One of Yoshimura’s tenderest, liveliest and most affirmative films, this drama was made at Shochiku rather than Daiei, but forms a fascinating tailpiece to the director’s ongoing exploration of Japan’s old capital of Kyoto, its traditional professions, and the role of women. An intricate script by Kaneto Shindo follows the fortunes of heroine Akie, who comes to Kyoto when she inherits a shop and factory which manufactures and sells traditional sweets. Her experience is juxtaposed with the lives of other female characters, as Shindo and Yoshimura explore the various options open to women in the Japan of 1960.
The plot was drawn from a novel by Hisao Sawano, the author of the book which had formed the basis of Yoru no kawa four years earlier. “Kinema Junpo” critic Heiichi Sugiyama noted that Onna no saka recapitulated the experimentation with colour which Yoshimura had attempted in the earlier film. Indeed, the cinematography by Yoshio Miyajima (1910-98), who also served as Masaki Kobayashi’s cameraman on Ningen no joken (The Human Condition, 195861), Seppuku (Harakiri, 1962) and Kaidan (Kwaidan, 1964) is one of the film’s most memorable properties; striking images capture the changing cityscape of a Kyoto in the throes of modernisation. The theme of tradition and modernity, the way in which they contrast with and complement each other, is effectively set up in a title sequence in which images of the famous Zen stone garden of Ryoan-ji temple are shown to the accompaniment of the avant-garde score by Toshiro Mayuzumi (1929-97). Picking up on these fruitful oppositions, Sugiyama wrote that “The combination of the old house and Okada’s red sweater and slacks is strangely harmonious and beautiful, without suggesting an ideological clash between feudalism and modernity.”
However, Mariko Okada (1933)’s vivid star performance is perhaps the film’s greatest asset; as the practical, liberated heroine, she personifies a postwar model of modern femininity. Akie’s mother, meanwhile, is played with characteristic skill by Nobuko Otowa (192494), Shindo’s wife and frequent star of the films he himself directed.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström