General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (残菊物語)

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (残菊物語, Zangiku Monogatari) is a 1939 Japanese black-and-white drama film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, produced by Shochiku's Kyoto studio and released on October 13, 1939¹^•². Adapted by Yoshikata Yoda and Matsutaro Kawaguchi from a novel by Shofu Muramatsu about the life of the kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke II, it follows a four-year romance across class lines between a young actor and a household servant³^•⁴^•⁵. The film is regarded as the first full maturity of Mizoguchi's signature long-take style and won the first Education Minister's Award in Japan's Excellent Film Selection⁶^•⁷.

Key fact	Detail
Director	Kenji Mizoguchi (1898–1956)¹^•⁸
Production	Shochiku (Kyoto), 1939; 35 mm, black and white, sound film (density track)¹
Release	October 13, 1939 (Shochiku's database; JFDB lists October 10)²^•³
Running time	143 minutes per Shochiku, the National Film Archive of Japan, and Criterion; other databases give 142, 144, 147, or 148 minutes²^•³^•⁶
Source	Novel by Shofu Muramatsu about the kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke II⁴
Principal cast	Shotaro Hanayagi (Kikunosuke), Kakuko Mori (Otoku), Kokichi Takada, Gonjuro Kawarazaki⁶
Honors	First Education Minister's Award in the Excellent Film Selection⁷
Later versions	Remade in 1956 (Daiei, directed by Ko Sekiguchi) and 1963 (directed by Hideo Ōba)⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Kikunosuke, the adopted son of the legendary kabuki actor Kikugoro Onoe V and himself a performer of female roles, is praised publicly by everyone around him but secretly mocked as a poor actor who never rehearses²^•⁶. Otoku, the wet nurse of his infant stepbrother, is the only person willing to tell him the truth; moved by her forthrightness, he falls in love with her². In the feudal society of the 1880s, the relationship draws persecution from the women of the household, and Otoku is dismissed. Kikunosuke defies his adoptive father and leaves home, and the two live in poverty on the provincial touring circuit, with Otoku supporting him²^•⁹.

Kikunosuke's art eventually improves to the point that his father's circle recognizes it, and he rises in the theater world; the condition is that Otoku must leave him². Their reunion comes only at her deathbed¹⁰. Shochiku's synopsis notes that the story develops as Kikunosuke's rebellion against his adoptive father, sustained by Otoku through the years of itinerant life².

Production background

Mizoguchi came to Shochiku's Shimogamo studio in Kyoto in 1939, after passing through Nikkatsu, Daiichi Film, and Shinko Kinema⁷. The film was a literary adaptation: Shochiku's database describes Muramatsu's original as a "documentary-style novel" based on the life of the kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke II²^•⁴. Yoshikata Yoda wrote the screenplay, and Matsutaro Kawaguchi was credited with the adaptation³. The archive record credits Shigeto Miki and Yozo Fuji with cinematography and Hiroshi Mizutani as art director; Mizutani designed sets for many of Mizoguchi's films into the postwar era¹^•³. Shintaro Shirai produced³.

Style and significance

The long-take style. Shochiku's database states that Mizoguchi completed his one-scene-one-take method with this film². The National Film Archive of Japan calls it the work in which Mizoguchi's signature long takes achieved their full maturity, with kabuki stage scenes of unusual depth and dynamism and a finale of visual grandeur⁵. The British Film Institute's critic Tony Rayns wrote that the film shows Mizoguchi already the master of unbroken camera movements and intricately organized staging, and singles out a celebrated traveling shot following Kikunosuke and Otoku walking home late at night¹¹. Film scholar Donald Kirihara, author of Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s, recorded that Mizoguchi himself regarded the film as a creative turning point in his career, and noted that few of his films reach more clearly for antecedents in Japanese tradition: the kabuki performance scenes are shot from a fixed camera at the perspective of a theater audience, recalling early Japanese cinema¹²^•¹³.

Theme. Criterion describes the film as a critique of the oppression of women and the sacrifices required of them, set behind the scenes of kabuki theater in the late nineteenth century⁶. The critic Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker that Mizoguchi raises his vision of Japan's subjugation of women to the heights of tragedy⁹. The Japanese Film Archives project presented the film as the Mizoguchi work that best expresses "the strength of the spirit of Japanese women," a theme the director pursued throughout his life¹⁴.

Place in Mizoguchi's career

The National Film Archive of Japan identifies the film as the only surviving entry in Mizoguchi's "performing arts trilogy" about the theater world⁵. It was made during the period in which Mizoguchi, working at Shochiku, became a leading figure in Japanese film; the archive's 2026 exhibition catalog names it, alongside The 47 Ronin (1941–42), as proof of that standing⁸. Mizoguchi is often grouped with Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu as one of Japan's three most important filmmakers, and the film marks the point at which the long takes and camera movements of his postwar international successes, such as Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), first fully appear⁶.

Reception and preservation

The film received the first Education Minister's Award in the Excellent Film Selection, a recognition highlighted in Shochiku's own production history⁷. The BFI's list of a great Japanese film for every year from 1925 onward selects it for 1939, calling it Mizoguchi's most precious prewar film and one of his masterpieces¹⁵. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 94 percent Tomatometer score from 18 reviews¹⁰.

The National Film Archive of Japan holds a 1939 screening positive of 12,856 feet¹. A digital restoration, listed at 142 minutes on DCP, has circulated in archive programs, with prints provided by Shochiku⁵. The Criterion Collection issued the film on Blu-ray with a restored 4K digital transfer, and around that release the film received its first American theatrical premiere run⁶^•¹⁶.

Remakes

Muramatsu's story was filmed twice more in Japan: a 1956 Daiei version directed by Ko Sekiguchi and a 1963 version directed by Hideo Ōba⁴. Shochiku's database records the 1963 film, with Mariko Okada as Otoku, as a re-adaptation of the same original novel¹⁷.

References

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