Story of a Prostitute
Reviewed by James Slone

Harumi comes to Manchuria as a comfort woman for the Japanese army, volunteering her body for lonely, sex-starved Japanese soldiers on the front. Casting off her life as a mistress to find her own way in the world, she ends up in a village lorded over by the brutal Lieutenant Narita, an abusive tyrant who treats his functionaries and paid lovers like pack animals, kicking and hurling abuse at the first sign of weakness. Narita claims Harumi for himself, taking her first by force and holding on to her with the threat of violence. But she has her own agenda and plots to defy him.

Narita’s orderly, Mikami, soon attracts Harumi’s attention. Held in contempt by his superior, Mikami seems the perfect agent for exacting revenge on Narita, but Harumi unexpectedly falls in love with him. This creates a precarious situation for the timid, virginal Mikami, who finds himself stuck between military duty and his growing need for Harumi. Mikami begins to defy orders and invites the jealousy of Narita, who reacts with casual brutality. This melodramatic “love” triangle forms the center of Seijun Suzuki’s 1965 adaptation of Taijiro Tamura’s novel “Story of a Prostitute”.

This is a Suzuki film, so naturally the melodrama is skewered towards the absurdly comical. But what might come as a surprise to those who are mainly familiar with Suzuki’s Yakuza pictures, is how serious, even realistic, “Story of a Prostitute” is. There is an abundance of style of course, but it’s in the service of a dark compelling story that rather unexpectedly has a lot to say. This is a stylized, wildly entertaining film that has a brain in its head. What might have been a movie about true love in wartime becomes an examination of the idiotic logic of military honor.

Our hero Harumi is not anyone’s woman or fool, and when she sets her sights on Mikami she becomes a force to be reckoned with. She’s as tough a character as any I’ve seen. Being a comfort woman she is necessarily in a subordinate position. Her brutal rape at the hands of Narita, shown in sharp montage cuts, places her officially on the bottom rung of the social ladder. But that doesn’t stop her from expressing contempt and doing whatever the hell she wants to do. In an inventive scene characteristic of Suzuki’s work, Harumi imagines Narita torn apart like a flat photograph.

Poor Mikami is a boyish kid, utterly subservient to authority, who makes the cruel mistake of falling for the Lieutenant’s woman. It’s also Harumi’s mistake because she finds her lover devoted to the code and rituals of the military machine. He regards his own trespasses as dishonorable and when he has his chance to escape with his lover from the Lieutenant and probable death, he returns to face his court martial, despite the loud protestations of Harumi. She is simply unable to understand why he’d forfeit his life for a clearly broken ideal.

War in the film is chaotic and intrusive, an arbitrary force that strikes without warning. Chinese soldiers are rarely seen. There are spectacular rocket attacks at night. In one scene Harumi, having heard that Mikami was left for dead in a trench, rushes across a battlefield while rockets hurl in the opposite direction. Considering the film’s low budget, this scene is simply amazing. When war appears, people die and buildings crumble. The why and how are wisely left unconsidered; total war is so irrational in its scope and cruelty, the why goes out the window.

Life with the comfort women seems removed, even provincial. When the soldiers arrive, a festive drunken atmosphere sets in, which Suzuki shoots with abundant detail. But with the celebration comes the assembly line of sex; lines form at the door, the woman’s legs are spread, payment is presented and intercourse begins. Harumi is generally a sport about it, because she knows what she wants. Her relations with the Lieutenant, for example, are softened by the loving caress of his orderly. Of course, she’s routinely abused and beaten, and only her apparent dignity makes it bearable.

The film’s third act is ostensibly tragic, but the tone is more thoughtful than maudlin. Harumi and Mikami are given their chance to ride into the sunset when they’re captured by a sympathetic Chinese battalion. Mikami has been injured and placed in a Buddhist temple, and is urged by a former compatriot, Uno (Kentaro Kaji), to desert the Japanese war effort and depart with the Chinese forces. Harumi begs Mikami to follow Uno. But ever the patriotic functionary, Mikami refuses and returns to face charges of desertion, which really means “sleeping with the Lieutenant’s woman.”

“Story of a Prostitute” is a visually stunning, visceral, and creatively directed farce that mocks tribal notions of fealty and betrayal. Harumi almost seems shocked by the stupidity around her. She has her own fits of irrationality, but there is something even more ludicrous about leaving the love and comfort of a woman to face execution for a crime you never actually committed. What was simply the “betrayal”of a superior officer becomes “desertion” in he official jargon of a militarized culture.

Suzuki seems to be throwing up his arms in solidarity with Harumi, especially when the story screeches to its absurdly quixotic finish.