Kinuyo’s First Love

Reikichi Kawamura is an executive at his father’s security firm; he knows he has responsibilities, but he’s not terribly enamored of them. He is intrigued by Kuniko Igawa, the girl who chalks the prices on the board, who treats him with disdain. He asks her out, and she refuses. Finally, he asks her what she thinks of him, and she responds honestly. After all, she can always work in the bakery shop run by her sister, Kinuyo Tanaka. Kawamura finds Miss Igawa’s attitude refreshing, and decides he wants to marry her. Everyone is pleased by this; with a wife, his father believes, he will settle down and apply himself. Her father sees this is a great marriage for her, and sets Miss Tanaka to order her to do so; the girls’ mother being dead, Miss Tanaka stands in her stead. She does so, and instructs her sister in how she should behave, in a short-tempered fashion. Until now, she had not known that Kawamura was the unnamed man with whom she plays Go, and with whom she is secretly in love.There are many elements in this movie that suggest Ozu’s post-war marrying-the-daughter-off movies, and that is, I believe, no coincidence. The scriptwriter of this movie is Tadao Ikeda; he would write several of Ozu’s movies, including WALK CHEERFULLY, and THERE WAS A FATHER, and did an uncredited rewrite of the second version of FLOATING WEEDS. This movie, heartfelt as it is, is a little too ambiguous and telling for the calm and happy comedies that Ozu would later direct.Although its director, Hiromasa Nomura, is a skillful director, I cannot look at it save in the light of Ozu’s works, and the heart-rending performances that Miss Tanaka would give in her career, particularly for Mizoguchi. It touches on the dark side of the demands that Japanese society places on women, but implies they are, burdens that can and should be borne.