Story of a Prostitute (1965) - #299

Just watch. I'll tear your power to shreds.

Of the seven films directed by Seijun Suzuki found in the Criterion Collection, Story of a Prostitute is without question the most overlooked. As of this writing, it has the lowest number of My Collection entries (267, a full 100+ behind its companion 2005 DVD release Gate of Flesh and of course well over 1000+ less than the twin Blu-ray releases Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill.) The rest of Suzuki's other films easily outpace it in terms of both commercial popularity and public notoriety. Reasons as to why Story of a Prostitute lags behind its peers are merely speculative on my end, but maybe the plainness of its title has something to do with it. It lacks the aggro pizzazz of films like Take Aim at the Police Van or Youth of the Beast, not to mention non-Criterion selections like The Big Boss Who Needs No Gun, Detective Bureau 23: Go to Hell Bastards!, Blood Red Water in the Channel, or Million Dollar Smash and Grab. Given its subject matter, Suzuki could have easily sexed it up with a more alluring title along the lines of his earlier works such as The Naked Woman and the Gun, Young Breasts, Underworld Beauty or The Age of Nudity. Or if he just wanted to perplex potential viewers with something strange and mysterious sounding, he certainly could have come up with something in the vein of The Flower and the Angry Waves, Clandestine Zero Line, or Voice Without a Shadow. Instead of all that, we get this rather nondescript, generic label, Story of a Prostitute, that could realistically be applied to at least a few dozen other Criterion offerings, if you just stop and think about it for a moment.

A more disconcerting possibility as to this film's relative lack of popularity might be linked to the fact that the focus here is on a strong and confrontational female protagonist, not the usual hyper-masculine loner hellbent on satisfying whatever lust or mania that drives a more typical Suzuki anti-hero. It just may come down to the fact that the director's core audience has a harder time identifying with the plight of a lowly so-called "comfort woman" forced to live in a brothel run by the Japanese military on the Manchurian frontier during Japan's invasion of China during World War II. It's a lot more fun for us guys to imagine ourselves as crazed yakuza henchmen or rogue soldiers staggering back toward our obliterated homes in the aftermath of a cataclysmic defeat than to identify with the miseries inflicted on a victim of that same surge of ill-tempered testosterone that we might celebrate in a different context.

But as I see it, any fan of Suzuki's work who might be passing up Story of a Prostitute based on some kind of apprehension of its lack of intrigue or entertainment value is making a costly mistake. This is a film with a profoundly moral core, as it fearlessly subverts the traditional martial code and calls to account the intransigent military leadership that consigned many Japanese soldiers and civilians to their doom. In this respect, it has a place in the esteemed company of more highly revered and reflexive postwar self-critiques as Nakahira's The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain or Kobayashi's The Thick-Walled Room and The Human Condition. As much as I enjoy his more free-wheeling, screw-loose forays into cinematic madness, Suzuki's decision to play this story a little closer to the vest makes for a refreshing change of pace from the more lurid flamboyance he usually delivers. (And don't worry, there are still enough renegade auteur flourishes scattered over the film's 96 minutes to augment Suzuki's reputation and rivet our attention.)

This trailer, offered without the benefit of subtitles, gives a generous sample of the film's mood and tenor. Even if you can't translate the language, I think the message comes through loud and clear:

With a few notable exceptions that make the DVD worth seeking out for its own sake, the most memorable visual moments are all at least briefly excerpted in that generous, impressionistic reassembly of footage and audio from Story of a Prostitute. The narrative tension emerges from the tormented triangle of erotic and psychological conflict that develops between Harumi, a scorned woman seeking vengeance, determined to make herself a promiscuous and pitiless heartbreaker, who thrusts herself into the corps of a dozen or so whores assigned to serve the needs of a battalion of soldiers, and two men: the tyrannical commanding officer (his title is "adjutant") Narita, and his lackey Mikami, a humiliated private whose rank had been reduced in retaliation for misconduct earlier in the war. The desirable Harumi, already frustrated at a former lover who wanted to continue his amorous conduct with her even after taking a more respectable wife, becomes enraged when Narita takes advantage of his commanding privilege to make her his exclusive consort. She plots her revenge by initially pretending to favor Mikami, as a way of showing her contempt for his arrogant and repulsive boss. Of course, Mikami finds her advances impossible to resist, but his beaten-down subservient conscience induces an agonizing dilemma as he recognizes the risks he's taking by screwing his commander's paramour. Mikami's wavering only forces Harumi to throw herself at him all the harder, and in the process, she begins to develop a genuine affection for the pawn she's been playing with. Over the course of time, and bolstered by a crucial outburst of Mikami's anger, the feeling becomes something Harumi recognizes as love.

But as that emotional connection crystallizes, Mikami's tension level rises from uncomfortable to excruciating. Watching Tamio Kawaji, who played Mikami, in this role was quite a revelation, as I'd only known him to portray high-strung, kooky characters in films like Koreyoshi Kurahara's The Warped Ones and Black Sun. Here, Kawaji is much more disciplined and, as the role demands, manly in the traditional sense - not the spoiled little punk that I'd typecast him as. Yielding to Harumi's plea to requite her love puts Mikami not only at odds with his commanding officer, but with the entire thrust of his military training and discipline. The Japanese soldier of that era was programmed to obey orders and to kill - to slaughter the enemy while strength and opportunity remained, and to annihilate himself rather than be taken prisoner when all hope was lost. Thoughts of self-preservation, much less personal fulfillment or more philosophical reflections on purpose or morality, were worse than gratuitous indulgences; they were perversions of discipline, abrogations of duty, indicators of shame, unworthy of a soldier's contemplation. But the questionable presence of a company non-conformist named Uno introduces a dissonant note into the rigid cadence that Narita tries to instill, using whatever sadistic interventions he finds necessary.

Suzuki rightfully deserves the credit for ramping up the creative element in Story of a Prostitute's cinematic technique and also for pushing up against the strong taboos that often prevent a nation's armies (any nation's, not just Japan's) from being cast in such a reprehensible light by its artistic voices. The original plan for the story was to present the comfort women as "entertainers," leaving their sexual exploits more a matter of implied innuendo, not the tawdry shift-work grind depicted onscreen. Likewise, the conflict could have been more driven by Mikami's conflicted motives, with Narita's villainy tempered by a more traditional and relatively sympathetic portrayal of him just being your run-of-the-mill hard ass drill sergeant just doing what's he must in order to maintain discipline. As a veteran of the war he put on film, it's difficult to resist drawing the conclusion that he was revisiting some lingering grudges, settling some old scores in the process.

But the centerpiece of the film, the aspect that makes Story of a Prostitute stand out and will cause it to linger in my memory, is the ferocious vitality of Yumiko Nogawa in the lead role as Harumi. She was pretty sensational as the feisty teenage hooker Maya in Gate of Flesh, but here she raises her game considerably, embodying the rage and passion of a woman on the verge of being dehumanized by her circumstances but determined to avoid that final defeat of her will even if she has to sacrifice everything else in the process. Don't get me wrong - there's no effort on Suzuki's or anybody else's part to present Harumi as heroic or even as a martyr for some cause. No, she's merely a victim, a doomed woman who discovered the possibility of love and dared to envision a path to freedom, where that love could be expressed and experienced outside of the constricting bonds that made it forbidden. Sadly for her, the love was born into a world that was too strong to be overcome, and attached to a man who proved unable to finally join with her in the quest. But her dream, that wandering path into a harsh and unexplored wilderness, was still captured and told in this Story of a Prostitute.

Next: The Moment of Truth