Gate of Flesh
肉体の門
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Postwar Tokyo street prostitutes with one rule — never for free — and the man who breaks it.
Tokyo, just after the war. In a black market among the ruins, eighteen-year-old Maya steals a sweet potato. Abe, a gangster from the Yoshino gang that runs the market, tries to sell her to the Occupation troops and beats her in public when she fights back. Sen, a prostitute with a tattoo on her arm, stops him and takes Maya into her group: a few women who work the streets and live together in a burnt-out building. Maya was raped by Occupation soldiers; she talks so much about her brother, killed on Borneo, that they call her Borneo Maya. The group has one law: never sleep with a man for free. Maya watches a woman who broke it shorn and stripped, and learns to sell herself and to hit back.
Shintaro Ibuki, a demobilised soldier who lives by stealing from Occupation depots, stabs an American soldier and is shot as he runs. He hides in the women's building and lords it over them, and one by one they want him. When Machiko, a war widow, breaks the law, the others tie her up and beat her; she cries that they have never loved a man, and they throw her out. Ibuki sleeps with her afterwards. Maya, who sees her dead brother in him, is torn between jealousy and longing.
One day Ibuki comes back leading a cow, slaughters it himself and throws a feast. When he is drunk, Maya takes him down to a boat and asks him to make love to her, and for the first time she knows what it is to love a man. He tells her to meet him at the bridge if she wants to go with him. Sen has seen it all. She sells him to the gang, and the gang tells the Occupation police where he is. The women punish Maya savagely; she endures it, thinking of him, and runs to the bridge. He has been shot dead, and no one is there. She stands staring at a flag floating on the filthy river.
Starring
Yumiko Nogawaas Borneo Maya
An eighteen-year-old raped by Occupation soldiers, who joins Sen's group to survive and learns its one law.
Borneo Maya’s story
In a black market, Maya steals a sweet potato and is beaten for refusing to be sold to the Occupation troops. She talks so much about her brother, killed on Borneo, that the women of Sen's group call her Borneo Maya. She learns to sell herself, and when Machiko is punished for breaking the group's law, Maya beats her hardest. In Ibuki, the soldier hiding with them, she sees her brother. Seeing him with Machiko, she coerces a priest who tried to save her into sex; he later takes his own life. After the feast she takes the drunken Ibuki to a boat and, against the law, loves a man for the first time. He tells her to meet him at the bridge. She endures the women's punishment and runs there. He has been shot dead, and she is alone.
Joe Shishidoas Shintaro Ibuki
A demobilised soldier living by theft, who hides out with the women after stabbing an American soldier.
Shintaro Ibuki’s story
Ibuki lives by stealing from the Occupation. After he knifes an American soldier and is shot as he runs, he hides in the burnt-out building where Sen's women live, refuses to leave once his wound heals, and lords it over them. He has hidden a haul of stolen penicillin and robs for money. He stops the women beating Machiko for breaking their law, and later sleeps with her. He sells the penicillin to the Yoshino gang, leads home a cow, slaughters it and throws a feast, and when Sen offers herself he brushes her off. After a night with Maya on a boat, he tells her to meet him at the bridge if she wants to go with him. Sen sells him to the gang, the gang tells the Occupation police, and he is shot dead before Maya gets there.
Satoko Kasaias Sen
The tattooed leader of the women, who enforces their law without mercy and wants Ibuki for herself.
Sen’s story
Sen leads a few women who work the streets from a burnt-out building, and she enforces their one law, never sleep with a man for free, with beatings. She has had her arm tattooed to make herself strong. She stops a gangster beating a starving girl, Maya, and takes her in. When Ibuki, shot while fleeing the Occupation, turns up at the building, she hides him; she tells him to leave once his wound heals, but he will not, and she falls for him. She leads the beating of Machiko for sleeping with a man for nothing, and suggests Ibuki sell his stolen penicillin to the Yoshino gang. On the night of the feast she offers herself to him and is brushed off. Then she sees Maya with him. She sells him to the gang, and she punishes Maya savagely.
Misako Tominagaas Machiko
A war widow who still looks like a respectable wife and is thrown out of the group for breaking its law.
Why it matters
Gate of Flesh comes from Taijiro Tamura's 1947 novel, the first bestseller of post-war Japan; Seijun Suzuki's version, the first of his trilogy about women's bodies, is counted among the high points of his years at Nikkatsu. Most of the studio's actresses refused the roles because of the nudity and the subject, and the sets were thrown together from whatever the backlot held. Critics read the film as an allegory of the Occupation: a defeated country where the old order of obedience and punishment rebuilds itself among the people at the bottom. The women's law, never for free, is how they survive men who take what they want, American soldiers and Japanese gangsters alike, and they enforce it on one another with a violence learned from the war. The question it leaves is what love can be for a woman whose body is her only living: a luxury, a betrayal of the others, or the one thing still hers.