Flame of My Love (1949)

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, ... See full summary »

Director:

Kenji Mizoguchi

Writers:

Kôgo Noda (novel), Kaneto Shindô

Stars:

Kinuyo Tanaka, Mitsuko Mito, Kuniko Miyake

Cast

Credited cast:
Kinuyo Tanaka	...	Eiko Hirayama
Mitsuko Mito	...	Chiyo
Kuniko Miyake	...	Toshiko Kishida
Ichirô Sugai	...	Kentaro Omoi
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Shinobu Araki	...	Eiko's father
Zeya Chida
Eitarô Ozawa	...	Ryuzo Hayase
Sadako Sawamura
Koreya Senda	...	Prime Minister Inagki
Eijirô Tôno	...	State Councillor Ito

Storyline

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government. Eiko and Omoi are jailed because of a fire at a factory instigated by Chiyo, a servant girl from Eiko's home in Okayama, who was sold to slavery. A few years later the 1889 constitution is proclaimed, Eiko, Omoi, and Chiyo are pardoned, and the Liberal Party is reinaugurated. However Omoi does not campaign for women's rights.

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Plot Keywords:

liberal party | women's rights | servant | 1880s | mill | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Did You Know?

Connections

Referenced in Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (1975)

User Reviews

We Are Not Free Until Everyone Is

It's Japan in the 1880s. The Liberal Party is not what we think of as liberals today, but a group of lower-class radicals who want to replace the government by the powerful clans with a democratically elected body. Their leader is Ichirô Sugai and the government has forbidden meetings. That doesn't stop him. Neither does it stop Kinuyo Tanaka, a schoolteacher who heads off to Tokyo to work for Sugai, not anticipating prison, a marriage to Sugai and betrayal of her ideals. She believe that until women are equal with men, no one can be free.

Although Miss Tanaka endures hardships, it is Mitsuko Mito who suffers degradation. It is she who is sold by her parents to provide for her old age. It is she who is raped and beaten. It is she who seeks to be the servant of a man, any man, who promises to take care of her.

It's a feminist movie directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, as raw a political tract as any he directed. He would show degradation of the individual with Miss Tanaka in works life LIFE OF OHARU. In that one, it is an individual degradation that stands in for every woman. In this one, he shows how the political system of Japan works to degrade women, and how they must struggle to make a new Japan. the artful beauty of his films does not exist here. Instead, there is the pandemonium of the factories and women's prisons, where the men in charge beat and rape their charges, and the smug satisfaction of the newly enfranchised men, who feel that now that they have power, everything is fine... and nothing changes.

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

5 January 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

My Love Burns

Company Credits

Production Co:

Shochiku

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1