• 大地の子守歌 (Lullaby of the Earth)

9/15/25 (Mon)

Masamura Yasuzo’s 1976 work was playing at a retrospective of powerful film performances by actresses, and a friend spoke so highly of Harada Mieko that it piqued my interest.

It is the 1930s. An orphaned 13-year-old girl has been raised by an old lady in the happy solitude of the mountains of Iyo (Ehime Prefecture). She returns one day to find the woman dead. Extremely strong-willed, she is determined to live her life dependent on no one. She initially rejects one man who tries to recruit her for steady work, but gives in when she learns that it is by the sea, which she’s always dreamed of seeing. She is taken to a remote island, where unsurprisingly she is put to work in a brothel, though, given her age, as an assistant to the girls and not a prostitute herself.

She is headstrong and not interested in making friends or being liked. She resists limits and labels: she insists on rowing the boat that takes the prostitutes out to sailors, usually a man’s job, and cuts her hair to look like a man. She resolutely refuses to be with clients even after she gets her first period – which she only comprehends after a kind lady on the outside explains – but gives in when she realizes that the money earned can buy her way out. After first forcing a young kid to have sex with her to get that out of the way, she plunges into that world as with everything and is soon the most popular whore in the house.

Nevertheless, she does not sacrifice her dignity: she does not scrape and bow to her clients, and refuses the offer to become a rich man’s mistress, unwilling to rely on anyone. Eventually she takes on so much business that she goes blind, presumably from venereal disease. As she wanders toward the sea, she meets a pastor who takes her to a Buddhist temple and asks them to save her. She falls to the ground and hears her grandmother’s voice telling her to return to the land, which will always nourish her (echoes of Scarlett O’Hara hearing her father’s voice urging her back to Tara). As brief glimpses throughout the film had suggested, she ultimately becomes a wandering pilgrim.

The much-lauded performance by Harada Mieko was way overdone. She screams her lines rather than speaks them, and while she puts impressive energy into every move, I would have welcomed her easing up every now and then. She is unsympathetic and unrealistically pig-headed in trying to remain independent, and her character did not develop over the course of the film, even when she was seeking salvation toward the end. Her speech comparing her life to the fish in the boy’s net was fine in sentiment but unconvincing as presented. I’m not sure what the director was trying to say here, but he didn’t say it very well. I found her grating.

The other performances were par for the course. Tanaka Kinuyo has a one-minute cameo at the beginning, which proved her last film appearance, and Okada Eiji appears briefly in a key role as the pastor. Kaji Meiko is lovely as the caring woman who provides kindness and advice when Harada panics after her first period.

Harada’s unremitting performance in this film has its fans, but I’m not one of them. Not recommended.