jac 02/11/21

Released: 1979
Length: 154 minutes
Director: Satsuo Yamamoto
Screenplay: Kei Hattori, Shigemi Yamamoto
Music: Masaru Sato

Cast:

Mine Masai..................................................................................Shinobu Otake
Yuki Shinoda..................................................................................Mieka Harada
Takichi Adachi............................................................................Rentaro Mikuni
And hundreds more…

Story:

The film is based on Yamamoto Shigemi's book Aa, Nomugi Toge (Ah! Nomugl Pass), published in 1968. [see http://www.theeast.co.jp/1999/352/jot352.htm]. Both the book and the film tell the story of peasant women drawn to the silk factories rising in Japan's cities in the 1860's.

Commentary:

Difficult to obtain and rarely seen in the United States, Satsuo Yamamoto's film version of the story explores the contradiction between growth in the wealth and power of Japan and the "exploitation" of poor rural women who went to work in the silk factories whose productivity provided one of the major sources of foreign income to Japan during the start of the Meiji period [see Reischauer, pg 109].

An acknowledged communist, Yamamoto's films continued a style of using film for social criticism began by the first wave of Japanese leftist film-makers in the 1930's. [see http://www.city.yamagata.yamagata.jp/yidff/docbox/5/box5-2-e.html for a fascinating history of this period in Japanese film.] As a result, Yamamoto's films were rarely commercially successful, and he had trouble finding financing. Nomugi Pass was produced independently, although distributed by a major Japanese film company once completed. Yamamoto's best known "serious " film is probably Shinkuu Chitai (Vacuum Zone), perhaps the strongest anti-war film ever made in Japan. He is also known for making several of the very popular Zatoichi blind samurai films. Yamamoto died in 1981.