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| Masayuki Mori in Love Letter |
Cast: Masayuki Mori, Juzo Dosan, Yoshiko Kuga, Jukichi Uno, Kyoko Kagawa, Shizue Natsukawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chieko Seki, Ranko Hanai, Chieko Nakakita, Keisuke Kinoshita. Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, based on a novel by Fumio Niwa. Cinematography: Hiroshi Suzuki. Art direction: Seigo Shindo. Film editing: Toshio Goto. Music: Ichiro Saito.
Struggling to get by in postwar Japan, Reikichi Mayumi (Masayuki Mori) spends his idle time searching for his childhood sweetheart Michiko (Yoshiko Kuga). Then one day he finds her and berates her for what she did to survive: become the mistress of an American soldier. That is the crux of the great actress Kinuyo Tanaka's first film as a director, Love Letter. The letter itself is the giveaway to Michiko's secret. Reikichi overhears her dictating it to his friend Naoto Yamaji (Jukichi Uno), who ekes out a living by writing letters for women whose GI boyfriends have left them behind when they returned to the States. Michiko bore the soldier's child, but it died, and now she urgently seeks his financial aid, fearing that she will have to prostitute herself to live. Tanaka creates a vivid portrait of a wounded country where regret about the past is secondary to the need to survive. In this context, Reikichi's rigid morality seems out of place. Alive with secondary characters, the film gives us more than just a tortured romance, and although it contains a soap opera crisis, Tanaka wisely avoids a pat reconciliatory ending.
