Forget Love for Now

『恋も忘れて』

Dir. Hiroshi Shimizu. 1937, 73 mins. 35mm print courtesy of Japan Foundation. In Japanese with English subtitles. With Michiko Kuwano, Bakudan-kozō, Shūji Sano. Like the earlier Japanese Girls at the Harbor, this devastating story of a single mother Oyuki (Kuwano) who supports herself and her son Haruo (Bakudan-kozō) by working at a “chabuya,” a hostess bar catering to foreigners, is set in the cosmopolitan harbor city of Yokohama. Bullied because of his mother’s profession, Haruo becomes a pariah among his classmates, picking fights to defend her honor while befriending a gaggle of ostracized Chinese children in the seaside town’s migrant community—a pointedly political gesture in the first year of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The film’s sensitively observed scenes of children erecting self-contained worlds that naturally reproduce the oppressive stigmas of their parents’ society lead to a tragic climax ranking among the director’s finest sequences. 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

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