The great Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse is famous for his movies presented from a woman's point of view. Often the men are less sympathetic characters in his films but that wasn't always the case. One such exception is 1953's Wife (妻). It's kind of the anti-Meshi, Naruse's more famous film released two years earlier. Like Meshi, Wife is based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi and it's also about a married couple drifting away from each other. But unlike Meshi, Wife seems to put the blame much more on the wife. The result is a film lacking Meshi's subtlety but there's still plenty of the understated, keenly rendered characters Naruse excelled at creating.
We meet Toichi (Ken Uehara) and his wife, Mihoko (Mieko Takamine), as he's leaving for work one morning. We hear their thoughts in voice over, both of them expressing dissatisfaction with their marriage. Mihoko laments the amount of work she must do in order to maintain the household while Toichi more vaguely questions the loss of interest he has in his wife and home. He thinks the arguments he and his wife have can't be pleasant for her, either.
This is the first little clue that the fault lies more on Mihoko's side. In Japanese culture, where considering the needs of your friends, coworkers, and family is seen as a mark of good character, the fact that Mihoko only thinks of her own troubles while Toichi also worries about the effect of the situation on Mihoko is significant. As the film continues, these little signs never really become enormous except in their cumulative effect. Just as it's easy to see why Mihoko is to blame, it's as easy to see that she would have trouble recognising it.
Toichi glumly opens his little bento lunch at work. Rice, sardines, two slices of takuan (pickled radish), and an umeboshi (pickled plum). Everything but the rice is from a can or jar. When he picks up a piece of takuan, there's a hair on it.
Nearby is the desk of his beautiful young coworker, Sagara (Yatsuko Tanami). She opens her own bento, filled with fresh fruit and sandwiches.
The boss comes in and compliments her on her always delicious looking lunches, which, she confirms, she makes herself every day. She modestly explains that she skips breakfast every day so she puts extra effort into lunch. She also makes a plate of croquettes and salad for Toichi at work.
The red umeboshi on white rice is supposed to look like the Japanese flag, it's a traditional bento component, while all of Sagara's food is conspicuously western. She also dresses in western attire while Mihoko usually wears a kimono. These are all pretty familiar signals from post-World War II Japanese films. Among other things, it marks Sagara as being receptive to the idea of divorce and remarriage. Mihoko, despite her own dissatisfaction with the marriage, proves unwilling to consider it.
Another familiar topic for Naruse is money trouble. Toichi and Mihoko run a boarding house, Toichi works in an office, and Mihoko has a side job knitting. Mihoko complains about the amount of work she has to do but when Toichi finally asks her why they need so much money she struggles to respond. She can only answer lamely that Toichi will need some new clothes soon.
The boarders provide means of showing Mihoko and Toichi's characters by contrast. There's a bohemian painter who fantasises about having many beautiful girlfriends (but has none). There's a kept woman whose lover's wife clearly takes it much harder than Mihoko when she finds out her husband is having an affair.
But as usual with Naruse, there's no simple solution to Mihoko and Toichi's problem and the more they struggle with it, the worse it gets.
Wife is available on The Criterion Channel.
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