Mina Talkie’s fourth production, following on directly from Hometown, was the first jidai-geki (period film) to be made with sound. The novel that supplied the plot, by popular writer Shin Hasegawa, was filmed twice in 1930. This sound film ver­sion was released on December 4; a silent film produced by Makino Productions and directed by Kyotaro Namiki had beaten it into theatres by a mere two weeks. The book was to be filmed again in 1962 by Kazuo Ikehiro, this time starring matinee idol Raizo Ichikawa. The title of the book and film evokes a vil­lage in the remote and mountainous Hida district in present-day Gifu Prefecture. It narrates a story of vengeance following the rape of the hero’s lover, Osan. He kills her rapist, but she takes her own life, and the film dramatizes the inner torment of its protagonist, which intensifies after he meet a geisha who looks exactly like his now dead lover.A contemporary review in “Kinema Jun­po” dismissed the film as “incorrigibly uncinematic”, criticizing both the direc­tion and the acting, and describing the cinematography of Henry Kotani, a once celebrated director and photographer, as “a shadow of its former self”. However, the film’s historical interest as the first talkie jidai-geki is considerable.