Karayuki-San, The Making of a Prostitute
Classic DOCS • 1h 15m
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1975 • 75 minutes
From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, Japanese girls and women were trafficked out of Japan and sent to foreign countries like China, Singapore, and beyond to serve as indentured prostitutes. These women were called Karayuki-san.
Shohei Imamura discusses this unfortunate history with Zendo Kikuyo and retraces Kikuyo’s steps as a 19-year-old girl who was tricked from her hometown in Japan and ended up in Malaysia. With Kikuyo, they revisit the docks where she landed and was transferred, her old brothel—Number 20 on Malay Street—and together they visit other former Karayuki-sans in their homes.
"Imamura extends quiet patience towards his subject, encouraging her to reclaim the humanity that had been stolen in the wake of Japan's imperial hubris."—Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader
Up Next in Classic DOCS
-
Forever
Directed by Heddy Honigmann • Documentary • 2006 • 95 minutes
Through a leisurely tour of the world-famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place for legendary writers, composers, painters and other artists from around the world, FOREVER provides an unusually poignant, emotiona...
-
On the Bowery
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • Documentary • With Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews • 1956 • 65 minutes
On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded on t...
-
No Home Movie
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2015 • 115 minutes
The final film from groundbreaking auteur Chantal Akerman, NO HOME MOVIE is a portrait of her relationship with her mother, Natalia, a Holocaust survivor and familiar presence in many of her daughter's films.
"At the center of Chan...
