is a 1930 Japanese silent film directed by Shigeyoshi Suzuki. It was the top-grossing Japanese film of the silent era. Notable as an example of the

tendency film was a genre of socially conscious, left-leaning films produced in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. Tendency films reflected a perceived leftward shift in Japanese society in the aftermath of the 1927 Shōwa financial crisis. Notable examples o ...

genre, it reportedly caused a riot upon its showing in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

's Asakusa district.

Plot

The plot centers on a schoolgirl, Sumiko, who has been sent to live with her uncle. Arriving to a harried household with many children, her aunt and alcoholic uncle are annoyed by her arrival. A note, which Sumiko cannot read, announces that her father has killed himself. After being denied schooling and placed into labor for the family, Sumiko is eventually sold to a circus where she suffers at the hands of its members and ringmaster. Sumiko escapes with another circus performer, Shintaro, but Sumiko joins a team of thieves and ends up arrested. She is given work in the home of a wealthy aristocratic family, who denies even the simplest of pleasures to their staff out of cruelty. She is sent to a Christian orphanage, where she is humiliated for writing a letter to an old friend, and must make a public speech renouncing her ways and accepting Christ into her heart. Given the opportunity, Sumiko instead denounces the church, and ends up burning it down.

Cast

* Keiko Takatsu as Sumiko * Rintarō Fujima as Hiroshi Hasegawa * Ryuujin Unno as Shintarō * Yōyō Kojima * Hidekatsu Maki * Itaru Hamada * Takashi Asano * Saburō Ōno

Production and reception

After the commercial success of other tendency films such as

Tomu Uchida , born Tsunejirō Uchida, was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. Uchida chose the stage name Tomu, a transliteration of the English Tom, written in Kanji characters meaning "to spit out dreams". Biography Early career After leaving junio ...

's ''A Living Puppet'' and

Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese filmmaker who directed roughly one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include '' The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), '' The Life of Oharu'' (1952), '' Ugetsu'' (1953), and ' ...

's ''Metropolitan Symphony'' (both 1929), produced by the

Nikkatsu is a Japanese film studio located in Bunkyō. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Motion Pictures". Shareholders are Nippon Television Holdings (35%) and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation (28.4%). ...

studio, the entertainment-oriented Teikine (Teikoku Kinema Engei) studio produced ''What Made Her Do It?'', introducing "vulgar elements" (Geoffrey Nowell-Smith) aimed at the audience to the story, thus lightening its social criticism. The film was an enormous commercial success, with press reports of riots following its showing in

's Asakusa district. In his 2005 book ''A Hundred Years of Japanese Film'', film historian

Donald Richie Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) was an American-born author who wrote about the Japanese people, the culture of Japan, and especially Japanese cinema. Although he considered himself primarily a film historian, Richie also ...

titled the film "a

melodramatic A melodrama is a dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on dialo ...

potboiler", at the same time acknowledging it for being "also extraordinarily film literate".

Restoration

The film, thought to be lost after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, was restored in 1997 from an incomplete print found in the Russian

Gosfilmofond Gosfilmofond is a state film archive in Russia. It is the main film archive of the Russian Federation and a member of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). It is a state cultural institution — curator of films collection and ot ...

archive in 1994. The restoration, under supervision of Yoneo Ōta, replaced missing scenes at start and finish of the film with title cards.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title 1930s rediscovered films Rediscovered Japanese films 1930 drama films 1930s Japanese films Japanese black-and-white films Japanese silent films Japanese drama films Japanese political films