Contours of Glamour and Solitude - Mari Atsumi and the Shadow of Women's Liberation in the Late 1960s (1960s-1970s)

Contours of Glamour and Solitude - Mari Atsumi and the Shadow of Women's Liberation in the Late 1960s (1960s-1970s)

Mari Atsumi (born in 1947) was an actress who symbolized a turning point for Nikkatsu from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. In the postwar era, when the film industry was shifting from purity to sensuality, she embodied an image of a woman who was not merely "glamorous," but who also encompassed intelligence and solitude. In "Jyotai" (1968) and "Mekura no Oichi: Killing Hell" (1969), she portrayed the contradictions of sexuality and the breath of freedom of the times with a performance that coldly stared back at male society. Her provocative yet intelligent presence resonated with the women's liberation movement of the 1960s. While her contemporary Mariko Kaga played a decadent city woman, Mayumi Ogawa played a woman of passion, and Meiko Kaji played a woman who fights, Atsumi was in between, expressing "the body that holds reason. In "Play Girl" (1969-76), she established the image of the "woman of action" with Akemi Mari and others, symbolizing an era in which sex was dis
cussed as a subject. Her short career reflected the lights and shadows of the 1960s culture, which was both liberating and lonely, and she left a unique mark on Japanese film history.