# Flame of My Love (わが恋は燃えぬ)
**Flame of My Love** (*わが恋は燃えぬ*, also written 我が恋は燃えぬ or 我が戀は燃えぬ) is a 1949 Japanese black-and-white drama film directed by [Kenji Mizoguchi](https://www.edgepedia.org/kenji-mizoguchi), produced by Shochiku's Kyoto studio, and running 84 minutes. It is the third of Mizoguchi's postwar "women's liberation trilogy" starring Kinuyo Tanaka, following *The Victory of Women* (1946) and *[The Love of the Actress Sumako](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-love-of-sumako-the-actress)* (1947), and dramatizes the life of the women's emancipation pioneer Hideko Fukuda (née Kageyama, 1865–1927) from her autobiography *Warawa no Hanseigai*.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) • [2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) • [3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | Preliminary showing 9 February 1949; general release 15 February 1949, distributed by Shochiku[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) |
| Format | 84 minutes, 35 mm black and white, sound film; print length 7,553.06 feet[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) |
| Series position | Third in Mizoguchi and Tanaka's postwar "women's liberation trilogy"[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) |
| Source | The autobiography *Warawa no Hanseigai* of Fukuda Hideko; original plan by Takizo Noda, screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda and Kaneto Shindo[3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/) |
| Lead cast | Kinuyo Tanaka as Hirayama Eiko; with Mito Mitsuko, Ozawa Eitaro, Sugai Ichiro, and others[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) |
| Historical setting | Meiji-era Freedom and People's Rights Movement, from 1885 in Okayama through the 1889 constitution amnesty and the first general election[3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/) • [2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) |
| Place in Mizoguchi's career | His last film for Shochiku; afterward he worked with Shintoho, Daiei, and Toho[4](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/mizoguchi2026/) |
## Spoilers
### Story
The film opens in Okayama in Meiji 17 (1885). Hirayama Eiko, raised in a feudal-minded old family, is stirred toward freedom by speeches of the [Freedom and People's Rights Movement](https://www.edgepedia.org/freedom-and-peoples-rights-movement) and follows her lover, the Freedom Party member Hayase Ryuzo (Ozawa Eitaro), to Tokyo.[3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/) • [2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) There she learns how difficult it is to live by the ideal of liberty under clique government (藩閥専制), and is stunned to discover that Hayase, who champions freedom in speech, is in fact a spy for that government.[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) • [7](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=27035)
She then places herself with Omoi Kentaro (Sugai Ichiro), a veteran Freedom Party fighter modeled on the real activist Oi Kentaro, who proclaims liberal ideals but is careless in his relations with women.[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) • [8](https://filmarks.com/movies/22730/reviews/205741548) When the Chichibu silk factory incident erupts, with exploited women workers and their impoverished farmer parents rising against oppression, Omoi and Eiko rush to support them. That night the factory burns, and Omoi, Eiko, and Chiyoda (Mito Mitsuko), a factory worker who set the fire, are imprisoned as political offenders.[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/)
Chiyoda had been born a tenant farmer's daughter in Okayama and sold far away to the factory; in the same prison Eiko shields her and comes to know women's powerlessness.[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) In Meiji 22 (1889) the constitution is promulgated, and Omoi, Eiko, and Chiyoda are freed in the accompanying amnesty.[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) Omoi, standing for the first general election, leaves for Osaka, the center of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, with Eiko and Chiyoda accompanying him, and their life together begins.[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) When Omoi wins his Diet seat, Eiko, seeing his male-centered conduct, breaks with him and returns to her home region.[9](https://eiga.com/movie/40219/review/02658017/)
## Production and personnel
The film was produced by Hisao Itoya, with Kohei Sugiyama as cinematographer, Hiroshi Mizutani as art director, and Senji Ito as composer, performed by the Shochiku Kyoto Orchestra.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) The title theme song, "わが恋は燃えぬ," had lyrics by Kikutaro Takahashi, music by Gento Uehara, and was sung by Ken Tsumura, with Tanaka Kinuyo credited with the recitation; a second theme, "愛の灯," was composed by Ito Senji.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855)
The screenplay credits divide differently between sources. Shochiku's database and the film records list Tadao Ikeda's plan (原案) by **Takizo Noda** with scripts by Yoshikata Yoda and Kaneto Shindo.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) • [2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) A later testimony by Yoda reported by one viewer holds that Shindo wrote the script and Yoda only advised.[5](https://filmarks.com/movies/22730)
The Nara prefecture tourism film database lists the **Nara Juvenile Prison** as a location connected with the production.[6](https://yamatoji.nara-kankou.or.jp/020movie/M000000032/)
## Historical subject and adaptation
The film's protagonist is a fiction, Hirayama Eiko, standing in for the real **Hideko Fukuda** (1865–1927), a social reformer of the Meiji and Taisho eras who struggled for women's emancipation and was described by one contemporary account as a "Joan of Arc of the East."[2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/) • [10](https://hawkrose.hatenablog.com/entry/15781991) The film draws on her autobiography *Warawa no Hanseigai* (published 1904), which had been reissued in 1949 by the publishers Sumiya and Itoya; Itoya Hisao is credited as the film's producer, and Mizoguchi himself described the work as "a biography of Kageyama Hideko."[11](https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/reference/show?asc=desc&dtltbs=1&fi=2_2&id=1000165657&ldtl=1&mcmd=25&ndc1=77&ndc_lk=1&page=ref_view&pg=4&st=update&type=reference) • [1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) • [2](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/)
The [National Film Archive](https://www.edgepedia.org/national-film-archive)'s program note summarizes the arc as the growth of Eiko, who in 1885 was moved by the movement's speeches in her home Okayama and went to [Tokyo](https://www.edgepedia.org/tokyo-ep6jg0kyrw), through her encounters and partings with the lover who sank into being a government spy and with a new partner, the Freedom Party fighter played by Sugai.[3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/)
## Critical reception
The film was not well received on release. A survey of the reception history records that the dominant evaluation held that the film failed in shaping its heroine as a convincing "modern woman," and that Mizoguchi's postwar sequence of democracy-enlightenment films, the so-called women's liberation trilogy, was never highly rated at the time; reevaluation of these buried works began from the 1998 centenary of Mizoguchi's birth, after which the film came to be highly regarded as a "feminist" film.[12](https://tsukuba.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/28483/files/6.pdf) • [13](https://jscs.exblog.jp/page/11/)
Later assessments remain divided. The Japanese film scholar Hiroshi Komatsu's overview notes that after the war Mizoguchi, working closely with Kinuyo Tanaka, released films infused with postwar democratic currents, including this one, during a period of confusion that lasted long.[14](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/person.aspx?person_id=115553) An eiga.com reviewer called it a serious effort on an interesting subject, a woman active in the Meiji Freedom and People's Rights Movement, but unfinished as a Mizoguchi film.[15](https://eiga.com/movie/40219/review/spoiler/) A 2015 labor film screening program presented it as fiction based on Fukuda's 1904 autobiography.[16](https://hatarakubunka-net.hateblo.jp/entry/20150410/1428651846) On aggregate sites it scores 3.5 on Filmarks, 7.3 on IMDb, and 68.3 points (of 100) averaged over 22 users on Kinenote.[17](https://eiga-pop.com/movie/36960/) • [7](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=27035)
## Place in Mizoguchi's career
The film closed Mizoguchi's long association with Shochiku: having made *My Love Burns* in 1949, he left the studio and worked thereafter with Shintoho, Daiei, and Toho, a stretch in which he met with neither commercial nor critical success until *[The Life of Oharu](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-life-of-oharu)* (1952) won an international prize at the 13th Venice International Film Festival and his later works brought him world fame.[4](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/mizoguchi2026/) The National Film Archive holds a 35 mm black-and-white release print of the film and has screened it, including in its 2018 program "Meiji Japan in Film."[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855) • [3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/)
## References
1. [我が戀は燃えぬ, National Film Archive of Japan film collection search system](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=11855)
2. [わが恋は燃えぬ, Shochiku film database](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/02517/)
3. [映画にみる明治の日本-14 我が戀は燃えぬ, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/meiji-201804-14/)
4. [没後70年 映画監督 溝口健二, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/exhibition/mizoguchi2026/)
5. [わが恋は燃えぬの作品情報・感想・評価, Filmarks映画](https://filmarks.com/movies/22730)
6. [わが恋は燃えぬ, 奈良県観光 映画情報](https://yamatoji.nara-kankou.or.jp/020movie/M000000032/)
7. [わが恋は燃えぬ, KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=27035)
8. [わが恋は燃えぬのacoの映画レビュー, Filmarks映画](https://filmarks.com/movies/22730/reviews/205741548)
9. [わが恋は燃えぬ Gustavさんの映画レビュー, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/40219/review/02658017/)
10. [映画日記2018年2月28日～3月1日, 人生は野菜スープ](https://hawkrose.hatenablog.com/entry/15781991)
11. [昭和20年代に作られた映画で、福田英子についての映画を探している, レファレンス協同データベース](https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/reference/show?asc=desc&dtltbs=1&fi=2_2&id=1000165657&ldtl=1&mcmd=25&ndc1=77&ndc_lk=1&page=ref_view&pg=4&st=update&type=reference)
12. [占領, 筑波大学Repository](https://tsukuba.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/28483/files/6.pdf)
13. [日本映画学会 公式ブログ](https://jscs.exblog.jp/page/11/)
14. [溝口健二 略歴・フィルモグラフィー, KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/person.aspx?person_id=115553)
15. [わが恋は燃えぬのレビュー・感想・評価, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/40219/review/spoiler/)
16. [労働映画鑑賞会「我が戀は燃えぬ」が終了しました, 働く文化ネット](https://hatarakubunka-net.hateblo.jp/entry/20150410/1428651846)
17. [わが恋は燃えぬ, 映画ポップコーン](https://eiga-pop.com/movie/36960/)
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*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*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license