Jul 24, 2021
I didn’t see many people mention some stuff, so I decided to leave this as my first review.
Overall, I felt that this movie was quite a unique callback to Japanese history and culture and it seems that was the movie’s main point. It also seems to be based off of a 1980s manga series about the actual O’Ei’s life, but the truth is that not much is actually known about the real woman. This seems to be the reason that the plot seems to meander or have no resolve, and to me it was apparent that it was based on the Japanese genre of
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literature called “I-story”, where it’s more so writing down day to day musings, stories, and thoughts— similar to the historical Japanese novel “The Pillow Book”.
What I admired the most about this movie was how much history during the Edo period was incorporated into the film. I always think back on this movie, especially the scene with the firemen and the fact they all had tattoos (tattoos are currently seen as taboo in Japan so I was surprised to see that here. Apparently pre-Edo period tattoos were used for all sorts of reasons, then when the Edo government restricted the use of tattoos later for criminalization, some people still used it as protection symbols, especially firemen.) There was also a scene where she meets a male prostitute, and it seems he was based off of a “kagema” who were young male sex workers that offered services to both male and female clients.
I really respect this movie for trying its best to reflect the Edo period as best as it could, but also not afraid to show things that I thought would not be shown in a Japanese animation (considering it had some big names attached to it and made it to Netflix, I thought it would be more of a culture propaganda move). I was pleasantly surprised by it. As an amateur history nerd, I liked this movie a lot and would recommend this to anyone interested in Japanese history and culture.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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