{ "id": "epnj2n8t1m", "slug": "red-angel", "title": "Red Angel (赤い天使)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical", "label": "War and historical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure", "label": "War action and adventure", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure.war-action-films-released-through-1999", "label": "War action films released through 1999", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure.war-action-films-released-through-1999" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure.war-action-films-released-through-1999.yr-1963-1998", "label": "Released 1963 to 1998", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure.war-action-films-released-through-1999.yr-1963-1998" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical", "label": "Asia (other) · 1946 to 2000: War and historical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical", "path": [ { "id": "geo.asia", "label": "Asia (other)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946", "label": "Asia (other) · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical", "label": "War and historical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Red Angel (赤い天使, Akai tenshi) is Masumura Yasuzo's 1966 Daiei black-and-white war drama, adapted from Arima Yoriyoshi's novel, starring Ayako Wakao as nurse Sakura Nishi in 1939 China; released October 1, 1966, 95 minutes, R-rated.", "snippet": "Red Angel (赤い天使, Akai tenshi) is Masumura Yasuzo's 1966 Daiei black-and-white war drama, adapted from Arima Yoriyoshi's novel, starring Ayako Wakao as nurse Sakura Nishi in 1939 China; released October 1, 1966, 95 minutes, R-rated.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.war-historical.war-action-and-adventure.war-action-films-released-through-1999.yr-1963-1998", "markdown": "# Red Angel (赤い天使)\n\n**Red Angel** (赤い天使, *Akai tenshi*) is a 1966 Japanese black-and-white war drama directed by Masumura Yasuzo (増村保造) for the Daiei studio, adapted from Yoriyoshi Arima's (有馬頼義) novel of the same name. Set in 1939 during the [Second Sino-Japanese War](https://www.edgepedia.org/second-sino-japanese-war), it follows army nurse Sakura Nishi (Ayako Wakao) through a succession of ever more desperate field hospitals, and her bond with the surgeon Okabe (Shinsuke Ashida), who has retreated into morphine addiction. It was released in Japan on October 1, 1966, runs 95 minutes, and carries an R rating.[1](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/160917) • [2](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22019)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | October 1, 1966, distributed by Daiei; produced at Daiei Tokyo[1](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/160917) |\n| Format | 95 minutes, black and white, DaieiScope (2.35:1), 35 mm mono, R-rated[2](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22019) |\n| Source | Novel by Yoriyoshi Arima; screenplay by Ryozo Kasahara; cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi; music by Sei Ikeno[1](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/160917) |\n| Lead cast | Ayako Wakao as nurse Nishi Sakura; Shinsuke Ashida as Dr. Okabe; Yusuke Kawazu as Private Orihara[3](https://www.wowow.co.jp/detail/019556) |\n| Setting | 1939, Japanese army hospitals in Tientsin (Tianjin) and near the front line of the war with China[4](https://www.arrowvideo.com/p/red-angel-blu-ray/13441464/) |\n| Masumura–Wakao partnership | One of twenty films Masumura made with Ayako Wakao, and generally described as his best-known film[5](https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2025/08/27/la-douloureuse-obsession-du-corps-du-cineaste-yasuzo-masumura_6636460_3476.html) |\n| Home video | Arrow Video Blu-ray (1080p restoration) released January 18, 2022, with commentary by David Desser and extras by Tony Rayns and Jonathan Rosenbaum[6](https://trailersfromhell.com/cinesavant/red-angel/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nIn 1939, in the fifth year of the [Shōwa era](https://www.edgepedia.org/showa-era) by the [Japanese calendar](https://www.edgepedia.org/japanese-calendar), Nishi Sakura is posted as an army nurse to the army hospital in Tientsin. Within days, during a night round after lights-out, she is raped by several patients. Two months later she is transferred to a branch hospital at Shen County, working under the surgeon Okabe, where truckloads of wounded arrive after each operation and amputated limbs pile up in boxes beside the operating table. Okabe, worn down by the workload, has become a habitual morphine user and has been left impotent by the drug.[9](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/34417/)\n\nBack in Tientsin on rotation, Nishi meets Private Orihara, a soldier who lost both arms and whose life she believes Okabe saved. To restore his sexual function, which she comes to see as her mission, she spends a night with him in a hotel; the next day he throws himself from the hospital roof. Returning to the branch hospital, she learns of Okabe's impotence and sleeps with him to try to cure it, coming to love him in the process. The two then join an emergency nursing unit sent to the front. Their truck is encircled by enemy forces at a settlement called Einrinchin before reaching its destination, the settlement's sanitation is dire enough that cholera breaks out, and the radio is broken. Trapped with all hope gone, Okabe suffers violent morphine withdrawal through one night, which Nishi physically restrains until dawn; when he regains his senses the two embrace, and the Chinese attack begins. The whole unit falls before the overwhelming Chinese force, and when relief arrives Nishi is found collapsed, embracing Okabe's body.[9](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/34417/)\n\n## Production\n\nThe film was produced at Daiei Tokyo with Masumura Yasuzo directing from a screenplay by Ryozo Kasahara, planning by Kikuo Kubodera, editing by Tatsuji Nakazawa, and music by Sei Ikeno. Masumura's regular cinematographer Setsuo Kobayashi shot it in black-and-white DaieiScope.[1](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/160917) • [2](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22019) The cast centers on Ayako Wakao as Nishi Sakura, Shinsuke Ashida as the army surgeon Okabe, and Yusuke Kawazu as Private Orihara, with Ranko Akagi as head nurse Iwashima and Jotaro Senba as Private Sakamoto.[3](https://www.wowow.co.jp/detail/019556) • [7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/red-angel-blu-ray-review-masumura-yasuzo/)\n\nMasumura had studied in Italy at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in the early 1950s, assisted Mizoguchi and Ichikawa on his return, and then spent nearly his whole career at Daiei. Wakao was his most frequent leading actress; the two made twenty films together.[5](https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2025/08/27/la-douloureuse-obsession-du-corps-du-cineaste-yasuzo-masumura_6636460_3476.html) 1966 was a busy year for the director: alongside *Red Angel* he released *Irezumi* (刺青), also with Wakao, and *Army Nakano School* (陸軍中野学校), both also in monochrome.[8](https://eiga.com/movie/34417/)\n\n## Themes and reception\n\nThe film is built around the field hospital rather than combat. Critics describe its hospitals as slaughterhouses of packed wounded men, with amputations performed under inadequate anesthesia and a sound design that leaves the screams and bone saws to the imagination; Kobayashi's widescreen monochrome compositions intensify the claustrophobia.[7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/red-angel-blu-ray-review-masumura-yasuzo/) Within this setting the film links sex and death: Nishi's head nurse tells the nurses they should have no heart, Okabe calls the soldiers not human beings but \"objects... dog tags,\" and Nishi rebels through her sexuality, treating her body as the one means she has to help men the system has written off.[7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/red-angel-blu-ray-review-masumura-yasuzo/) The critic Jeffrey M. Anderson, comparing the film with Kurosawa's hospital dramas *The Quiet Duel* (1949) and *Red Beard* (1965), wrote that *Red Angel* has \"a savage energy unique in films,\" and read it as an indictment not of war itself but of the mentality of those who wage it.[10](https://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/classic/redangel.shtml)\n\nThe film's treatment of the nurse's body has also been read against the history of the comfort women, women forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese army; the scholar David Desser discusses this history on the Arrow Video commentary, and the film itself draws a sharp distinction between nurses and comfort women in the isolated garrison.[7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/red-angel-blu-ray-review-masumura-yasuzo/) • [8](https://eiga.com/movie/34417/) The critic Tony Rayns places the film in the context of Japanese anti-war cinema of the era, arguing that it marked a shift toward the more graphic and nihilistic.[7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/red-angel-blu-ray-review-masumura-yasuzo/) French criticism has described it as Masumura's best-known film, in which the embraces between the nurse and the opium-addicted, impotent doctor answer, in purely visual terms, the charnel houses of the Sino-Japanese War.[5](https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2025/08/27/la-douloureuse-obsession-du-corps-du-cineaste-yasuzo-masumura_6636460_3476.html) On the aggregator Filmarks it holds a user rating of 3.9 from about 1,495 reviews, and on MUBI 8.4/10 from 473 ratings.[11](https://filmarks.com/movies/7772) • [12](https://mubi.com/en/us/films/red-angel)\n\n## Later releases\n\nFantoma Films issued the film on DVD in 2006 with a widescreen transfer and liner notes by Earl Jackson Jr.[10](https://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/classic/redangel.shtml) Arrow Video released a restored Blu-ray on January 18, 2022, with an uncompressed mono track, English subtitles, a commentary by the Japanese cinema scholar David Desser, a filmed introduction by the critic Tony Rayns, and the visual essay *Not All Angels Have Wings* by Jonathan Rosenbaum.[6](https://trailersfromhell.com/cinesavant/red-angel/) • [4](https://www.arrowvideo.com/p/red-angel-blu-ray/13441464/) A 4K restoration received its first screening in the Daiei 4K Film Festival, which ran from January 20, 2023 at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho and other theaters.[13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy0tRvicogw)\n\n## References\n\n1. [赤い天使 (1966), allcinema database, Stingray](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/160917)\n2. [赤い天使, KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=22019)\n3. [赤い天使, WOWOW Online](https://www.wowow.co.jp/detail/019556)\n4. [Red Angel Blu-ray, Arrow Video US](https://www.arrowvideo.com/p/red-angel-blu-ray/13441464/)\n5. [Le cinéaste Yasuzo Masumura et sa douloureuse obsession du corps, Le Monde (2025)](https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2025/08/27/la-douloureuse-obsession-du-corps-du-cineaste-yasuzo-masumura_6636460_3476.html)\n6. [Red Angel, Trailers From Hell / CineSavant](https://trailersfromhell.com/cinesavant/red-angel/)\n7. ['Red Angel' Blu-ray Review: Arrow Video, Slant Magazine (2022)](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/red-angel-blu-ray-review-masumura-yasuzo/)\n8. [赤い天使 : 作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/34417/)\n9. [赤い天使 (full synopsis), 映画.com](https://secure.eiga.com/movie/34417/)\n10. [Red Angel (1966) review by Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid](https://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/classic/redangel.shtml)\n11. [赤い天使, Filmarks](https://filmarks.com/movies/7772)\n12. [Red Angel (1966), MUBI](https://mubi.com/en/us/films/red-angel)\n13. [大映4K映画祭／赤い天使 特別映像, KADOKAWA映画 (YouTube, 2022)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy0tRvicogw)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1963 to 1998*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Red Angel (赤い天使)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Red Angel (赤い天使)](https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel](https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Red Angel (赤い天使)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/red-angel. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Red Angel is Masumura Yasuzo's 1966 Daiei black-and-white war drama, adapted from Arima Yoriyoshi's novel, starring Ayako Wakao as nurse Sakura Nishi in 1939 China; released October 1, 1966, 95 minutes, R-rated." }