Utamaro and His Five Women (1946) on Netflix
In Edo, Utamaro makes prints of beautiful women, drawing his models from the city's brothels. Enraged by one of them, a samurai painter of a rival school comes looking for him.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.0/101,564 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Plot summary
In eighteenth-century Edo, Utamaro draws beautiful women for his woodblock prints, taking his models from the city's brothels. His ukiyo-e manner, which he holds above the Chinese style then in favor, angers Seinosuke Koide, a samurai and painter of another school, who goes looking for him. Warned, Utamaro meets him at a tea-house and proposes a contest with brushes rather than a sword duel. Koide accepts and becomes his follower. Utamaro asks Orui, a courtesan famed for her beauty, to let him paint on her back so that Edo's finest tattoo artist can work over the design, and she agrees. Shozaburo, a wholesaler's son, falls in love with Orui and runs off with her to the countryside, leaving his fiancée Okita, once a model for Utamaro.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Utamaro and His Five Women (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Made during the seven-year Allied occupation of Japan, when jidaigeki period films were rarely approved as nationalistic or militaristic, Kenji Mizoguchi won a permit to make the film by arguing that Utamaro was "a popular democratic painter" and agreeing to emphasize female emancipation.
