Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro

Director: Mikio Naruse

1938 / 89min / 35mm

After the 1937 kokutai decree established a cultural regime of militarist ultranationalism, the Japanese film industry decreased production of the shoshimin-eiga (common people dramas) in which Naruse had hitherto specialized in favor of films valorizing traditional Japanese arts. The liveliest and most moving of the films Naruse dutifully turned out in the geido genre, expressing the “way of the artist,” this backstage tragicomedy of the late Meiji period concerns a temperamental shinnai tandem—male singer Tsurujiro (Kazuo Hasegawa) and female shamisen player Tsuruhachi (the great Isuzu Yamada)—whose uncanny musical chemistry is matched only by their romantic combustibility. With its rarefied fine arts setting, Naruse’s film is a singularly lyrical articulation of his core theme, the unequal relationship between a man and a woman.