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. ...

---

Plot Keywords:

prostitute | brothel | samurai | flood | rescue | 

---

Genres:

Romance | Drama

---

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

A beauty of truth.

The simple story of a timeless truth. A lovely Cinderella-type story. I highly reccomend watching this film with good friends and a bottle of wine. This is a quaint story about a brothel girl in constant throes of unrequetted love from her clients. This happens over and over until the climatic ending of the movie where she is trapped in the brothel by a deadly flood. I saw this movie in my Japanese class. That was the only reason I didn't let myself cry. You will really love this movie.