Among Western fans of Japanese cinema, Kinuyo Tanaka is easily recognisable as one of the great actors of the mid-20th century. She collaborated with many of the best known Japanese directors of the period: Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, Keisuke Kinoshita and, of course, Akira Kurosawa. Most of what has been written about Tanaka, however, focuses on her collaborations with Kenji Mizoguchi, whose films offer sympathetic portrayals of women struggling against a misogynistic society. Because of this, Mizoguchi is sometimes called a proto-feminist filmmaker, with Tanaka as his muse, although the professed feminism of his films contradicts the actions he made in his personal life. Yet while many are familiar with Tanaka’s work as an actor, fewer know about her career as a director. English language histories of Japanese cinema often fail to mention it in any detail (and Tadao Saito’s seminal Currents in Japanese Cinema doesn’t mention it at all). Between 1953 and 1962, Tanaka directed six films, making her the first woman in Japan to have a career as a film director, and the only woman working as one in that period.
Released shortly after the end of the American Occupation (1945-1952), Love Letter (1953) is a romantic melodrama that grapples with contemporary issues. The film follows Reikichi, a recently repatriated veteran pining for his childhood sweetheart Michiko, who married another man during the war. Living with his brother, Hiroshi, and needing to support himself, Reikichi finds work with his old friend Yamaji, as a translator of love letters sent between women and their American GI lovers. Though not exactly street prostitutes, these women occupy a similar position to sex workers, as evidenced by Reikichi’s reaction upon meeting them. In one revealing moment, Yamaji’s client offers Reikichi some food, which he reluctantly accepts when Yamaji urges him to take it. During the immediate postwar period, when American forces occupied the country, Japanese officials established “special comfort facilities” for American soldiers. These facilities were state-run brothels, designed to minimise the sexual assaults perpetrated by American men. The Japanese government appealed to young, destitute women to work in these comfort facilities as part of the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA). This official body was disbanded in 1946, as the Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) found the comfort system to be tantamount to human trafficking. No longer state-sanctioned, sexual relationships between Japanese women and occupiers nevertheless continued in an unofficial capacity, reaching their peak during the Korean War (1950-53), when American soldiers were stationed in Japan for rest and recuperation – something apparently referred to as “intercourse and intoxication” by the soldiers. In 1952, the year before Love Letter was released, over 70,000 women worked as prostitues for American soldiers. While some women operated privately as hostesses, others would get married as “war brides”. According to Professor Chunghee Sarah Soh, many of these women “would face social attitudes that conflated ‘war bride’ with ‘war booty’ or prostitute”.
Through his new job, Reikichi reunites with Michiko, who is now one of Yamaji’s customers. Reikichi learns that after her husband died in the war, Michiko entered into a relationship with a GI to survive. After their baby miscarried, and with the American no longer supporting her, Michiko now has “nothing but herself to sell”. Rather than empathising with her situation, Reikcihi is disgusted, asking her “why did you let an American solider have you? Who killed your husband? It could have been the man you slept with”. His admonishment marks a meeting point between the sexual and the political, reflecting the prevalent social attitude in which any relationship with an American is conflated with sex work.
In terms of theme and premise, Love Letter is similar to Ozu’s 1948 film A Hen in the Wind. In that film, Tanaka stars as Tokiko, a mother who resorts to prostitution in order to pay for her infant son’s hospital bills while her husband is away at war. When Tokiko’s husband Shuichi is repatriated and learns about what she did, he is appalled with her. His disgust manifests as physical and sexual abuse, but after secretly visiting the brothel Tokiko went to, and taking pity on a young prostitute there, he is able to understand the difficult position his wife was in. The film ends with the couple embracing in mutual reconciliation. This is perhaps Ozu’s most misguided film, as he both-sides domestic violence. Rather than being framed as an abuser, Shuichi is portrayed as a sympathetic figure, who struggles to grapple with his wife’s actions. While the film takes pity on Tokiko as well, she’s framed as helpless and naive: her love for Shuichi never wavers in the face of his violence and we are never meant to question her devotion. When the perspective shifts to Shuichi in the second half of the film, Tokiko is reduced to a passive figure who must be forgiven. It is easy to pair Tokiko and Shuichi in A Hen in the Wind with Michiko and Reikichi in Love Letter. Like Ozu, Tanaka dwells on the perspective of the male protagonist, as Michiko only appears a third of the way into the runtime. But Tanaka is far more critical of the male protagonist than Ozu is and uses his situation to draw connections between gender relations in the postwar era.
Ozu’s A Hen In The Wind
When we are introduced to Reikichi in the opening scene he hangs up the laundry to dry, while his brother, Hiroshi returns home from work after flirting with a woman. The brothers’ life together positions Reikichi as a feminised figure next to Hiroshi who, as the financial provider, takes on the role of husband in this domestic scene. Reikichi is a self-pitying man whose longing for Michiko reflects a deeper longing for a mythical pre-war innocence, as demonstrated by a sentimental flashback to their childhoods. As an educated man, Reikichi looks down on the women he translates for, describing them as “less intelligent”. These women are moga (modern girls), as evidenced by their Western dress, and are portrayed as boisterous. Their relationships to Americans are primarily motivated by money. Their portrayal stands in stark contrast to Michiko, whose reserved elegance embodies a more traditional notion of femininity.
Love Letter seems to vilify the modern women as vulgar, corrupted women. They speak in a crude manner, and lack the interiority granted to Michiko. Yet the film also recognises the hypocrisy of men like Reikichi who look down on them. Just as the women are dependent on American men for money, Reikichi is dependent on the relationship as well, since he must translate for them. He refuses to see the connection between himself and the women he sneers at. Worse, he is unable to recognise that despite their similarity, the women are in a far more vulnerable position than he is, as they are marginalised by society, while he is not. In her portrayal of the relationship between Reikichi’s brother and Michiko, Tanaka is more explicitly critical of the male characters. Hiroshi’s attitude towards her, while well-meaning, comes across as patronising. In a scene towards the end of the film, a group of Westernised panpan (prostitutes) recognise Michiko as an old friend while she is walking with Hiroshi. Unlike the clientele that Reikichi and Yamaji translate for, these women are heavily implied to be street prostitutes. Embarrassed, Michiko is silent, while Hiroshi speaks for her, telling these ‘fallen’ women that Michiko is not like them. It is implied that women who take pleasure in sex work are contemptible, while those who do it purely out of necessity should be pitied and forgiven. A silent Michiko then walks into oncoming traffic.
By juxtaposing the vulgar panpan with the innocent Michiko, Tanaka indulges in the Madonna-whore dichotomy. González-López and Mayu conclude in their informative reading that Love Letter “ultimately conforms to the condemnation of female deviant sexual behaviour”. But when watching Love Letter in 2018 I can’t help but see an ambiguity at play. Rather than end the film with an embrace like A Hen in the Wind, Tanaka leaves Reikichi and Michiko on a note of uncertainty. After he first rejects her, the two never physically share the same space. The film ends with Michiko waking up in hospital after her suicide attempt, and Reikichi riding a taxi to her. Tanaka cross-cuts between the pair, suggesting there may be a reunion, but Michiko’s blank stare to the camera in extreme close-up disquiets any assumptions about a romantic ending. Much of the film is about Reikichi having to let go of romantic ideals of true love in the face of post-war realities. Also, while González-López and Mayu see the car crash as a symbolic punishment for Michiko’s perceived transgressions, I see it as an earnest suicide attempt, and an escape from the eternal judgement of a misogynistic society, because even though Hiroshi is kind, he still sees her actions as abhorrent. She’s just not like those ‘other’ women. This is supported by Michiko’s preceding speech, where she says that it wouldn’t matter if she only slept with one American or many, because she will forever be marked by society as a depraved woman.
Michiko’s impossible position echoes the restrictions placed on Japanese women who worked in the film industry. Women were only adequately represented as actors as the qualities expected of a director were gendered as male, which severely limited any opportunity a woman had of becoming one. The story of Tazuko Sakane’s career, who was the first Japanese woman to direct a feature film, highlights the misogyny of the Japanese studio system, which Tanaka herself would have to navigate as well. Sakane started working for Nikkatsu in 1929 as a script girl on a Mizoguchi set, and Yumiko Matsumoto writes that Sakane wore men’s clothing to avoid bullying from her colleagues. After working her way up the career ladder, Sakane became an essential part of Mizoguchi’s crew and was able to direct her own film, New Clothes in 1936, which is now lost. During the shoot Sakane was bullied mercilessly by her all-male crew, who would often ignore her directions, and openly speak ill of her. Sakane moved to the continent in 1942, where she found a more welcoming work environment, and directed documentaries, of which only one survives. When she returned to Japan in 1946, Sakane was unable to direct again because directors were now required to hold a university degree; yet another gatekeeping measure that held women back. Sakane retired from the film industry in 1950.
Sakane’s case both illustrates the barriers that women faced and highlights the fact that Kinuyo Tanaka’s career as a director was an anomaly. Tanaka held an extraordinary position within the Japanese film industry when she began directing in 1953. She was 43 years old and had managed to carve out a successful career as a leading lady, despite the dwindling of substantial roles for older women. Although she spent several years being ridiculed for being paired with young male actors, film critic Eito Toshio declared Tanaka to be the best Actress of 1952, because of her performances in The Life of Oharu, and The Ataka Family. The former (directed by Mizoguchi) had won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival, exposing her to a non-Japanese audience. Furthermore, after nearly three decades in the film industry, Tanaka had cultivated deep working relationships with filmmakers of the period who could offer her support in a working environment that was hostile to women. Kinoshita wrote Love Letter, and Ozu gifted her one of his unused scripts for her second film. Meanwhile, she learnt the ropes under Naruse as an assistant on his 1953 film Older Brother, Younger Sister. It’s clear that for Tanaka to be given the chance to direct, she first had to become one of the most successful and visible women in the Japanese film industry.
And although such visibility gave Tanaka a certain degree of power and privilege, it also led to far greater scrutiny from the public. Koji Kajiyama’s documentary The Travels of Kinuyo Tanaka (2009) details how the actor received “a ferocious drubbing in the media” following her 1949 goodwill trip to America. The experience apparently left her suicidal. She began her trip in kimono and returned to Japan three months later in Western dress, blowing kisses to the crowd. The derision Tanaka endured reflects Reikichi’s condemnation of Michiko in Love Letter. Both director and character are perceived as corrupted by an American influence. A biographical reading therefore complicates our understanding of the panpan scene, as they are the most Westernised characters in the film.
Whether Love Letter is a condemnation of oversexed, Americanised women, following González-López and Mayu, or a subtle takedown of the male romantic hero, the film suggests that Tanaka was probing the gender relations of her time with rigour. Tanaka tackles these themes with greater maturity than Ozu did in A Hen in the Wind – yet she is one of the most criminally understudied directors of the postwar Golden Age in Japanese cinema. To date there have been no wide-releases of her work outside of Japan, condemning them to rare festival retrospectives and academic conferences. Distributors like the BFI, Criterion, and Arrow Video continue to release lavish Blu-rays for male directors like Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Seijun Suzuki. Meanwhile, Kinuyo Tanaka’s contributions to film history are reduced to her role as Mizoguchi’s muse, despite her being a singularly dedicated and individual artist in her own right.
