First of Several Japanese Classics

#28: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

This 1960 classic from Japanese director Mikio Naruse feels like a strange amalgamation of Italian Neorealism and pre-war American melodrama. Neorealist in its cinematography, melodramatic in its characterizations, Naruse's film focuses on Keiko, a young widow turned aging "bar girl" in post-war Tokyo, as she realizes that her days of cajoling businessmen into spending their evenings drinking are numbered. Her future is either to marry or to buy a bar of her own. Neither seems to be in her cards.

The bar girl culture is depicted as something between dating and prostitution: more overtly commercial than dating but not as straightforward as prostitution. Businessmen follow the girls from bar to bar where the women work as something like independent contractors. Their welcome is dependent on their ability to attract men, which depends on their fulfilling some chaste fantasy (sex was apparently career suicide) for these men, who, in turn, spend substantial resources on drinks and gifts. Clearly a young woman's game, Keiko finds herself losing both clientele and interest.

The bulk of the movie consists of Keiko wandering through her life encountering a number of archetypal Japanese men as she struggles to make a living and a future. Women in this film are more nuanced and better characterized but only Keiko is depicted as fully human. Laden with worry, responsibility, and feckless men Keiko emerges as strong and noble, even as her problems are not resolved with any sort of happy ending.

Proto-feminist in its sensibilities and with a remarkable cast, this film is definitely a gem of Japanese cinema.