Hideko Okiyama - Women of the Night and After" - 1945-1971: A Postwar History of Women Actors

Hideko Okiyama - Women of the Night and After" - 1945-1971: A Postwar History of Women Actors

More than 20 years after the defeat in 1945, Japan was making a miraculous recovery from the ruins of the war. Economic growth transformed the country and people's lives, but women's space for expression remained limited. Against this backdrop, actress Hideko Okiyama gained prominence when she appeared in the film "Women of the Night" (1948, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi), playing a prostitute in the immediate aftermath of the war's defeat.

Women of the Night" is an unusual film set in Osaka in the immediate postwar period, depicting women living on the margins of society. The protagonists are women who are forced to take to the streets to make a living, and they desperately try to maintain their pride as human beings, even as their dignity is undermined in exchange for their daily bread. Mizoguchi's camera captures the women not with sympathy, but with a "look" that depicts their resilience rather than their weakness. The role played by Okiyama is in the same vein, embodying the pride of a woman who protects her heart even while exposing her body to the world.

But that glory was also a struggle against social prejudice and the harsh realities of the field. She tells us. When a woman takes off her clothes, she is not only serving her work. The meaning of 'nakedness' is questioned before the role itself. This was a time when audiences and staff alike paid more attention to the body than to the performance. In the immediate postwar period, actresses tended to be regarded not as "artists" but as "spectacles. On regional tours, they traveled all night in cars with no sleeping quarters, and when they took the stage, they were often complemented by the actors. Tension with the director was the norm, and the composition of "men directing and women following" remained unchanged.

In such a situation, Okiyama says, "I learned to own myself through acting. I speak my own body in my own words and choose my own actions. In the early 1970s, when the shadow of second-wave feminism was beginning to reach Japan, the testimony of actresses like Okiyama was a forerunner. The testimony of actresses like Okiyama was a forerunner of this movement.

Her path reflects how women were spoken of in the medium of film and how they came to speak for themselves. Art and commerce, self-expression and the desire of others, life and acting. The record of Hideko Okiyama, who lived through all of these while wavering between them, shines a quiet but definite light in the history of women's expression from the postwar period to the period of rapid economic growth.