Yoru no kawa

YORU NO KAWA features some of postwar Japanese cinema’s most evocative uses of colour, but beneath its picturesque surface, tradition and modernity do quiet battle. Kiwa, a talented artisan who specialises in hand-dyed silks, walks the wire between them. Passed down from her father, her craft is too old-fashioned for the Western tastes of some, while her designs—which include a kimono adorned with a swarm of crimson fruit flies—strike others as too bold. Kiwa gladly eschews marriage to focus on her work, preferring to devote herself, as she says to a friend, to Mount Hiei, whose shifting colours across the day inspire her to render them in dye. The comedy that comes at the expense of her hapless admirers eventually gives way to melodrama, when her deepening relationship with a married man forces her to choose between duty and desire. Yoshimura Kozaburo films with unusual sensitivity to texture and hue, which is exactly how Kiwa sees the world, from rain-splattered rooftops to a lovers’ conversation interpreted through alternating shots of fuzzy yellow blossoms and delicate purple orchids. (Genevieve Yue)

Yoshimura Kozaburo: WARM CURRENT (1939), THE STORY OF TANK COMMANDER NISHIZUMI (1940), THE SPY ISN’T DEAD YET (1942), THE BALL AT THE ANJO HOUSE (1947), TEMPTATION (1948), CLOTHES OF DECEPTION (1951), THE TALE OF GENJI (1951), THOUSAND CRANES (1953), BEFORE THE DAWN (1953), GINZA NO ONNA (1955), AN OSAKA STORY (1957), NIGHT BUTTERFLIES (1957), A WOMAN’S UPHILL SLOPE (1960), BAMBOO DOLL OF ECHIZEN (1963)