One of the finest and most trenchantly feminist of Naruse’s early films, Nyonin aishu brilliantly dissects the situation and feelings of a woman forced into an unhappy and stifling arranged marriage to a man from a wealthy family. Its power and intensity derive in part from Naruse’s sympathetic direction, in part from the touching star performance of lead actress Takako Irie (1911-95). A diva of the Japanese silent cinema, Irie had established her own independent production company in 1932; this was its first collaboration with P.C.L.

Naruse co-wrote the screenplay with Chikao Tanaka (1905-95), whose wife Sumie was eventually to become Japan’s most famous female screenwriter and to furnish the scripts for many of Naruse’s most celebrated postwar films. Indeed, with its engrossing combination of bleakness and hope, the tone of the film closely resembles that of Naruse’s later work. The film’s distinguished cinematographer, Mitsuo Miura (1902-56), had visited Hollywood in 1928 and was influenced by Josef von Sternberg. He had shot Naruse’s earliest extant film, Koshiben ganbare (Flunky, Work Hard!, 1931), and was to lens Kafuku later in 1937.

In a book on Japanese film directors published in the year of the film’s release, critic Kyoichi Otsuka described the film as a return to form for both Naruse and Irie, praising it for its “depth and authenticity”, and observing that Irie was “the perfect choice for the role”. “Kinema Junpo” critic Seiji Mizumachi likewise praised Irie’s performance as the best of her career since the coming of sound cinema. More recently, Tetsuya Hirano has saluted Naruse’s “brilliant” direction, commenting on “the fast-paced scene changes at the beginning and his signature outdoor scenes”. Susanne Schermann compares the film’s focus on the independence of a married woman with Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, while Catherine Russell calls the film “one of the most damning critiques of women’s social roles to be found in pre-war Japanese cinema”.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström