The Insect Woman (1963)

Synopsis: Director Shohei Imamura's THE INSECT WOMAN revisits several decades of Japanese history through the eyes of an impoverished country girl with a lot of pluck. Raped as a young woman and expected to sacrifice herself for her family, she eventually moves to Tokyo and suffers a series of triumphs... Director Shohei Imamura's THE INSECT WOMAN revisits several decades of Japanese history through the eyes of an impoverished country girl with a lot of pluck. Raped as a young woman and expected to sacrifice herself for her family, she eventually moves to Tokyo and suffers a series of triumphs and misfortunes as a prostitute. The film explodes the myth of the self-sacrificing Japanese woman, portrayed in films such as Mikio Naruse's FLOATING CLOUDS and Kenzo Mizoguchi's THE LIFE OF OHARU. Imamura's female protagonist is a lusty survivor who toils with the industry of an insect, like the violated women in his other films (PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS, INTENTIONS OF MURDER). Often compared to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN, the film presents its heroine's life along with important dates in postwar Japan, suggesting that an amoral center is at the heart of the country's economic miracle. At times seeming like a documentary, the film prefigures the documentaries Imamura later made focusing on prostitutes (A HISTORY OF POSTWAR JAPAN AS TOLD BY A BAR HOSTESS and KARAYUKI-SAN: THE MAKING OF A PROSTITUTE). [More]