Kenji Mizoguchi's last film, the 1956 "Akasen Chitai" ("Red-Light District," aka "Street of Shame") may not be one of his best pictures but it is one of his most interesting. As D.J. Rajakaruna, who here translates the entire script, writes: "It is not a great film like 'The Life of Oharu' or 'Ugetsu' but (it is) a document of historical and sociological importance."
One reason for this importance is the role the film is said to have played in the passing of the Prostitution Prevention Law, which was then being debated in the National Diet for the fourth time. Mizoguchi's film was released in March 1956, and two months later the bill was passed, coming into effect a year later, in April 1957.
Though sober, factual and not at all melodramatic, the film did show the great economic pressures under which postwar prostitutes lived. Mizoguchi's typical brothel (called Dreamland) contains a floating population of a dozen or so women, and he and his scenarist focus on six of them. Their interweaving stories constitute the subject of the film.
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