Sisters of the Gion
About Sisters of the Gion
In an okiya in Kyoto's Gion, older geisha Umekichi takes in her bankrupt patron, Shimbei Furusawa. Her younger sister Omocha says giri is a waste and tries to pay Furusawa off and match both women with richer men. A shop clerk who stole a kimono for them is caught. Umekichi drops the new patron and goes back to Furusawa. The clerk tells Furusawa's wife, then abducts Omocha and throws her from a car. Furusawa returns to a country factory with his wife. Umekichi is left nursing Omocha, who lies bandaged and curses the geisha system.
Cast & crew
More about Sisters of the Gion
Kenji Mizoguchi directed and produced the film with Masaichi Nagata for Daiichi Eiga. Yoshikata Yoda wrote the script with Mizoguchi, from Alexander Kuprin's novel Yama: The Pit. Minoru Miki photographed it. Shochiku released it in Japan on 15 October 1936. The same cast and crew made Osaka Elegy the same year.
Themes
Background
The story is set among geisha in the licensed quarter of Gion in the mid-1930s, with one sister trained in the old obligations and the other schooled in public classrooms and Western dress.
In film history
It is paired with Osaka Elegy as the 1936 diptych in which Mizoguchi set two women against the men who pay for them. Donald Richie later linked it to Kōzaburō Yoshimura's geisha drama Clothes of Deception (1951).
Making
Yoda's published screenplay carries his name. Some later disc notes have called the story Mizoguchi's original. The film is a loose adaptation of Kuprin's Yama.
Reviews
Tadashi Iijima called it the best prewar Japanese sound film. In the British Film Institute's year-by-year Japanese list, Alexander Jacoby wrote that Mizoguchi delivered the social analysis with concision, force, rigor, and scalpel-like precision.
Look
Minoru Miki photographed the black-and-white film, moving between the okiya and the streets of the Gion quarter.
Preservation
Shochiku and the Japanese Movie Database list 95 minutes. The print in circulation, including the Criterion edition, runs 69 minutes. Kinenote attributes the shorter length to missing scenes.
Notes
- Isuzu Yamada plays Omocha. Yōko Umemura plays Umekichi.
- Eitarō Shindō plays Kudo. Taizō Fukami plays Kimura.
- The Japanese title is Gion no kyōdai.
- Hiromasa Nomura directed a 1956 remake under the same title.
- Mizoguchi later named this film and Osaka Elegy as the pictures with which he considered his own work had begun in earnest.
Awards
- Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film (1937)
Scenes
- Omocha hands Furusawa money and tells him Umekichi is done with him. He drinks it away.
- The clerk throws Omocha from a car. Umekichi sits with her in the hospital while she curses the trade.
Influenced by
- Yama: The Pit by Alexander Kuprin
Influenced
- Sisters of the Gion (1956, Hiromasa Nomura)
Also available
- Internet Archive (sisters-of-the-gion)
- Criterion Eclipse Series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women (2008)
- Wikimedia Commons (Sisters of the Gion (1936) by Kenji Mizoguchi.webm)
