# The Water Magician (瀧の白糸) (1933 film)
**The Water Magician** (瀧の白糸, *Taki no Shiraito*, literally "White Threads of the Waterfall") is a 1933 Japanese silent drama film directed by [Kenji Mizoguchi](https://www.edgepedia.org/kenji-mizoguchi), produced by Irie Production, and distributed by Shinko Kinema.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=20431) It adapts Izumi Kyōka's 1894 story *Giketsu Kyōketsu* (義血侠血, "Loyal Blood, Heroic Blood") and stars Takako Irie as a water-magic performer who sacrifices everything to fund the legal education of the man she loves.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1933_n.html) • [3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html) It was released on 1 June 1933.[4](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/130445)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / studio | Kenji Mizoguchi; produced by Irie Production, distributed by Shinko Kinema[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=20431) |
| Release | 1 June 1933, Japan[4](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/130445) |
| Source | Izumi Kyōka's 1894 story *Giketsu Kyōketsu* (義血侠血)[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1933_n.html) |
| Format | Silent, black and white, 35 mm, 1.33:1[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=20431) • [3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html) |
| Leads | Takako Irie as Tomo, the water artiste Taki no Shiraito; Tokihiko Okada as Kinya Murakoshi[3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html) |
| Running time | Reported as 96, 98, 101, or 102 minutes depending on the print; a 2006 restoration runs 102 minutes and a 2025 digital restoration 122 minutes[4](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/130445) • [5](https://artofthebenshi.org/media/pages/press-resources/42ec5f49ee-1706815928/art-of-the-benshi-2024-programs-and-short-film-notes.pdf) • [6](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/film-program/tiff-nfaj202610/) |
| Survival | An incomplete 16 mm reduction positive exists, with fragments missing; the film was restored in 2006[3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html) • [5](https://artofthebenshi.org/media/pages/press-resources/42ec5f49ee-1706815928/art-of-the-benshi-2024-programs-and-short-film-notes.pdf) |
| Contemporary standing | Ranked 2nd by *Kinema Junpō* for 1933[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1933_n.html) |
## Spoilers
### Story
Tomo, a touring water-magic performer known as Taki no Shiraito, meets the poor carriage driver Kinya Murakoshi in Kanazawa and falls in love with him. Learning that he aspires to study law, she promises to support him financially and sends him to Tokyo.[9](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/index.php/document/detail-work/323) Two years later, in a winter season when water magic no longer draws crowds, her troupe falls into hardship; when she learns that the troupe member Nadeshiko is about to be sold to the usurer Iwabuchi, she spends the troupe's money to let Nadeshiko elope with her lover, leaving Tomo destitute.[9](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/index.php/document/detail-work/323) She then borrows from the usurer Iwabuchi (played by Ichirō Sugai), and as her situation grows ever more hopeless, events escalate toward tragedy.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1933_n.html) • [10](https://db.nipponconnection.com/ja/film/2605/n-a)
The Silent Era cast list gives the full character names: Takako Irie as Tomo Mizushima, also known as Taki no Shiraito; Tokihiko Okada as Kinya Murakoshi; Ichirō Sugai as the usurer Gozō Iwabuchi; Bontarō Miake as Shinzō; Kumeko Urabe as Ogin; and Suzuko Taki as Nadeshiko, among others.[3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html)
## Production
The film was made by Irie Production, the company founded by its star, Takako Irie, a leading Japanese actress of the 1930s.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=20431) • [7](https://csw.ucla.edu/2017/05/24/silenced-voice-modern-girl-mizoguchi-kenjis-water-magician-examining-role-women-early-japanese-cinema/) The scenario was credited to Yasunaga Higashibōjō, Kennosuke Tateoka, Shinji Masuda, and Takuaki Seiryō, with cinematography by Shigeru Miki and film editing by Tazuko Sakane.[2](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1933_n.html) • [3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html) The water-magic performance itself was coached by the stage magician Tenkatsu Shōkyokusai, credited as 水藝指導 (aquatic-effects advisor) in the NFAJ record.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=20431)
That a major production was still silent in 1933 reflects conditions in the Japanese industry: the benshi, the live narrators who voiced silent films, were so popular that audiences often went to see a favorite benshi rather than a favorite star, and their fame and power within the industry delayed the coming of sound in Japan.[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician)
## Style and significance
The film is widely treated as the point where Mizoguchi's own cinema begins. Writing in *Sight and Sound*, the scholar Alexander Jacoby, a British researcher of Japanese film, called it the fourth of Mizoguchi's films to survive but the first that really feels like his own, quoting Mark LeFanu's description of it as the first film "in which one can properly see the Mizoguchian world-view in all its unpolished purity and bleakness."[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician) The same account notes high-angle shots and sweeping camera movements that lend the melodrama a distinctly modern dynamism, and early signs of the fluent long take that later earned Mizoguchi the admiration of Western critics such as André Bazin.[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician) • [5](https://artofthebenshi.org/media/pages/press-resources/42ec5f49ee-1706815928/art-of-the-benshi-2024-programs-and-short-film-notes.pdf)
**A recurring theme.** The story of a strong woman who sacrifices herself for a weaker man recurred in Mizoguchi's later work in *[The Downfall of Osen](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-downfall-of-osen)* (1935) and *The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums* (1939).[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician) The film scholar Wakako Suzuki, writing for UCLA's Center for the Study of Women, argues that Irie's performance synthesizes the image of the emancipated "modern girl" she embodied offscreen with that of a sacrificial woman acting with honor and benevolence, and that the film goes beyond the traditional shinjū (lovers' double suicide) motif of Kyōka's source by exploring the inner voice of a woman living on the social periphery.[7](https://csw.ucla.edu/2017/05/24/silenced-voice-modern-girl-mizoguchi-kenjis-water-magician-examining-role-women-early-japanese-cinema/)
## Survival and restoration
Most of Mizoguchi's silent output is lost; of his roughly 90 films, 57 are lost and 33 survive.[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician) • [11](https://www.ycam.jp/cinema/2007/series-on-reading-film-history-7/) *The Water Magician* survives in incomplete form: the Silent Era database records a 16 mm reduction positive with fragments missing.[3](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html) The benshi of a later generation played an important role in the film's 2006 restoration, and restored versions have circulated since at different lengths, including a 98-minute Matsuda Film print, a 101-minute "longest version," and a 102-minute DCP.[5](https://artofthebenshi.org/media/pages/press-resources/42ec5f49ee-1706815928/art-of-the-benshi-2024-programs-and-short-film-notes.pdf) • [12](https://www.matsudafilm.com/matsuda/e_pages/e_d_3j.html) • [13](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/filmlist_4.pdf) A new digital restoration, running 122 minutes, was produced with the cooperation of the Yanai Initiative, a [Waseda University](https://www.edgepedia.org/waseda-university) and UCLA collaboration, and received its first Japanese screening in the TIFF/NFAJ Classics Mizoguchi retrospective.[6](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/film-program/tiff-nfaj202610/)
Restored screenings often revive the film's original presentation practice: at festivals such as Nippon Connection and the Barbican in London, it has been shown with live benshi narration, in one case by the narrator Ichirō Kataoka with piano accompaniment by Günter A. Buchwald.[10](https://db.nipponconnection.com/ja/film/2605/n-a) • [8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician)
## Related versions
The title has been adapted more than once. A 1937 sound version was directed by Gorō Hirose for Makino Talkie, with Mitsue Hisamatsu in the title role and [Takashi Shimura](https://www.edgepedia.org/takashi-shimura) among the cast.[14](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=49083&mode=0&op=AND) A 1952 film directed by Chōji Nozawa is also based on Kyōka's work.[15](https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/reference/show?asc=desc&fi=8_21+2_9+5_%E5%85%A8%E5%B9%B4%E9%BD%A2%2C%2520%E9%AB%98%E6%A0%A1%E7%94%9F%2C%2520%E4%B8%AD%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F&id=1000032235&lsmp=1&mcmd=25&page=ref_view&rnk=1&st=ref_cnt_all) Kyōka's story had earlier been staged as a shinpa play, first performed by Ichiro Kawakami's company in 1895.[8](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician) • [15](https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/reference/show?asc=desc&fi=8_21+2_9+5_%E5%85%A8%E5%B9%B4%E9%BD%A2%2C%2520%E9%AB%98%E6%A0%A1%E7%94%9F%2C%2520%E4%B8%AD%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F&id=1000032235&lsmp=1&mcmd=25&page=ref_view&rnk=1&st=ref_cnt_all)
## References
1. [瀧の白糸, National Film Archive of Japan film collection database](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=20431)
2. [日本映画レビュー──1933年: 瀧の白糸](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1933_n.html)
3. [Taki no shiraito (1933), Progressive Silent Film List, Silent Era](https://silentera.com/PSFL/data/T/TakiNoShiraito1933.html)
4. [瀧の白糸（1933）, allcinema](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/130445)
5. [The Water Magician (Taki no shiraito), Japan, 1933, Art of the Benshi program notes](https://artofthebenshi.org/media/pages/press-resources/42ec5f49ee-1706815928/art-of-the-benshi-2024-programs-and-short-film-notes.pdf)
6. [TIFF/NFAJ クラシックス 映画監督 溝口健二, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/film-program/tiff-nfaj202610/)
7. [Wakako Suzuki, The Silenced Voice of the Modern Girl in Mizoguchi Kenji's The Water Magician, UCLA Center for the Study of Women (2017)](https://csw.ucla.edu/2017/05/24/silenced-voice-modern-girl-mizoguchi-kenjis-water-magician-examining-role-women-early-japanese-cinema/)
8. [Alexander Jacoby, Mizoguchi's The Water Magician, Sight and Sound, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/mizoguchis-water-magician)
9. [瀧の白糸, Musashino Art University Museum & Library image library database](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/index.php/document/detail-work/323)
10. [瀧の白糸, Nippon Connection film database](https://db.nipponconnection.com/ja/film/2605/n-a)
11. [溝口健二監督特集, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM)](https://www.ycam.jp/cinema/2007/series-on-reading-film-history-7/)
12. [《没後50年「溝口健二」特別企画》, Matsuda Film](https://www.matsudafilm.com/matsuda/e_pages/e_d_3j.html)
13. [NFAJ Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective film list (PDF)](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/filmlist_4.pdf)
14. [瀧の白糸 (1937), National Film Archive of Japan film collection database](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=49083&mode=0&op=AND)
15. [「瀧の白糸」という舞台や映画がある。原作となった小説を読みたい。, レファレンス協同データベース, Okayama Prefectural Library](https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/reference/show?asc=desc&fi=8_21+2_9+5_%E5%85%A8%E5%B9%B4%E9%BD%A2%2C%2520%E9%AB%98%E6%A0%A1%E7%94%9F%2C%2520%E4%B8%AD%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F&id=1000032235&lsmp=1&mcmd=25&page=ref_view&rnk=1&st=ref_cnt_all)
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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 › Early and silent cinema › Silent feature films › Released 1927 to 2012*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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