The Sea Is Watching (2002)
"Umi wa miteita" (original title)

19th century. Oshin is a prostitute in a brothel of a red-light district. A disgraced samurai, Fusanosuke, rushes in the brothel seeking for a refuge, because he had wounded a powerful ... See full summary »

Director:

Kei Kumai

Writers:

Kei Kumai (screenplay), Akira Kurosawa (original screenplay),

Stars:

Misa Shimizu, Nagiko Tôno, Masatoshi Nagase

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Misa Shimizu	...	Kikuno
Nagiko Tôno	...	Oshin
Masatoshi Nagase	...	Ryôsuke
Hidetaka Yoshioka	...	Fusanosuke
Miho Tsumiki	...	Okichi
Michiko Kawai	...	Osono
Yumiko Nogawa	...	Omine
Tenshi Kamogawa	...	Umekichi
Yukiya Kitamura	...	Gonta
Takayuki Katô
Kumiko Tsuchiya	...	Prostitute
Rikiya Ôtaka	...	Boy
Renji Ishibashi	...	Zenbei
Eiji Okuda	...	Ginji
Teru Satô

Storyline

19th century. Oshin is a prostitute in a brothel of a red-light district. A disgraced samurai, Fusanosuke, rushes in the brothel seeking for a refuge, because he had wounded a powerful samurai. Oshin hides him from the authorities and falls in love with him, against an older prostitute's, Kikuno's, misgiving. Fusanosuke advises Oshin to cleanse herself by giving up her line of work. Believing falsely that this is a promise for marriage, she turns her customers over to the other prostitutes, who are happy to help her. Funasukoke leaves to be reconciled to his family, but, when he returns, he reveals that he is engaged and is going to marry his fiancé. Some time later a desperate itinerant, Ryosuke, appears and Oshin falls in love again. Meanwhile, an older man asks Kikuno to buy her contract and marry her, but she is entangled with an old abusive customer of hers. One night, while the madam of the brothel is away to thermal baths, a storm hits the area and everybody tries to flee. ...

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Plot Keywords:

prostitute | brothel | samurai | flood | rescue | 

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Genres:

Romance | Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some sexuality

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

27 July 2002 (Japan)

Also Known As:

The Sea Is Watching

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$161,588 (Japan) (9 August 2002)

Gross:

$1,094,874 (Japan) (9 August 2002)

Company Credits

Production Co:

AII, Japan Road Service, Maru

Technical Specs

Runtime:

119 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The literal translation of the title is "The Sea Was Watching".

User Reviews

I love this film

This has become one of my all time favorite films. The cinematography is beautiful; it has an interesting plot; I like the characters. I am not crazy about some of Akira Kurosawa's samurai flicks (he wrote this movie) but I adore this film. This is probably my favorite Japanese film. I highly recommend it. I don't think you have to know anything about Japanese culture either. I heard that one criticism of Kurosawa's works is that he doesn't have many roles for women and tends to focus on men. This film really shows his ability to write about women and create wonderful women characters. But the great thing is that it isn't just character development. There is a good plot also. Everyone should see this film