PLOT: Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man who shows a low self esteem, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poetess. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and the development of a serious illness: a breast cancer, which leads her to lose her breasts. In the last stage of her life she meets a young journalist arrived from Tokyo, an admirer of her work, who wants to write a story on her life.

Forever.a.Woman.1955.Kinuyo.Tanaka.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 50 min
Size: 	2.45 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	790x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.372
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 003 kb/s
BPP: 	0.275
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 1.0ch AC-3 @ 160 kb/s (Mono)

https://nitro.download/view/01B19F5AA0F7B05/Forever.a.Woman.1955.Kinuyo.Tanaka.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, French

The post Kinuyo Tanaka – Chibusa yo eien nare AKA The Eternal Breasts AKA Forever a Woman (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Rouven Linnarz wrote:
Although she would go on to make feature films as an actress, Kinuyo Tanaka’s last project as a director would be the 1963 jidaigeki “Love Under the Crucifix”, a work based on the novel “Ogin-sama” by Toko Kon. At the same time, given her development as a filmmaker, this is truly an interesting climax to a career which saw her progressing more and more, developing her skills, especially when it comes to cinematic storytelling. Additionally, the themes that defined her previous works such as “Love Letter” and “Forever a Woman” also found a fitting conclusion in a feature that, even though it was not set in the present as her other movies, it certainly made a very relevant point about gender roles within Japanese society as well as the conflict between duty and desire as expressed in the story of the main characters.

The story begins in 1587, as the Japanese lords were threatened by the growing influence of Christianity and an increasing number of them being converted to this new faith coming from Europe. However, as a means to create a feeling of unity among the many provinces, Sen no Rikyu (Nakamura Ganjiro II), a nobleman with a profound knowledge of tea rituals, is asked by a military commander to have his daughter, Ogin (Ineko Arima) to be married to a rich merchant named Mozuya (Hisaya Ito). Having instructed him in the tea ritual and finding him a very respectable man, Rikyu does not object, but eventually makes it his daughter’s decision whether she will marry him or not. Given her affection for Ukon Takayama (Tatsuya Nakadai), also a former student of her father and a firm supporter of Christianity, she seeks his approval and possibly his love for her, which he refuses, believing in his duty to remain pure and without sin.

Two years later, Ogin has become the merchant’s wife, but the marriage is unhappy and without children. When Mozuya meets Ukon during a tea ceremony, seeking to negotiate a new trade agreement, although he is well-aware of the days of Christianity being numbered in Japan, Ogin feels attracted to the young man once more. However, at one point ,both of them finally see an opportunity to give in to their feelings for each other, resulting in a catastrophe for them and their families.

Similar to, for example, “Love Letter”, Tanaka shows both of her main characters, Ogin and Ukon, as prisoners of certain restraints, of faith and society. From the first time we see these two together, there is an invisible wall between them, with Ukon shutting down his feelings for the young woman by citing concepts such as purity and sun, setting up the foundation of what will be their ultimate downfall. Both Nakadai and Arima excel in their scenes together, highlighting the conflict of their characters of having to choose between their duty and their desire, making the titular “love under the crucifix” a difficult goal to achieve.

Whereas other directors have used the historic setting and costumes of the jidaigeki as a means to explore greed, hybris and jealousy, in the case of Tanaka’s final feature it is the importance of rituals and concepts in favor of feelings and peace. Apart from the implications of Christianity and its role within the history of Japan, much time is spent showing the strict routine of the tea ceremony, with most of the encounters in the feature following the ritual. Masahige Narusawa’s screenplay seemingly wants to connect the idea of the ceremony to the way people, especially women, must follow certain expectations or face punishment for disobedience. When Ogin witnesses another woman on her way to be crucified, she learns of her crime of not wanting to commit adultery with a lord, creating one of the many instances of foreshadowing in “Love Under the Crucifix”.

In conclusion, “Love Under the Crucifix” is a terrific final feature for Kinuyo Tanaka as director. Using the structures of the jidaigeki, she tells a compelling story about the conflict of duty and desire, with Tatsuya Nakadai and especially Ineko Arima giving great performances as two people having to decide between their feeling for each other or obeying to the set of rules imposed onto them.

2.81GB | 1h 41m | 1024×428 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/E83ABF26C9585A9/Love.Under.the.Crucifix.1962.Kinuyo.Tanaka.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English,French

The post Kinuyo Tanaka – Ogin-sama AKA Love Under the Crucifix (1962) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In the late 1950’s prostitution was banned in Japan and if a woman was found exercising this profession they were sent to a reformatory. This is a story of one of these brave women Kuniko who is released from the reformatory and tries to build a new life.

Michael Smith wrote:
Girls of Dark was released five years after the criminalization of prostitution and focuses on the rehabilitation of former prostitutes in their struggle to assimilate into legitimate society. The lead character of the film, Kuniko, is another Tanaka protagonist who is shown to be entirely unambiguous in the use of her sexuality but, in her case, it is only through the elimination of her brazen eroticism, which is shown to be as much a part of her personal character as it was to her former professional one, that she is able to approach successful rehabilitation.

Even after finding contentment in country life, Kuniko is ultimately unable to escape her past and it is her inability to survive in mainstream Japan through which Girls of Dark offers a cynical outlook on the futures of the thousands of Japanese women trying to find a new life in a Japan which, for the first time in its history, was proactively intolerant of the sex trade.

Girls of Dark has a particularly unpleasant scene in which Kuniko is jumped by a gang of inmates at the rehabilitation centre, who force her to the floor, brace her legs apart and burn her genitalia with candle wax. Such explicit imagery was rare in mainstream Japanese cinema of the time and is demonstrative of the seriousness with which Tanaka approached the issues of her own gender, which she clearly saw as amounting to more than merely a discussion of modernity and familial roles.

Both the breadth of women’s issues considered in her films and the serious, sometimes confrontational levity with which she approached these issues mean that Tanaka Kinuyo’s films can be considered as not only contributions to the canon of female-centred postwar Japanese cinema, but contributions from a woman personally invested in the position of her gender.

1.16GB | 1h 32m | 666×283 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/287C9AD6825F782/1961_Onna_bakari_no_yoru_-_Tanaka.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/9AB07A88B45286A/Girls.of.the.Night.1961.eng.OHAKOSUBS.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Kinuyo Tanaka – Onna bakari no yoru aka Girl of Dark (1961) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Pu Zhe, the younger brother of the Emperor of Manchukuo, Pu Wen, marries Ryuko the daughter of a long-established aristocratic family – all in the interest of the Japanese rulers, which legitimizes the relationship between Japan and its Chinese puppet state. To the surprise of all , a deep love between Pu Zhe and Ryuko develops. It is put to the test when Japan loses the war, Manchukuo is dissolved and the imperial court must flee. The lovers now have to separate: Pu Zhe tries to escape to Japan with his brother, while Ryuko flees with her daughter Eisei over the country. A film on the relationship between Pujie (1907-94), brother of the “last emperor” Puyi and his second wife, Marquise Hiro Saga (1914-87).

1.57GB | 1h 42m | 860×366 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/42688B5C3BBDDA3/The.Wandering.Princess.1960.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Kinuyo Tanaka – Ruten no ôhi AKA The Wandering Princess (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This is a rare chance to see a film by Kinuyo Tanaka as director. Tanaka was an actress known through her starring roles in many, many Japanese films in the pre-war and post-war golden ages – films like Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu (1952) – through to her tremendous and award winning performance in Kei Kumai’s Sandakan 8 (1974). Although not the first woman to direct a film in Japan Tanaka was able to produce a handful of films in the 50s that are very competently made and much better and more interesting than many in their treatment of women in society. Although it was said that her relationship with Mizoguchi was the reason she was able or allowed to direct it is clear that she had talent that was all her own and that she was able to work with the cream of Japan’s studio talent (the script writer is Keisuke Kinoshita). Koibumi was her first film as director.

Koibumi (love letter or love letters) is a melodrama about a sundered pair of lovers who meet again after the war and have to try to rebuild a relationship in the light of her occupation relationship with US servicemen. The title refers to the letters written by abandoned Japanese girls to their absent occupation force lovers declaring love – and asking for money. The bitter man of the pair ends up writing letters in English for a small sum and finds himself encountering his long lost love but has trouble dealing with her past and his own prejudices. Although this is not new territory for Japanese film makers it is a sensitive and powerful film and well worth watching.

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/C7F17CE734B153B/koibumi.mkv
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/BA62EF70795ECF9/koibumi.srt

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English SRT

The post Kinuyo Tanaka – Koibumi AKA Love Letter (1953) first appeared on Cinema of the World.