WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS: A Prescient Examination Of Post-War Japan

If Mikio Naruse‘s Floating Clouds is a film about making peace with the war years, then When a Woman Who Ascends The Stairs is a far more forward-thinking endeavor. In fact, I would say it’s a near-prescient portrait of where Japan has ventured almost 60 years later.

One old lady comments on how you can still see the old Tokyo, but it’s obvious — even the classy scoring and the generally sleek compositions suggest as much — modern society is upon us in full force. It’s the 1960s, an era built on the bedrock of a post-war economy.

In a highly fashionable area like Ginza — renowned even today for its shopping and glamour — the western influence is undeniable. Most of the film doesn’t take place on the main streets however, instead frequenting the back alcoves and the lines of bars hidden away from the public. Even here, the American influence is felt with many of the bars deriving their names from English.

The Life of Keiko

What’s presented is a different type of life, even as it develops its own fashionable conception of the world.  Keiko or “Mama-san” (Hideko Takamine), as she is known by all, is one of the women living in this world. She is a kind of hostess. If it’s a euphemism for something more, I can’t entirely say nor does the film try and define it, choosing instead to exist in this ambiguity.

Still, her entire existence can be summed up by one early shot: presenting the daunting stairs winding up ahead of her toward her livelihood. In a practical sense, they lead up to the bar she dutifully frequents every evening and yet Naruse’s shot comes to represent something far more.

I’m not sure if we could call it her stairway toward the “glass ceiling” exactly but she enters a new world — a restricting space — when she steps into work every evening. She must fortify herself, and it’s true she has an untenable veneer built up over the years.

It braces her to be the perfect hostess to all, balancing her customers’ entreaties and come-ons with the utmost ease and floating from each conversation with impeccable tact. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, she works with her longtime manager and bill collector (Tatsuya Nakadai), trying to eke by an existence, paying off the creditors they must pay rent to.

It’s hardly a sustainable life. Trying to keep customers happy while getting by on only the smallest of margins. Even a regular named Minaboe has started frequenting another place. His absence hurts her business. Thankfully, there are other clients to work on, and so she does her best to keep them happy, while never quite acquiescing to their wishes. For 5 years in this tawdry business, she’s kept strong in this regard.

Because this is a film all about sex, though we never see it outright. And if it is about sex then only as a commodity, a tool, a bargaining chip, to be used. Despite being a story about women giving companionship to men on their business trips and away from their wives, for the longest time no notion of actual love is created. This should not catch us by surprise.

It is a business first. Mama-san is expected to supply small talk and the girls that work under her flirt with the patrons over drinks. But as Keiko later admits, when she returns to her humble roots, it’s all a meticulously created fabrication. They wear kimonos, buy perfume, and pay for taxis and apartments they can barely afford, way above their paygrade, just so they can maintain the fantasy for their obliging audience. Meanwhile, there’s another side, a lot more disheartening and downright heartbreaking.

It’s the undercurrent of Tokyo if you wander into the red district or happen to step outside the confines of the beautifully cultivated exterior. It’s not a lie — all the things in front — but there is so much more to contend with. Love hotels, geishas and hordes of hostesses to go with them. What do they beget? Among many things suicide, loneliness, and helplessness.

A Touch of Sirk

If there is any other film I found myself cycling back to, it was actually Imitation of Life directed by the master of luscious American melodrama Douglas Sirk. It too was about a strong single woman trying to make her way in a world all but dominated by men. If it was true in America, it was even more prevalent in an albeit modernized Tokyo.

Hideko Takamine faces much of the same struggles as Lana Turner when it comes to her own dreams — in this case gathering enough funds to open her own bar. The only way to get ahead seems to be settling and giving in to the constant implicit or explicit demands of men. Because they hold the power. Society has certain set expectations. So they must play the game or live a life like hamsters on a wheel, in a constantly spinning cycle of survival.

Turner‘s life is equally complicated by her relationship, or lack thereof, with her daughter (Sandra Dee). But in a manner indicative of Japanese culture, Keiko must deal with a nagging mother and a useless brother who are constantly dependent on her for money. It’s the tug-of-war between familial duty and what she personally aspires to in life.

Tender Tragedy

I cannot speak for others, but When a Woman Ascends The Stairs tears my heart out, especially because I have seen elements of this world first hand, even if only in the periphery. It starts being a film about love once Keiko finally relents and opens herself up to be hurt.

She’s finally human and she loves, and the scenes that evolve out of this development are the film’s most devastating. What makes them even more impactful is how they just keep building off one another scene after scene. There is no relief in this constant barrage of pain, rejection, and heartbreak our heroine is taxed with.

There is also a certain continuity created between Hideko Takamine and Masayuki Mori thanks to their work together in Floating Clouds and yet the relationships go still further. She’s proposed to and berated and lied to and loved by three or four different men. And yet at the end of the day, she must put a cap on her emotions and saunter up those same solitary steps and don the genteel facade expected of her.

The culmination of it all feels like madness and at times there’s a surplus in the reservoirs of tragedy, but the final action, the smile on the face, the token salutation, are a final touch of irony. Even with its touches of humor in an expression or a line of dialogue, it’s nowhere close to the campy, technicolor crescendo Sirk cooked up for Imitation of Life.

Still, just as Sirk was capable of dissecting American life, I would wager Naruse is equally adept when it comes to Japan. Satire and sarcasm infused in drama do not function in the same manner in Japan. In its place, Naruse commits unreservedly to his story and consequently, provides another moving examination of his culture. It has a lot to say about a Japan that still seems to exist very much to this day in ever-evolving forms.  The remnants of loneliness, suicide, and patriarchal ways are not just specters out of the past. They still have a fairly insidious grip on the society.

Final Thoughts: When a Woman Ascends The Stairs

My last thought is only this. Setsuko Hara was the first Japanese actress I truly recognized across a body of work; she was a luminary personality, and Hideko Takamine deserves to hold the same company, proving herself to be an incomparable muse in her own right.

The performance she gives here is yet again so potent with the range and verisimilitude to all but carry the picture. She’s spellbinding, beautiful, and simultaneously breaks our hearts with the depth of her vulnerability. It’s not the kind of exhibition you soon forget. Because in one go she effectively represents an entire subset of human beings and imbues them with unmistakable pathos. Far from being moth-balled and prosaic, When a Woman Ascends The Stairs beats with the most devastating of lifebloods. If it’s steadfastly Japanese, then it’s equally universal.

Are you familiar with Mikio Naruse? Why do you think he is not more well-known worldwide? Let us know in the comments below!