is a 1963 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 ...

directed by

Shōhei Imamura was a Japanese film director. His main interest as a filmmaker lay in the depiction of the lower strata of Japanese society. A key figure in the Japanese New Wave, who continued working into the 21st century, Imamura is the only director from J ...

. It was entered into the

14th Berlin International Film Festival The 14th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 26 June to 7 July 1964. The Swedish film '' 491'' by Vilgot Sjöman was rejected by festival director ''Alfred Bauer'' owing to its controversial nature. The Golden Bear was awarde ...

, where

Sachiko Hidari was a Japanese actress and film director. Life Hidari was born in Asahi, Toyama, as the eldest of 8 children. She graduated from Tokyo Women's College of Physical Education and gave her film debut in 1952 in ''Wakaki hi no ayamachi''. Betw ...

won the

Silver Bear for Best Actress The Silver Bear for Best Actress (german: Silberner Bär/Beste Darstellerin) was an award presented at the Berlin International Film Festival from 1956 to 2020. It was given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance and was chos ...

award. It was also awarded numerous national film prizes.

Plot

The film follows Tome, a young woman born to a rural lower-class family in the

Tōhoku region The , Northeast region, or consists of the northeastern portion of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This traditional region consists of six prefectures (''ken''): Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Tōhoku retains a ...

in 1918, who, after a long series of mishaps, rises to the status of a

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 ...

in the post-war era. When she is sentenced to jail, her daughter Nobuko becomes her patron's lover, but later steals his money to use it for building up a farming commune.

Cast

as Tome Matsuki *

Jitsuko Yoshimura is a Japanese film and television actress. She was discovered by Shōhei Imamura as a newcomer and cast in the film '' Pigs and Battleships''. She went on to appear in films like Imamura's ''The Insect Woman'', Kaneto Shindō's '' Onibaba'', for ...

as Nobuko * Emiko Aizawa as Rui *

Masumi Harukawa , born , is a Japanese actress. Filmography * 1963: ''The Insect Woman'' * 1964: '' Unholy Desire'' * 1964: ''Kunoichi Keshō'' * 1967: ''Zatoichi's Cane Sword'' * 1968: ''The Human Bullet'' * 1968: '' Curse of the Blood'' * 1974: '' Pastoral: T ...

as Midori * Emiko Higashi as Kane * Daizaburo Hirata as Kamibayashi * Seizaburo Kawazu as Karasawa * Teruko Kishi as Rin *

Tanie Kitabayashi was a Japanese actress and voice actress. Born Reiko Ando in Tokyo, she began as a stage actress. Kitabayashi was a founding member of the famed Mingei Theatre Company, founded in 1950. Early in her career, she became well known for portraying o ...

as Madam *

Kazuo Kitamura was a Japanese actor. His son is actor Yukiya Kitamura. Kitamura met Shōhei Imamura when he was a student of Waseda University and became a close friend so often worked with Imamura. Kitamura joined Bungakuza theatre company and started his acti ...

as Chuji *

Asao Koike was a Japanese actor. He is most famous for playing yakuza roles. He is also known as voice actor. In 1950, he joined the Bungakuza Theatre Company. In 1963, he left the Bungakuza Theatre Company and established the Kumo Theatre Company. He appe ...

as Sawakichi * Masakazu Kuwayama as Owagawa En's Lover *

Hiroyuki Nagato , stage name of Akio Kato (加藤晃夫), was a Japanese actor. He starred in ''Season of the Sun'', '' Endless Desire'', '' My Second Brother'', '' Stolen Desire'', and '' Sukeban Deka'', and ''Yo-Yo Girl Cop''. Life and career Nagato was bo ...

as Matsunami *

Shoichi Ozawa was a Japanese actor, radio host, singer, and prominent researcher and expert on Japanese folk art. He also founded the Shabondama-za theater company. Ozawa, who was born in Tokyo, graduated from Waseda University. He began acting after college, ...

as Ken * Sumie Sasaki as En *

Taiji Tonoyama was a Japanese character actor who made many appearances in films and on television from 1939 to 1989. He was a close friend of Kaneto Shindo and one of his regular cast members. He was also an essayist. In 1950 he helped form the film company Ki ...

as Foreman *

Shigeru Tsuyuguchi is a Japanese actor. Biography Tsuyuguchi was born in Tokyo and raised in Ehime.Nihon Eiga Jinmei Jiten　2　190-191 He attended Ehime University, but withdrew before completing his degree and joined the Haiyuza Theatre Company in 1955. His c ...

as Honda

Production

In a 1977 interview, director Imamura explained that he had chosen Hidari for the role due to her vitality and energy, which had impressed him in the film ''The Maid's Kid'' (''Jochukko'', 1955). Yet, according to Hidari, she and Imamura disagreed profoundly on the way she should play her character, calling him a "chauvinist" in retrospect for his bullying the then pregnant actress by e.g. insisting on multiple re-takes in delicate scenes.

Release

''The Insect Woman'' was released in Japan on 16 November 1963, earning $500,000 in four weeks. It was re-released with ''Getsuyōbi no Yuka'' in February 1964, earning a similar amount. The film was released as a region 1 NTSC

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in 2009 as part of

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

's Shohei Imamura DVD box and as a region B

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

in 2011 by

Masters of Cinema Masters of Cinema is a line of DVD and Blu-ray releases published through Eureka Entertainment. Because of the uniformly branded and spine-numbered packaging and the standard inclusion of booklets and analysis by recurring film historians, the ...

Reception

''Variety'' magazine declared the film being "potent adult film fare by any nation's standards" and praised the camera work by Masahisa Himeda and performances by Sachiko Hidari, Kazuo Kitamura and Jitsuko Yoshimura. The review noted that the film takes place over a period of 45 years in an episodic technique "consciously causing viewer alienation". The film won 14 awards in Japan, including the

Blue Ribbon Award for Best Film The Blue Ribbon Award for Best Film is a prize recognizing excellence in Japanese film. It is awarded annually by the Association of Tokyo Film Journalists as one of the Blue Ribbon Awards. Filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Tadashi Imai and Mikio Naru ...

and

Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year The Kinema Junpo Awards for Best Film of the Year is given by ''Kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) sy ...

References

External links

* *
''The Insect Woman: Learning to Crawl''
an essay by Dennis Lim at The Criterion Collection 1963 drama films Japanese drama films Japanese black-and-white films Best Film Kinema Junpo Award winners Films directed by Shohei Imamura Nikkatsu films 1960s Japanese films {{1960s-Japan-film-stub