Chiio Kimura

Although incomplete in its current form, 'Tokyo March' stands as a fragment of Kenji Mizoguchi's early work. Mizoguchi's story of love, revelation, and the sometimes-cruel hand of fate gives us an early glimpse at themes that will be returned to in his later works.

The Morning Sun Shines is a fiction-documentary film (1929) by master director Kenji Mizoguchi and Seiichi Ina. Sadly, only 25 minutes of it survived.

During World War II a young woman quits university and instead obtains a job at a magazine about film that her mentor set up for her. The mentor herself is an actress. Here the woman meets Hara Setsuko as a colleague. The work is hard however. (imdb)

Masako Toyoda writes an essay. Following the instructions of her teacher, she improves it, and eventually one of her compositions is published in a magazine. However, in her effort to be honest, the article contains a slighting remark about the most powerful man in the neighborhood. Her father, a poor tinsmith, loses jobs, his bicycle is stolen, and the family has nothing to eat.

Song of the White Orchid was a co-production of Toho and Mantetsu, the railway that served the colonial region of Manchuria, and the first film in the Kazuo Hasegawa/Shirley Yamaguchi “Continental Trilogy.” Handsome Hasegawa runs up against an impertinent Yamaguchi; not surprisingly, in the course of the film the woman comes around and realizes the benevolent intentions of the Japanese. In Song of the White Orchid Yamaguchi leaves Hasegawa, who plays an expatriate working for the railway.