Film – Another Gaze Presents Suzaki Paradise: Red Light

70th Anniversary—Introduction by Moeko Fujii. Destitute and down to a pocketful of change, a young couple arrives at the outskirts of the riverfront pleasure district of Suzaki Paradise shortly before the enactment of Japan’s anti-prostitution laws. Tsutae, a former prostitute, installs herself at the nearby Bar Chigusa, an outpost on the bounds of the district’s undefined expanse, while dour-faced Yoshiji toils away as a soba deliveryman. Based on Yoshiko Shibaki’s eponymous collection of stories (also the source material for Mizoguchi’s Street of Shame) and adapted by proto-New Wave filmmaker Yuzo Kawashima, Susaki Paradise: Red Light remains a crucial work of postwar cinema, its feverish undercurrent of desperation swelling as opportunism, love, desire and dreams collide over the shimmering waterways of Suzaki.

Dir. Yuzo Kawashima, 1956, 81 min. DCP, b&w, in Japanese with English subtitles. With Michiyo Aratama, Yukiko Todoroki, Tatsuya Mihashi.