Utamaro and His Five Women or Five Women Around Utamaro (Utamaro o meguru gonin no onna) is a 1946 Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His film Ugetsu won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Mizoguchi is renowned for his mastery of the long take and mise-en-scène...

. It is based on the novel of the same title by Kanji Kunieda, itself a fictionalized account of the life of printmaker Kitagawa Utamaro. It was Mizoguchi's first film made under the American occupation.

Theme

Mizoguchi was fascinated by painting and had trained as a painter as a young man. Kitagawa Utamaro (1756-1806) was 'possibly the greatest of all the portraitists of the floating world

Ukiyo

Ukiyo described the urban lifestyle, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of Edo-period Japan . The "Floating World" culture developed in Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo , which was the site of many brothels, chashitsu tea houses, and kabuki theaters frequented by Japan's...

' - he painted also idyllic outdoor scenes, Yoshiwara

Yoshiwara

Yoshiwara was a famous Akasen district in Edo, present-day Tōkyō, Japan.In the early 17th century, there was widespread male and female prostitution throughout the cities of Kyoto, Edo, and Osaka. To counter this, an order of Tokugawa Hidetada of the Tokugawa shogunate restricted prostitution to...

 festivals and drinking bouts, bathers and shell-divers, as well as erotica. The film dramatically presents this sense of range, and openness to life's variety, and contrasts the old official court-approved style of painting, called kano with the new, dynamic form of painting known as ukiyo-e

Ukiyo-e

' is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre, and pleasure quarters...

(literally:paintings of the floating world).

Seinosuke (Kotaro Bando), a samurai appeenticed to a kano master, visits an Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 print shop where he sees a painting by Utamaro that boasts of ukiyo-e 's superiority to the official style. Enraged, he goes to a brothel where Utamaro is with his friends, and challenges him to a duel. Utamaro counterchallenges him with a different kind of duel - a contest of painting.

Production history

Utamaro and His Five Women was made during the 7-year Allied

Allies of World War II

The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

 occupation of Japan which followed World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. At the time, film production was overseen by representatives of the Occupation forces, and Jidaigeki

Jidaigeki

is a genre of film, television, and theatre in Japan. The name means "period drama" and is usually the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier—Portrait of Hell, for example, is set during the late Heian period—and the early Meiji era is also a popular...

(period films) like Utamaro were rarely made, as they were seen as being inherently nationalistic or militaristic.

The Film as Autobiography

Though Utamaro and His Five Women is based on the life of Kitagawa Utamaro, it is frequently seen as being an autobiographical work.

In her article on the film for the Australian film journal Senses of Cinema

Senses of Cinema

Senses of Cinema is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Senses of Cinema publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career overviews of the works of key directors, and coverage of many...

, film critic Freda Freiberg writes:

"Mizoguchi's regular scriptwriter Yoda

Yoshikata Yoda

was a Japanese screenwriter. He wrote for over 130 films between 1931 and 1989. He is most famous for his work with Kenji Mizoguchi...

, who worked with him (more precisely, for him) for 20 years, claimed in his memoirs that in the script for this film he was 'almost unconsciously' drawing a portrait of Mizoguchi through Utamaro. The equation Utamaro=Mizoguchi has been irresistible to most critics as the two artists did have a lot in common. Both of them worked in a popular mass-produced medium operated by businessmen, and chafed under oppressive censorship regimes; both frequented the pleasure quarters and sought the company of geishas; but, most significantly, they both achieved fame for their portraits of women. In a highly charged scene in this film, Utamaro paints, directly on the back of a beautiful courtesan, a sketch that is later tattooed into her skin. One could say that this creative act (and the passion the artist displays in executing it) literalises the fact that both artists achieved fame on the backs of women – relying on them to arouse and express themselves, emotionally and aesthetically."

External links

• Utamaro and his Five Women, by Freda Freiberg at Senses of Cinema
  Senses of Cinema
  Senses of Cinema is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Senses of Cinema publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career overviews of the works of key directors, and coverage of many...