Epitome
1953 · Japan · 131 min
- Director
- Kaneto Shindō
- Screenplay
- Kaneto Shindō
- Producer
- Kōzaburō Yoshimura
- Music
- Akira Ifukube
- Cinematography
- Takeo Itō
Cast
What it is about
Ginko is the daughter of a poor shoemaker in Tokyo who, to support her family, is sold into work as a geisha in a brothel in Chiba. Across a series of moves between houses in different provinces, the heroine tries to keep her family afloat while circumstances push her from one situation to the next. The film portrays with harshness the conditions these women endured and the financial burden they carried for their families.
How it was made
The film is based on an unfinished novel by Shūsei Tokuda, adapted by Kaneto Shindō, who also wrote and directed it. Kōzaburō Yoshimura produced, Akira Ifukube composed the score and Takeo Itō shot the film. Nobuko Otowa leads the cast alongside Isuzu Yamada, Sō Yamamura and Akira Yamanouchi. Shindō adopted a direct, naturalistic approach, with scenes of considerable harshness meant to show the everyday reality of the profession.
Reception and legacy
In their 1959 book The Japanese Film, Donald Richie and Joseph L. Anderson described it as so explicit that at times it was hard to watch the screen, though they judged its move towards naturalism to be fairly successful in parts. Film historian Alexander Jacoby compared it with Yoshimura's Clothes of Deception, released two years earlier and also scripted by Shindō, and felt Shindō's view of the geisha system was less resigned and more bluntly critical. It was screened at the Berkeley Art Museum in 1989 and at a retrospective in London in 2012.
Trivia
Other titles
The film is also known as Miniature in some international sources, an alternative title listed alongside the main one.
Later screenings
Decades after its release, the film was screened in Berkeley in 1989 and was part of a London retrospective on Shindō and Yoshimura in 2012.
More films by Kaneto Shindō
Onibaba
The Naked Island
Kuroneko
Children of Hiroshima
Edo Porn
WolfOriginal Cinematopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.