|Dan Howard|
The Life of Oharu plays in glorious 35mm at the Trylon Cinema on Thursday, June 4. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
Just two years before her death, Kinuyo Tanaka gave an interview for the 1975 documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director. It was during this interview that Kaneto Shindō, the director, inquired about the rumor that Mizoguchi was secretly in love with her and never confessed his feelings. Tanaka, while flattered, denied the claims. Stating that they were “greatly exaggerated,” and that she had ”embodied a certain image of women, an image that he loved.” That they were the ones Mizoguchi was really in love with. Women who had a hard life; who had, in a sense, fallen from grace.
Such is the case with The Life of Oharu. The film follows the woman of the same name, Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka), the daughter of a samurai, in seventeenth century Japan. After Oharu falls in love and runs away with the neighboring Lord’s lower-ranking retainer, Katsunosuke (Toshiro Mifune), and gets caught, she and her family are banished, and Katsunosuke is executed due to their class difference. Upon this heartbreaking loss, we follow Oharu through her tragic life as she becomes a concubine for their Lord to bear his child and is immediately cast out after giving birth, attempts suicide, is sent to work in a brothel by her father, and ultimately, lives life as a wandering nun on the streets of Edo-era Japan.
The Life of Oharu was far from Mizoguchi’s first film about a woman’s tragic life, as well as with Kinuyo Tanaka. Mizoguchi tasked her with portraying a jealous, murderous ex-lover (Utamaro and His Five Women) to a sex worker (Women of the Night), to finding a political identity within Japan’s liberal party (Flame of My Love), to forbidden familial relationships (Miss Oyu and The Lady of Musashino), to being either a metaphorical or physical ghost through her disappearance (Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff). Mizoguchi was far from shy about displaying his love for women who socially considered “the bottom of society” and/or “fallen” in its full glory within his work.
Oharu is, in the deepest sense, a victim of her societal circumstances. It was her love for Katsunosuke that, through to no fault of her own, set off a chain reaction of decisions made for her by her family that led to Oharu’s unwilling life of squalor. She fails at nearly everything she tries to sustain, including attempting to have a relationship with her estranged son, similar to Tamaki in Sansho the Bailiff. However, Oharu is set apart from other characters such as Okita (Utamoro and His Five Women) who allows her jealousy to consume her and resorts to murdering her ex-lover. And like Eiko (Flame of My Love) starting a school for women, Oharu is actively trying to better herself, but falls short. Ultimately, it seems that society is just against her. This serves as a sad reminder of how women were regarded in general in those times. Yet, through it all, Oharu keeps seeking some kind of resolution and Mizoguchi’s writing guides her to find her own way to Buddha by becoming a wandering nun.
It seems Mizoguchi’s affection for these women stems from some of his earliest years. Let’s look at what we do know about Kenji Mizoguchi’s personal life. Mizoguchi was often looked after by his older sister growing up, he was literally stabbed in the back by his former lover, Yuriko Ichijo (a sex worker), and was only married once, to Chieko Saga. A volatile marriage, from what his peers had described, caused great mental strain for Saga and ended with Mizoguchi committing her to a psych ward. It seems he had been around this type of woman for a lot of his life. While we can only speculate the reasons for this attraction, it does make sense how he would adapt them to the screen.
However, the big question I find myself asking is “What was it about Kinuyo Tanaka that made her perfect to portray these fallen women?” Undoubtedly, Tanaka possessed the necessary emotional depths she needed to bring Mizoguchi’s visions to fruition. However, Mizoguchi saw something more profound in her, beyond her talents. Of course, we can only truly speculate, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Tanaka provided a missing connection for him, bridging the gap between reality and Mizoguchi’s cinematic world. Mizoguchi had deep compassion for these struggling women and Tanaka gave the same compassion in her performances.
Perhaps Tanaka also provided some hope in Mizoguchi for his own love life. While she flawlessly portrays his “bottom of society” women characters who reflect women of his past, Mizoguchi could very well have seen Tanaka as his future. Working through his past through the woman he may have found new love with. Even on set, everyone noticed how differently he treated Tanaka. With everyone else, he was a “dictator” in his directing, but with Tanaka, he was gentler. Which is how it remained through their entire 15-film partnership. And their creative partnership was harmonious… until Tanaka expressed her own desire to direct. Mizoguchi actively tried to block her from directing. Going so far as to tell the studio that she didn’t have the “brains” for it. Meanwhile, other directors Tanaka had worked with, like Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and Keisuke Kinoshita offered their support, including providing scripts for Tanaka.
Lovers or not, Mizoguchi certainly behaved like a possessive, jealous partner when it came to Tanaka making her own films. His stars and crew would all confirm that Mizoguchi was, indeed, married to his work and that his films were all he thought of. An artist living through his work is not, by any means, a new concept. Writers have been incorporating aspects of their own lives into their work for as long as storytelling has existed. Is it really that far-fetched that Mizoguchi likely projected his desire for these lovers through his own storytelling? Maybe he did have this burning passion for Tanaka and their work was his way of keeping her close. With Tanaka embodying the kind of lovers he cherishes most, perhaps Oharu ended up being his greatest love that he could only conjure through the camera. A lover that he couldn’t bear to bestow a fully tragic ending upon. Perhaps by helping Oharu find peace through Buddhism, the auteur bares his heart for the world to witness.
Alas, as much as we’d like them to be at times, films do not always equate to reality. From my own perspective as a screenwriter, writing and having full control over these worlds, characters, and stories can be exhilarating, but it doesn’t serve as a replacement for real love. Was Mizoguchi hiding in his films rather than even attempting to face his own love life? It could be he felt he had to sacrifice any new, meaningful love affairs for the sake of his work. There is the possibility he might have paralleled a part of himself in Katsunosuke, feeling he has to kill that part of himself for the good of his work. We may never know his true thoughts and feelings about Kinuyo Tanaka or Oharu. However, when it came to Oharu’s tale, perhaps Mizoguchi gave himself some grace and allowed himself to find that happier, or at least bittersweet, ending for her. In turn, perhaps he shared in the same hope for himself that he, like Oharu, could find some happiness while remaining true to who he truly was: An artist.
Edited by Finn Odum