Once More
About Once More
After the war a man waits in a park for a woman who said she would meet him there. She does not come. The story goes back to 1936. Nogami, a doctor, turns down a university post to treat the poor. At a benefit play he walks into the dressing room of Akiko, a rich leading lady, and falls in love. She invites him to her birthday. He cannot stand her friends and leaves. Class, her engagement to the painter Sakon, and the politics of the decade keep pulling them apart. Akiko joins the left, is arrested, and is written up as a Red Lady. She marries Sakon under family pressure. Nogami, out of jail, goes to a poor village in the mountains.
Cast & crew
More about Once More
Heinosuke Gosho directed. Keinosuke Uekusa adapted a novel by Jun Takami. The Japanese title is Ima hitotabi no. A release date of 8 April 1947 is listed, with a running time of 118 minutes. Mieko Takamine plays Akiko. Ichirō Ryūzaki plays Nogami. Haruo Tanaka plays Sakon. Hyo Kitazawa and Kōji Kawamura play Nogami's friends from school, the playwright and the organizer.
Themes
Background
The plot runs from the 1936 graduation year through the China war and into the postwar meeting that does not happen.
Making
Gosho framed the romance as a flashback from the park after the defeat, so the 1936 courtship sits inside the occupation present.
Preservation
A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Gosho and Uekusa took the novel on in the occupation years as a story about people who had opposed militarism.
- The benefit play where Nogami meets Akiko is staged to raise money for socialist causes.
- Japan invades China in the stretch of the story while Nogami is in jail.
Scenes
- Nogami walks into Akiko's dressing room by mistake.
- He sits alone on the terrace while her birthday party goes on inside.
- He waits in the park after the war, and she does not appear.
Influenced by
- Jun Takami's novel
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (今ひとたびの - Once More (1947) by Heinosuke Gosho.webm)
