Akasen chitai (Street of Shame, 1956)

Mizoguchi Kenji

Japan

87 min, B&W, Japanese (English subtitles)

In his later years Mizoguchi, much like Kurosawa, turned profoundly pessimistic. While some of his early films were relentless tragedies as well (e.g. Life of Oharu), most provided a glimmer of hope for salvation through the sacrifice of another human being. Not so in Street of Shame and its bleak depiction of the dreary aftermath of World War II, when many Japanese women were forced to take up prostitution to support themselves and their families.

Amid the uncertainty after the war, the new "progressively" minded government launches a new attempt to ban prostitution. It is the several days before the crucial vote in the Diet that Mizoguchi chooses to depict as he follows the daily lives of several Yoshiwara prostitutes.

It is a dog eat dog world, where even though some of the women try to help each other, most have their debts, their families, and their shame to worry about. At the brothel sardonically called "Dreamland," the lives of several women intersect in an unhappy and ignoble web of circumstance. Yumeko (Mimasu Aiko) has left her son with her grandparents in her home village and while she does not visit often, she sends most of her money to support him. Mickey (Kyô Machiko) is a wayvard runaway who is trying to rid herself of the memory of her cheating daddy and socially-enslaved family life. Yorie (Machida Hiroko) is hopelessly and dangerously romantic as she dreams of an impossible existence with her husband. Hanae (Kogure Michiko) is forced to work to support her unemployed (and unemployable because of tuberculosis) husband and their baby. Yasumi (Wakao Ayako) is an unsentimental young beauty determined to fight her way out of poverty by any means necessary.

Mizoguchi's portrayal of the tragedy of these women's existence is subdued and without sentimentalism. Twice the establishment's owner repeats his pompous and vacuous speech about him providing a kind of welfare service; he sees himself as a "social worker" of sorts, claiming that the government does not understand the needs of the women. In that he is right. Abandoned by the authorities who are unable to build the economy as quickly as necessary to ensure the survival of its own citizens, the women have to sell their bodies. But do they have to suffer the additional indignity at the hands of the proprietor?

By the end, none of them retains any illusions either about their place or about their future. It is as dark as ever. When the news of the bill's defeat arrives, the jovial owner is unable to stir even a hint of emotion in these women, whose very livelihood depended on that law not passing. Life is much like death to these women despite the infrequent affirmatory statements to the contrary. The will to fight is mostly gone when they witness how Yumeko goes insane after being cruelly rejected by her son. Hanae is at the end of her strength, with a pitiful husband whose only thought is about suicide. And the seemingly untouchable Mickey erupts in anger against her father when he tries to take her home because "people will talk" and even sarcastically offers to bed him --- "the latest word in debauchery."

When all is said and done, the only person who escapes this nightmarish world to establish a legitimate existence is the cold and calculating Yasumi, who achieves her dream by ruining the lives of the quilt-maker (whose business she buys out) and another man, whom she literally forces into prison. In this world, you either deceive and destroy or are deceived and destroyed yourself.

At the end, there is little doubt what the title is referring to. The street is one of shame for the society that has perpetrated this indignity, forcing honest women into a demeaning line of work, and ensuring that the ones that do succeed are heartless villains. It is the responsibility of the government to create the possibility for people to be able to live through honest work and in that it has failed miserably. It is the collective responsiblity of society not to allow its members to live in misery. In that society has failed for it has not educated the young to be thankful for the sacrifices of the old. There is no reprieve for these women and Mizoguchi leaves no doubt about their eventual fates: the spiral of climbing debt will combine with the ravages of age to ensure that these women never leave the confines of Yoshiwara alive.

October 28, 2002