Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956) was a Japanese film director most noted for exploring both personal and broad societal issues such as the status of women. He is, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun "regarded as the dean of Japanese filmmaking." Gary Arnold, writing in The Washington Times, called his work "a substantial but curiously fragmentary and haunted body of work." Arnold says his films extract "extraordinary eloquence and pathos from stories of human abandonment, struggle and loss."

Early Life Fraught with Sorrows

Mizoguchi's topic selection is seen as reflecting his personal life, which was filled with seemingly constant sorrow. Mizoguchi was born on May 16, 1898, in Tokyo, Japan. He was born to a roofing carpenter and the daughter of a failed herbal medicines trader, one of three children. The family, who were living in the middle-class district of Toyko known as Hongo, was devastated financially during the Russo-Japanese war by his...