Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935)
"Tsuma yo bara no yo ni" (original title)

Tokyo salary girl lives with very serious bluestocking haiku writing mother. Salary girl seeks to marry the attendant dish but needs absent father to act as go-between... See full synopsis »

Director:

Mikio Naruse

Writers:

Minoru Nakano (play), Mikio Naruse (adaptation)

Stars:

Sachiko Chiba, Yuriko Hanabusa, Sadao Maruyama

1 win.

Cast

Credited cast:
Sachiko Chiba	...	Kimiko Yamamoto
Yuriko Hanabusa	...	Oyuki
Sadao Maruyama	...	Shunsaku - Kimiko's father
Toshiko Itô	...	Etsuko - Kimiko's mother
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Kamatari Fujiwara	...	Shingo - Etsuko's brother
Setsuko Horikoshi	...	Shizuko - Oyuki's daughter
Chikako Hosokawa	...	Shingo's wife
Kaoru Itô	...	Kenichi - Oyuki's son
Heihachirô Ôkawa	...	Seiji - Kimiko's boyfriend

Storyline

Tokyo salary girl lives with very serious bluestocking haiku writing mother. Salary girl seeks to marry the attendant dish but needs absent father to act as go-between... See full synopsis »

---

Plot Keywords:

based on play

---

Genres:

Drama

---

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

12 April 1937 (USA)

Also Known As:

Kimiko

Company Credits

Production Co:

Sony PCL

Technical Specs

Runtime:

74 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This was possibly the first fictional feature film from Japan to be distributed in the United States, under the name "Wife, Be Like a Rose!"

---

Connections

Remade as Koi ni mezameru koro (1969)

User Reviews

Two Loves, a Child and a Parent

This is a tender love story taking place about the time when the Japanese war machine was raping Nanking (Nanjing), enslaving Korean women, attacking the Philippines, and preparing to bomb Australia and America. These contrasts are startling as is the contrast that is in the lesson of the film. Naruse-san teaches us once again that the truth about a person resides not in the words and inferences spoken, rather in direct observation and understanding. Here we have a young women approaching the age of independence being raised by her mother who continually painted the absent father as an unfaithful woman chaser living with a woman of ill repute. The daughter wants to actually meet her father and she wonders why he left her and her mother. She trains to the remote village where the father lives with the infamous lady.

The actual meeting, first when the father and daughter view each other from a distance is the perfect technique Naruse-san used in other films, to the actual polite, respectful way the Japanese greet each other, is quite emotional and the viewer senses the love each has for the other, bridging the years of separation.

The daughter is quite surprised to learn that the so-called infamous woman is simply a very plain and loving farm lady with no special beauty nor male allure. She quite simply loves the man she lives with; she is a marvelous rose, something the man's wife was not.

As far as I know, the film is not available on DVD. I wish it were.