is a 1953 Japanese

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

written and directed by

Kaneto Shindō was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film producer, and writer, who directed 48 films and wrote scripts for 238. His best known films as a director include ''Children of Hiroshima'', ''The Naked Island'', '' Onibaba'', ''Kuroneko'' an ...

, based on an unfinished novel by Shūsei Tokuda.

Plot

Ginko, daughter of a poor shoemaker, is sold to work as a geisha in a brothel in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

to support her family. Although made the

madam Madam (), or madame ( or ), is a polite and formal form of address for Woman, women in the English language, often contracted to ma'am (pronounced in American English and this way but also in British English). The term derives from the French ...

after the death of the owner's wife, she suffers so much from the violence inflicted by the abusive owner, that her father buys her back. To help the family and her sick father, she starts working in a brothel in

Hokkaido is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...

. There she meets a man who is seemingly willing to make Ginko his wife, but his upper-class family demands that he marries a woman of equal social status. Back in Tokyo working at still another brothel, she catches pneumonia and is carried home to die, but in the end her younger sister Tokiko dies and she lives. The last scene shows her again as a geisha, entertaining a group of customers.

Cast

References

External links

* 1953 films 1953 drama films Japanese drama films Japanese black-and-white films Films based on Japanese novels Films directed by Kaneto Shindo Films scored by Akira Ifukube 1950s Japanese films 1950s Japanese-language films {{1950s-Japan-film-stub