Metrograph

Demure country girl Chiyo (Sachiko Chiba) travels to Tokyo in the hopes of securing an office job through her hometown friend Hisako, only to find the latter working as a bar hostess in the seedy Shiba ward. Moving into a dingy upstairs room, Chiyo searches classifieds by day while observing the tedious routines and sardonic humors of Hisako and her fellow hostesses by night. Marking Naruse’s third collaboration with glamorous star Chiba, whom he would marry a year later, and coming off the breakthrough success of his first year at rising studio PCL (forerunner of Toho), this boldly stylized prewar drama, scripted by the director himself, pushes the limits of narrative form, toggling unsettlingly between realism and expressionist fantasy in its depiction of the splintering subjectivity of a romantic young woman faced with the sordid facts of urban life.

Print courtesy the National Film Archive of Japan

Introduction by Alexander Fee, Film Programmer at Japan Society, on Saturday, June 21st