Chibusa yo eien nare

Released in 1955 this Japanese feature film was directed by famed actress Kinuyo Tanaka, and is based on the real life story of female poet Fumiko Nakajo. Mother of two Fumiko (Yumeji Tsukioka) is divorced from her husband and stricken by breast cancer. Despite this her poetry blossoms, as does a relationship with a journalist, even as she is dying. Based on the book by Akira Wakatsuki (as adapted by Sumie Tanaka), this is a poignant psychological drama (filmed in Hokkaido) which deals with the sexual and creative longings and energies of a dying woman. A meditation on gender, sexuality, disease, art and death.

Yumeji Tsukiokam. Is the mother of two and wife of Junkichi Orimoto. He is out of a job, drinking heavily, and dislikes her efforts to become a poet. He cheats on her with an old girlfriend, so she leaves him. Then she comes down with breast cancer. She gets a mastectomy. Then it metastasizes, just as her gloomy poems become the rage of the Tokyo literary set. Reporter Ryôji Hayama writes of her travails, and goes to visit her. At first she is defiant, but gradually comes to trust him as her life sinks low.

Kinuyo Tanaka directed this movie about misery, death, and acceptance ina way that had me looking for one ray of sunshine. Alas, there was none. The most that one can claim for it is a pain-filled stoicism on the part of Miss Tsukiokam and perhaps a little longing for dignity that the cancer strips away from her.

I don't like this movie. It is 110 minutes of tormenting an unhappy Miss Tsukiokam to no purpose except to urge acceptance of life's cruelties. But it certainly makes that point forthrightly.