The Affair at Akitsu
(Akitsu Onsen)
Kiju Yoshida and Mariko Okada in Person
Screening on Film
$10 Special Event Tickets
Screening on Film
$10 Special Event Tickets
Directed by Kiju Yoshida.
With Mariko Okada, Hiroyuki Nagato, Sumiko Hidaka.
Japan, 1962, 35mm, color, 112 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: The Japan Foundation
With Mariko Okada, Hiroyuki Nagato, Sumiko Hidaka.
Japan, 1962, 35mm, color, 112 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: The Japan Foundation
A haunting tale of unrequited love, The Affair at Akitsu is one of the most beloved Japanese melodramas of the postwar studio era. Yoshida’s first adapted screenplay uses the vivid background of war-torn Japan to suggest its archetypal characters of the spirited, selfless woman – mesmerizingly embodied by Mariko Okada – and the cynical intellectual drawn to her beauty as twin figures for the hope and resignation simultaneously born of Japan’s inevitable defeat. A deeply affecting and exquisitely beautiful film, Yoshida and Okada’s first collaboration announced the abiding interest in resilient heroines and pointedly feminist ideas that would remain a constant across the many films made throughout their long partnership.