Orizuru Osen

Orizuru Osen
Orizuru Osen
Directed by	Kenji Mizoguchi
Screenplay by	Tatsunosuke Takashima
Based on	Baishoku kamo nanban; by Kyōka Izumi
Produced by	Masaichi Nagata
Starring	Isuzu Yamada; Daijiro Natsukawa; Ichiro Yoshizawa;
Cinematography	Minoru Miki
Production; company	Daiichi Eiga
Distributed by	Shochiku
Release date	20 January 1935 (Japan);
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Orizuru Osen (折鶴お千, lit. "Osen of the paper cranes"), also titled The Downfall of Osen, is a 1935 Japanese silent film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi starring Isuzu Yamada.^[1]^[3] It is based on a short story by Kyōka Izumi.^[4]

Plot

While waiting for a delayed train at a train station, Sōkichi Hata, a medical professor, overhears other travelers talking about a courtesan in their midst. He reminisces his past when he was about to commit suicide and saved by Osen, a young woman acting as a decoy for a gang of traffickers led by Kumazawa. Osen convinces Kumazawa to take Sōkichi in as a servant, later learning that Sōkichi came to Tokyo to study medicine but failed due to his shortage of money. Outraged both at the gang's misdeeds and their repeated maltreatment of Sōkichi, she finally gives them away to the police and decides to help Sōkichi to take up his studies. When Sōkichi and Osen, who sees her solely as an elder sister, run out of money, she turns to prostitution and theft to help him finish his exams. After Osen is arrested by the police, Sōkichi's professor sees to his wellbeing.

Back in the present, the train personnel look for a doctor after one of the waiting travelers has collapsed. Sōkichi offers his help, only to find out that the collapsed person is none other than Osen. At the hospital, Sōkichi tries to make her recall their time together, but Osen, having lost her sanity, is unable to recognise him, stuck in memories of Sōkichi, whom she blames for having forgotten her.

Cast

Isuzu Yamada as Osen
Daijirō Natsukawa as Sokichi Hata
Ichirō Yoshizawa as Ukiki
Shin Shibata as Kumazawa
Genichi Fujii as Matsuda
Eiji Nakano as Professor

Legacy

Orizuru Osen was one in a series of adaptations of Izumi's stories directed by Mizoguchi,^[4] a writer he admired.^[5] Film scholar Chika Kinoshita noted that the film occupies a special place within the critical reception of Mizoguchi's oeuvre and that it has been singled out as one of the earliest embodiments of his style in the late 1930s.^[6] In his Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors, Alexander Jacoby wrote that Orizuru Osen "displayed in embryo [its] director's capacity for rich atmospheric detail and his abiding concern with the oppression of women".^[7]

Orizuru Osen has repeatedly been screened with live benshi narration by Midori Sawato.^[8]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c "折鶴お千". Japanese Movie Database (in Japanese). Retrieved 1 October 2022.
^ "折鶴お千". Kinenote (in Japanese). Retrieved 1 October 2022.
^ Bock, Audie (1978). Japanese Film Directors. Kodansha. p. 65. ISBN 0-87011-304-6.
^ ^a ^b McDonald, Keiko (2000). From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Films. p. 16.
^ Jacoby, Alexander (October 2002). "Mizoguchi, Kenji". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
^ Kinoshita, Chika (Spring 2011). "The Benshi Track: Mizoguchi Kenji's The Downfall of Osen and the Sound Transition". Cinema Journal. 3. Vol. 50. Society for Cinema and Media Studies. p. 1.
^ Jacoby, Alexander (2008). Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1-933330-53-2.
^ Midding, Gerhard (2 May 2016). "Das "h" bleibt stumm". epd Film (in German). Retrieved 2 October 2022.