A Woman's Life

Once again Mikio Naruse has Hideko Takamine starring as tragic survivor in A Woman's Story (1963). Takamine  plays Nobuko a woman who marries into a seemingly wealthy family by marrying Koichi Shimizu (Akira Takarada who was in several early 60s Naruse films). Koichi detests his father and his dissolute lifestyle and six months into the marriage his father commits suicide with his geisha mistress after making a disastrous investment. Nobuko must weather the storm with Koichi's mother Kimiko (Natsuko Kahara), whom unbeknownst to her will end up being a longtime household member. Much of the back story is told in masterful flashbacks with expert editing. In these flashbacks we see how the women have suffered and endured much tragedy as Tokyo is constantly bombed and they lose their house and most of their family. Then they evacuate to Tochigi where they struggle to get by in a rural environment. She returns to Tokyo to try and earn a living. While in Tokyo through a twist of fate she learns that her husband had been keeping a mistress even though he denied it before reporting for duty for the war.  Soon after an old friend of her husband's Akimoto (Tatsuya Nakadai) finds her and helps her get on her feet and it is apparent that there is a mutual attraction between the two. But fate intervenes and Akimoto must leave Tokyo leaving Nobuko to fend for herself. The film starts with Nobuko at her busy and successful beauty salon living with her mother in law and only son Kohei (Tsutomou Yamazaki), a car salesman. Essentially Nobuko and Kimiko are living through Kohei since Koichi was killed in the war. So he leaves the household to marry a bar hostess named Midori (Yuriko Hoshi) against his mother's wishes. Then he soon dies in a car accident. It is subsequently revealed that Midori is pregnant with Kohei's child. At first Nobuko rebukes the woman and offers to pay for her abortion, but reconsiders after a speech buy Kimiko who suggests that a woman's life is full of tragedy where men misbehave and then die early leaving the women to fend for themselves. Catherine Russell, in her book The Cinema of Naruse Mikio, sums up conclusions drawn from the film by saying: "In the disintegrating family system of 1960s Japan, it is the woman who loses, but these films also clearly point the way to a necessary reinvention of the woman's social role..."