{ "id": "epende96de", "slug": "women-of-the-night", "title": "Women of the Night (夜の女たち)", "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.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1940s", "label": "Drama films 1940s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1940s" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Asia (other) · 1946 to 2000: Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "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.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.asia.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Women of the Night (夜の女たち, Yoru no onna-tachi) is Kenji Mizoguchi's 1948 Shochiku drama, his postwar comeback, about two sisters descending into prostitution in ruined Osaka, shot neorealist-style on location with Kinuyo Tanaka.", "snippet": "Women of the Night (夜の女たち, Yoru no onna-tachi) is Kenji Mizoguchi's 1948 Shochiku drama, his postwar comeback, about two sisters descending into prostitution in ruined Osaka, shot neorealist-style on location with Kinuyo Tanaka.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1940s", "markdown": "# Women of the Night (夜の女たち)\n\n**Women of the Night** (夜の女たち, *Yoru no onna-tachi*) is a 1948 Japanese black-and-white drama directed by [Kenji Mizoguchi](https://www.edgepedia.org/kenji-mizoguchi), produced by Shochiku's Kyoto studio, and set in the ruined city of Osaka immediately after Japan's defeat in World War II. It follows two sisters, a war widow and her younger sister, as both descend into prostitution, and it was Mizoguchi's first postwar film and his most direct response to [Italian neorealism](https://www.edgepedia.org/italian-neorealism).[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/) • [2](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night) • [3](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Premiere and release | Advance premiere 26 May 1948; general release 27 May 1948[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/) |\n| Studio and format | Shochiku (Kyoto); 35mm black-and-white sound film[8](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=65200) |\n| Running time | 74 minutes per Shochiku and Criterion; the National Film Archive of Japan's film record lists 73 minutes[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/) • [2](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night) • [8](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=65200) |\n| Director and writer | Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi; screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda, based on the novel *Joseimatsuri* (女性祭) by Eijiro Hisaita[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/) • [2](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night) |\n| Lead cast | Kinuyo Tanaka as the widowed elder sister, Sanae Takasugi as the younger sister Natsuko, Tomie Tsunoda as Kumiko[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night) |\n| Setting | Location shooting in postwar Osaka, including the Shinsekai entertainment district[3](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women) |\n| Home video | Released on DVD in Criterion's Eclipse Series 13: *Kenji Mizoguchi's Fallen Women* (2008)[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThe story is set in Osaka just after the surrender. Fusako Owada (Kinuyo Tanaka; the Shochiku synopsis gives the character's name as Kazuko, 和子), a housewife waiting for a husband who has not returned from the war, tries to sell her kimono to buy milk for her young son, who has infantile tuberculosis; the shopkeeper suggests she take a lover for money. The boy dies, and a war comrade then brings word of the husband's death. Fusako becomes secretary to Kuriyama, the president of the comrade's company, and moves out of the family home. Her younger sister Natsuko (Sanae Takasugi), repatriated from northern Korea and working as a dancer while searching for her sister, finds her by chance in the Shinsaibashi district and moves into her apartment.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/)\n\nKuriyama turns out to be an opium smuggler who preys on the women around him. Discovering Natsuko and Kuriyama together, Fusako leaves home in fury, becomes a street prostitute, and rises to lead a gang of women of the night. Natsuko, searching the night streets of Shinsaibashi for her sister, is picked up in a streetwalker sweep and taken to a hospital, where she learns she has contracted a venereal disease from Kuriyama and is pregnant with his child. Fusako cares for her sister, takes her to a women's home, and returns alone to the night streets.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/)\n\nThe film ends in violence. A gang of prostitutes attacks one of the women in the shattered remains of a churchyard; Fusako is whipped and nearly stoned, and the sequence closes with a zoom into a stained-glass window depicting the Virgin Mary.[3](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women)\n\n## Production and style\n\n**A neorealist turn.** In 1948 Mizoguchi went on location to Osaka's Shinsekai district to make what he intended as a sober look at prostitution, specifically at how women on the lowest rung of Japan's social ladder were affected by postwar conditions. He consciously emulated the spontaneous, ragged shooting style of the Italian neorealists, who were then defining the international art film with frank depictions of postwar suffering. Like them, he had to shoot on poor-quality film stock because of wartime and postwar shortages, and the result is one of the rawest films of his career, though it retains his characteristic extended takes, with the camera craning through bustling areas reduced to rubble.[3](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women) • [6](https://movingimage.org/archived-events/women-of-the-night-yoru-no-onnatachi/)\n\nThe subject grew out of research. The panpan, a new, Westernized type of streetwalker that appeared in Japan during the impoverished years of the American occupation, fascinated Mizoguchi, and he investigated the venereal disease ward of a hospital, where a doctor told him that the ailing women, whatever their moral failings, were ultimately victims of \"a crime of men.\"[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/720099/women-of-the-night-1948-women-of-the-night)\n\nMizoguchi himself later criticized the film's near-splenetic anger, calling it \"barbarous\" and attributing it to \"the overpowering sense of resentment I'd accumulated during the long years of wartime oppression. You could call this the misplaced bravura of an old man.\"[3](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women)\n\n## Cast and Kinuyo Tanaka\n\nKinuyo Tanaka, Mizoguchi's perennial star, took her first \"dirty\" role in the film, cast against her established image.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/720099/women-of-the-night-1948-women-of-the-night) This was one of her last screen appearances before a formative trip to Hollywood; after returning to Japan she remade herself as one of Japan's first female directors.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/720099/women-of-the-night-1948-women-of-the-night) The supporting cast includes Sanae Takasugi, Tomie Tsunoda, and Mitsuo Nagata as Kuriyama.[2](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night)\n\n## Place in Mizoguchi's career\n\nThe film marked Mizoguchi's postwar comeback. After it, he moved to the classical literary subjects of *The Life of Oharu* (1952), *[Ugetsu](https://www.edgepedia.org/ugetsu)* (1953), and *Sansho the Bailiff* (1954), which won prizes at the Venice International Film Festival three years running and made his reputation international.[5](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/mizoguchi2026/) Within his work on prostitution, which scholars count at four films from *Osaka Elegy* (1936) to his final *Street of Shame* (1956), *Women of the Night* is the one anchored in the anguished years immediately after defeat, and it is read as a critique of Japanese patriarchy and, indirectly, of Occupation policies that shaped the characters' circumstances.[9](https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/MR40592.PDF)\n\nCritics have placed the film within Mizoguchi's recurring concern with women's position in Japanese society. Richard Brody, writing in [The New Yorker](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-new-yorker), described the protagonists' collapse \"from genteel poverty to maenadic monstrosity\" as having \"a tragic inevitability,\" and noted that the film's one irony concerns Western influences, contrasting the boogie-woogie of a dance hall called the Hollywood Club with the exaltation of motherhood in Christian doctrine and art.[7](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/women-of-the-night) The film circulated for decades in prints of variable quality; the first ten to twelve minutes of the Criterion DVD transfer are heavily damaged, reflecting the poor stock on which it was shot.[3](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women)\n\n## References\n\n1. [夜の女たち, Shochiku film database](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02486/)\n2. [Women of the Night (1948), The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/969-women-of-the-night)\n3. [Michael Koresky, \"Women of the Night: Dark City,\" Eclipse Series 13 essay, The Criterion Collection (2008)](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/705-eclipse-series-13-kenji-mizoguchi-s-fallen-women)\n4. [Violet LeVoit, \"Women of the Night (1948),\" Turner Classic Movies (2013)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/720099/women-of-the-night-1948-women-of-the-night)\n5. [没後70年 映画監督 溝口健二, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/mizoguchi2026/)\n6. [Women of the Night (Yoru no Onnatachi), Museum of the Moving Image](https://movingimage.org/archived-events/women-of-the-night-yoru-no-onnatachi/)\n7. [Richard Brody, \"Women of the Night,\" The New Yorker (2014)](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/women-of-the-night)\n8. [国立映画アーカイブ所蔵映画フィルム検索システム: 夜の女たち](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=65200)\n9. [Dissertation, \"The Cinema of the Victim,\" Library and Archives Canada](https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/002/MR40592.PDF)\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 › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1940s*\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/women-of-the-night", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/women-of-the-night.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": "\"Women of the Night (夜の女たち)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/women-of-the-night. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Women of the Night (夜の女たち)](https://www.edgepedia.org/women-of-the-night)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/women-of-the-night](https://www.edgepedia.org/women-of-the-night). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Women of the Night (夜の女たち)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/women-of-the-night. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Women of the Night is Kenji Mizoguchi's 1948 Shochiku drama, his postwar comeback, about two sisters descending into prostitution in ruined Osaka, shot neorealist-style on location with Kinuyo Tanaka." }