falls apart...

Violent and passionate, wonderfully photographed and played (especially by the beautiful Ayako Wakao), full of hot tears but nevertheless never sentimentalist or kitschy, this Japanese film is a real discovery.

I watched Yasuzo Masumura's Red Angel a few nights ago, and was really impressed, so decided to watch another film of his that also starred Ayako Wakao in the lead role. Both it and Seisaku's Wife are perhaps comparable in the sense that they focus on love during wartime, and much like life, show it to be no party, no disco, nor any kind of fooling around. But Red Angel's grimness was unrelenting and genuinely shocking, and Seisaku's Wife feels a little more melodramatic in a way I couldn't quite click with. It's very repetitive, and even though I do agree with what I think the movie is criticizing, I just got so worn down by how much it seems to repeat itself.

It might be the point - the endless (and annoying) gossiping and two lead characters who keep feeling stuck by the terrible and backward small town they live in. I don't know if it fully came together, though, and the more shocking scenes feel jarring in a way that might've also been intentional, but still didn't hit me the way I think they were supposed to. It's a bit of a mess, but I think it's well-shot and mostly well-acted, and also given that some of the frustrations I felt are probably the point (doesn't mean I liked feeling that way, nor found it the "right" amount of frustrating), I can't exactly call it bad. I'll absolutely never watch it again, though.