Sandakan hachiban shôkan: Bôkyô

This was the movie I saw on my first adult date. I was so encompassed by the story and cinematography that I soon forgot I was reading subtitles.

While the story may seem slow at first once the depiction of another society so far removed in time and place from our own gives the viewer a new look on the what shaped the lifestyle of the Japanese culture

You cannot help but be swept up in the crisis of the time depicted.

We tend to forget the world was not always as it is today, especially for us jaded Americans.

Elwin

Despite the subject matter, this is one of the most physically beautiful films I've ever seen. A difficult story to watch at times and some of the symbolism was a little overdone, but a well crafted movie with great attention to camera angle, set dressing, and - above all - the cinematography. A really stunning work...

This is my first movie which made me weeping. The first time I watched it in cinema was in eighties last century, as a very young man, I maybe could not understand everything in the story,or the history, but I wept,could not help, when I had seen old Osaki crying with Keiko's towel in her hand. This scene has been stayed in my mind forever since that moment.From this film, I have understood that a movie could make you cry! More than twenty years after I watched it,now, as a forty-four years old man, when I had watched the DVD again, it still makes me cry! That is pain in your heart when you see the old woman, now I understand everything in the story, I understand that's the pain of life, pain of the fate. This is not only a movie,but a lesson which teaches us something about humanity, so emotionally. In my heart,Kinuyo Tanaka was the one of greatest actress in the world,I love her,because of "Sandakan No. 8 ",because of her skillful performance,because she has impressed me so much,so long time,because she also made me call her: mum!

A female journalist researches the forced prostitution of Japanese women in the 1920s. She interviews Osaki, an old lady living with several cats in a shack at the edge of town. She tells the story in flashbacks, beginning with her trying to help her poor family by getting a job as a maid at a hotel. She works cleaning the rooms for two years and is then is coerced by the owner into becoming a hooker against her will.

Sandakan number eight turns out to be one the many brothels in Malaysia which used slave labor for years, including World War II, as a popular resting point for soldiers from around the world. The movie is based on a non fiction book of the same name which was controversial in Japan, as the women involved were shunned by society.

Osaki's tale is a sad and common one that needs to told. Sandakan 8 is compelling and well made.

I originally saw this film in 1975 when it was released and later on VHS...and for many years it was my favorite, bar none. Why? It combines the best that movies have to offer....visual grammar, incredibly moving, skillful performances, good directing and a powerful story of the relationship between a young modern Japanese woman and an older more traditional one, who tells of her experiences, being sold into prostitution at age 13, relating it (through flashbacks) to the younger woman. Those are the bare bones of the film...It doesn't begin to evoke the emotion and beauty of what human relationship can mean, as well as the heartless practices that society can inflict on its helpless inhabitants.