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Cinema Ozu (17): Tokyo Woman of the Night

Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) preparing for a night "out"

Feature #26
Woman of Tokyo / Tokyo no onna
(1933)
Status: fully preserved and available on DVD overseas
Script: fully preserved
Prints: original negative and multiple prints survive
Region1 DVD: none as of this writing

We have once again entered the realm of title translation nitpicking. When it comes to Tokyo no onna, I really prefer the less-literal "Tokyo Woman" to "Woman of Tokyo" (the widely-accepted title). "Woman of Tokyo doesn't quite roll off of the tongue, and it just sounds like broken English. For example, did they title that one movie "Midnight Cowboy" or "Cowboy of Midnight"? Further, is The Guess Who's song called "Woman of America" or "American Woman? I rest my case, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

This second installment in Ozu's "Fallen Women" trilogy is the shortest of the three, clocking in at about 47 minutes over four reels. The script is based on a short story by Ernest Schwartz called Twenty Six Hours, which is also the approximate timeframe in which the film takes place.

Ureo Egawa as Ryoichi

A college student named Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa) is a young man full of potential. His sister Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) works to support them both. By day, she works in an office. By night, her brother thinks that she does translation work for a well-respected college professor. She's actually an unlicensed prostitute.

Chikako in "normal" dress

Ryoichi's girlfriend Harue (Kinuyo Tanaka) has a brother in the police force (Shinyo Nara) who catches wind that Chikako is under investigation. What modern American viewers might miss without historical context is that prostitution was actually legal in Japan, but you had to be licensed and pay 7-10% tax to the government. The cops don't care about her safety or the moral fabric of Tokyo. They want her money, that's it.

Chikako at her day job

Harue tells her boyfriend what she suspects his sister of out of concern for Chikako. Ryoichi refuses to believe Harue at first, but his suspicions grow over the next evening. The following night, he confronts Chikako and slaps her around. Later that night, he does something extremely drastic.

Kinuyo Tanaka as "good girlfriend" Harue

I found the film less affecting than others that I've watched from '32 & '33, but the major difference is that there is no real "B" story threaded in, like there was in Tokyo Chorus or I Was Born, But.... The economy of storytelling gets the thing told, but the abrupt ending gives it the feel of a short story that you might read on the morning commute and forget about later. I found I didn't really think much about it until a few days later, when the thesis that "lives can change forever in 26 hours" really hit home for me. It's grown in impact gradually over the last few days.

On top of that, the feminist subtext is really very unique in this time period, where Chikako is only really demonized by her brother. She's looked down upon by others who know, but she emerges as the protagonist fighting against misogyny and prejudice. I find it particularly funny that when she puts on her "hooker" look, it's like a superhero putting on her mask and cape. Heroic hookers are seen throughout cinema history, but this is pretty rare for the era. Ozu's most briskly-paced picture thus far is deceptive in that its brevity is not an indication of its potential staying power.

Ryoichi ripped apart

Ureo Egawa, who plays Ryoichi here, is in his second and last picture for Ozu, once again playing a "little emperor" with violent tendencies as he did in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?. "Good girl" Kinuyo Tanaka once again plays love interest to Egawa, as she did in the aforementioned film. She will next get her biggest breakout role in Dragnet Girl, where she plays..."not-so-good". Yoshiko Okada, who plays Chikako, will work with Ozu just once more, in An Inn in Tokyo. Chishu Ryu makes another cameo appearance as a newspaper reporter at the end.

Ryoichi and Harue at the movies

I should mention that an interesting meta-referential thing happens in this film. It evinces Ozu's continued adoration of American movies. Woman of Tokyo features an interesting Hollywood film-within-the-film: If I Had a Million (1932). Harue and Ryoichi go out to the movies and see this movie specifically, and a few short sequences are wholly spliced into Woman of Tokyo.

Opening credits for If I Had a Million

Million stars a host of "names", from Gary Cooper and Charles Laughton to George Raft and W.C. Fields. The movie is about a wealthy man at death's door. His family disgusts him so much that he wants none of them to inherit anything. He instead wants his money given away to strangers from the city directory in million-dollar portions. Million follows seven of these individuals and how their lives change as a result. Each segment of the film was done by a different director, and the one that appears in Woman of Tokyo seems to be the Ernst Lubitsch-steered "The Clerk".

A shot from "The Clerk"

Hope for a Region1 DVD: I really want to see this film paired with the next "Fallen Women" title, Dragnet Girl. I'll provide more detail on how I'd package them in my writeup on that film, which should hit soon.

Next is Dragnet Girl, the most surprising discovery of the whole series for me. It's a gangster picture that is as equally steeped in Hollywood gangster tropes as it is in Ozu's developing "deep composition" style.

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but even more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.