• 銀座化粧 (Ginza Cosmetics)

6/11/22 (Sat)

The Japanese title of Naruse’s 1951 film, terribly rendered in English, suggests the makeup that women wear to burnish their image, as in the glitter of the ritzy Ginza area covering up the less attractive reality beneath.

Yukiko (Tanaka Kinuyo) is a 40-something hostess in a Ginza bar. She is raising a young son as a single mother, her former lover having run off when he discovered she was pregnant. She had been helped during her pregnancy by a married man who has since come upon hard times and now shows up mainly to ask for money, which she continues, reluctantly, to shell out. She is distrustful of men after far-too-many unpleasant experiences at the bar and warns her young protégé Kyoko (Kagawa Kyoko), who still harbors romantic notions, against getting too involved with customers. When Yukiko learns from the bar’s madam that the shop may have to close, she worries that she’ll be left without the means to support herself in what is essentially a man’s world. Shizue, a former hostess, who has since gained independence of a sort as a rich man’s mistress, arranges an introduction to a businessman for a possible loan. Unfortunately the businessman has other things on his mind in exchange for the money, and a furious Yukiko manages to fight him off and escape.

Salvation appears to come in a different form when Shizue asks Yukiko’s help. Shizue’s “true love”, a young scion of a wealthy family, is in town, but she is occupied for the next few days with her patron and recruits Yukiko to take the young man around. It turns out that Yukiko, introduced by Shizue as a war widow (to avoid the taint of their true jobs), is actually quite educated and engages with the man on an intellectual level, such as reciting poetry and looking out at the stars. She starts to fall for him and agrees to accompany him the next day. Unfortunately she forgets that she had promised to take her son to the zoo, leaving him bitterly disappointed. She spends the day with the businessman but is interrupted by Kyoko, who tells her that the son has gone missing. She leaves Kyoko with the man – introducing her as her “sister”, again to avoid revealing their true profession – and runs home, where the boy finally turns up. She then learns that the much younger Kyoko has innocently fallen for the man herself and is now engaged to him. She realizes immediately that her brains are no match for Kyoko’s youth, but takes comfort that her protégé has at least managed to get out of the bar life. Aware that her own time with men is up and that marriage is no longer a realistic option, Yukiko resolves to dedicate herself to her child and motherhood. As the bar has managed to solve its financial troubles, she continues to support herself as a hostess, knowing that while her future is secure, she has little to look forward to other than making men feel good for a few hours. Still, as in most of Naruse’s works, the tone is pragmatic rather than bleak, with a sense that somehow she will persevere.

This is a precursor in some ways to the far superior “When a Woman Ascends the Stairs” (1960), where the aging hostess is similarly doomed to a lonely life in the bar. While this film is not as hard-hitting as the later effort, it is in line with Naruse’s much-visited theme of the plight of women in Japanese society. The standouts amid an overall excellent cast are the ever-wonderful Tanaka and Kagawa. The film is a bit rambling until an actual story takes hold with the young man’s arrival, but it is always engaging. Recommended.