General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Crucified Lovers (近松物語)

The Crucified Lovers (近松物語, Chikamatsu Monogatari, literally "A Story from Chikamatsu") is a 1954 Japanese black-and-white drama film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, adapted from a play by the Edo-period dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon. It tells of a Kyoto scroll maker's wife and his apprentice who are falsely accused of adultery, flee together, and discover genuine love only on the run, knowing that the punishment awaiting them is death.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	近松物語 (Chikamatsu Monogatari); English titles include A Story from Chikamatsu and The Crucified Lovers³
Release	November 23, 1954; 102 minutes; monochrome; standard 1.37:1¹
Production	Daiei (Kyoto); produced by Masaichi Nagata¹
Source	Chikamatsu Monzaemon's 1715 play Daikyōji Mukashi Goyomi (大経師昔暦), dramatized for the screen by Matsutaro Kawaguchi as "Osan Mohei" and scripted by Yoshikata Yoda³^•²
Principal cast	Kazuo Hasegawa (Mohei), Kyoko Kagawa (Osan), Yoko Minamida (Otama), Eitaro Shindo (Ishun)¹^•³
Key crew	Cinematography Kazuo Miyagawa; art direction Hiroshi Mizutani; music Fumio Hayasaka¹
Festival history	1955 Cannes Film Festival; 2017 Venice Film Festival, Venice Classics (4K restored version)¹

Spoilers

Story

The action is set in 17th-century Kyoto. Osan, the young wife of the wealthy scroll maker Ishun, asks the household's best worker, the apprentice Mohei, for money to help her impoverished family; through a chain of misunderstandings the two are accused by those around them of illicit adultery.¹^•⁵ They flee the city, and during the flight they come to recognize their true love for each other.¹ Ishun orders his men to find the pair and separate them to avoid public humiliation.⁶ Caught and brought back, the lovers are paraded to execution; onlookers remark on how serene and happy they look.¹

The English title points to the punishment that hangs over the story from the start: crucifixion is glimpsed at the film's opening as the penalty meted out to adulterers, and it lingers over the whole narrative.² Critics have read the film as an indictment of the class hierarchy and patriarchal order that drive the two to their deaths; the JFDB synopsis notes that the social forces pressing on the couple, class difference and patriarchy among them, still resonate today.¹^•²

Source and production

The film adapts Daikyōji Mukashi Goyomi, a play Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725) wrote in 1715 for the bunraku (Japanese puppet theater for which Chikamatsu wrote plays) puppet theater, later also staged as kabuki.²^•⁴ Chikamatsu was the master playwright of the bunraku doll theater, and his name appears in the film's Japanese title.⁴ The National Film Archive of Japan's records list the intermediate stage as well: a dramatization by Matsutaro Kawaguchi, "Osan Mohei", published in Ōru Yomimono, with the final screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda.³

The picture was produced at Daiei's Kyoto studio, with Masaichi Nagata as producer and Mohei Wakao listed among the crew as planning (企画) by Kyuichi Tsuji.¹^•³ It belongs to the run of late-career Mizoguchi films of the first half of the 1950s that includes The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953), and Sansho the Bailiff (1954); Mizoguchi had won the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion three years running with The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, and Sansho the Bailiff before his death in August 1956 at age 58.⁵

Cinematography and style

Kazuo Miyagawa, Mizoguchi's frequent collaborator, shot the film, and the National Film Archive of Japan records that the 8th (1954) Japan Film Technique Award went to Miyagawa's cinematography and Kenji Okamoto's lighting, the former praised for "accurately expressing the drama's content and fully answering the direction's demands" and the latter for showing "cleanliness, dignity, and a modern sensibility".⁷ The film is dense with interior and night scenes, and Miyagawa's photography of the lovers against the glistening surface of a lake is singled out in the JFDB synopsis.⁷^•¹

Mizoguchi's period films place characters who attempt rebellion or flight within rigid social strata; The Crucified Lovers is his lovers-on-the-run film, and its first forty minutes move through mistaken identities, class swapping, and shifting devotions before the tragedy closes in.⁸

Reception and restoration

The film was presented at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, and after Cannes it was immediately championed by French observers including Jean-Luc Godard and Georges Sadoul.¹^•⁹ Akira Kurosawa hailed it as "a great masterpiece that could only have been made by Mizoguchi".¹⁰ The Harvard Film Archive describes it as one of Mizoguchi's lesser-known masterpieces in the United States, its intensity compared to film noir in contrast with the Buddhist detachment of his Princess Yang Kwei Fei.⁹

Kadokawa Corporation and The Film Foundation produced a 4K restoration at Cineric, Inc. in New York, with Audio Mechanics handling the sound and The Japan Foundation assisting; it screened in the Venice Classics section at the 2017 Venice Film Festival.¹^•¹⁰ The Criterion Collection issued the film on home video under the title A Story from Chikamatsu.¹⁰

References

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) › Historical dramas and epics › Titles symbols to L › Titles 1 to Em

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?