small joys
by
Douglas Messerli
Matsuo
Kishi (screenplay, based on Tomoichirô Inoue’s novel), Mikio Naruse (director) 銀座化粧 Ginza Keshō (Ginza
Cosmetics) / 1951
Mikio
Naruse is one of my very favorite of Japanese directors, although I love a
great deal of Japanese cinema. Naruse, however, is particularly sensitive in
his portrayals of women, particularly at a time in post-World War II Japanese
culture where, with a destroyed and failed male population, women had very few
choices regarding how to survive.
Ginza Cosmetics—a very strange
title given the fact that we witness a cosmetic shop only for a few moments—shows
us, as do so many other Naruse films, the few choices left to Japanese women of
the day. Either one married and lived unhappily with the mostly elderly
business men who had survived the war, or one sought out these same men in
various roles of prostitution—some women, like the heroine of the film, Yukiko
Tsujo (Kinuyo Tanaka) serving simply as pleasurable hostesses, while others more
directly engaged in sex. The hours were late, and the pay insubstantial, but it
was a way, without any resources, one might survive.
Like many another of Naruse’s characters
(his best film, When a Woman Ascends the
Stairs portrays the same situation), Yukiko is a widow with a child—the
marvelous young boy, Haruo (Yoshihiro Nishikubo)—she, a woman who is growing a
bit too old to attract the men to her table; “Once you hit 40, you can’t really
do it,” Yukiko says. Of course, she still has suitors, such as the buck-toothed
business man with a mole astride his nose, who attempts to force her into sex
at a nearby warehouse; but Yukiko knows that she is in her last years as a Ginza
hostess at Bel-Ami, despite her endless application of cosmetics, particularly
since even the bar is having financial problems, which she works to resolve.
The only man she meets throughout this
episodic tale who might be worth her interest is a far younger country boy, loved
by Yukiko’s friend, Shizue Sayama (Ranko Hanai). The shy, intellectual kid, (Yuji
Hori), does not at all like Tokyo, but is the first functional male Yukiko has
met in years, and it’s clear she might have dreams of marrying him, or, at
least, of discovering more about the world of stars which he explains to her. But
at the very most tender moment of that developing relationship, her son goes
missing, and she must entrust the stranger’s tour to her younger sister, who
quickly falls in love with the stranger, who in turn, promises to invite Kyōko to
his country home.
As critic R. Emmet Sweeney has noted,
when Yukiko hears the news, “Barely a flutter passes over Tanaka’s face at the
passing of this brief flirtation. It speaks to the million tiny heartbreaks
that Yukiko must have suffered through the years that this latest one barely
registers.” And Yukiko is soon back at work, knowing that Haruo will be obediently
waiting for her back at home.
In short, little changes throughout the
film in Yukiko’s basically unhappy life; but she remains a survivor in the most
profound sense, a self-aware believer, despite the cynical world in which she
is forced to live. The only man to whom she is grateful, Fujimura (Masao
Mishima)—once a wealthy businessman who helped her pay for Haruo’s birth—is now
a poor “sad sack,” who cannot even afford a new pair of shoes.
Yet, despite this film’s bleak outlook, it
is utterly filled with possible joy. Yukiko’s landlady gives music lessons in
traditional Japanese songs, and throughout the excellently scored work by Seiichi
Suzuki, music plays a major role, even when badly performed by a drunken
student of the traditional music. And the musical score gives this work a sense
of beauty far beyond what Yukiko might find in her personal contacts.
And then there is her charming son, who
wants to become a scientist and loves fishing boats! Despite their different
schedules and Haruo’s wandering habits, he is a joy to everyone in the
neighborhood, as each of the many woman living in Yukiko’s house call out to
him when he returns, however briefly, home. Everyone in the entire neighborhood
seem to love him, and who wouldn’t, given his youthful enthusiasms?
So, for all her disappointments in life,
Yukiko, perhaps, has more joys than many of us do. She certainly knows who she
is, and what her future will be. But she is a tough survivor, who also asks for
music even when it is terribly performed. She asks for love, even if it is
seldom given. She asks for respect, even when spurned from the society in which
she lives. Naruse presents us with a totally modern woman whose character might
be a model for women even today. Certainly, although she might be demanded to
perform it, she is not at all the demurring Geisha of the Japanese stereotype,
but is, rather, a strong figure determined to raise up a child into a new world
never available to her.
Los Angeles, March
5, 2018
Interesting review - am puzzled by other reviews that have seemed to criticize it for going on without much of a plot - yet isn't this a character study which form is a quintessential aspect of most films of perhaps the greatest Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu? Have lobbied Criterion to get this movie released on DVD!
ReplyDelete