SOURCE: "Why Does Oharu Faint? Mizoguchi's 'The Life of Oharu' and Patriarchal Discourse," in Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History, edited by Arthur Nolletti, Jr., and David Desser, Indiana University Press, 1992, pp. 3-55.

In the following essay, Cohen interprets Mizoguchi's portrayal of the plight of women in Japan in his film The Life of Oharu using the Western concept of patriarchal control, concluding that Mizoguchi created a "fractured" character in Oharu, which strengthens rather than weakens the patriarchy he set out to question.

There is little doubt today in the West that Mizoguchi's most important subject has been the plight of the Japanese woman. At the same time, we realize that Mizoguchi was a director of commercial films, and consequently, that his work represents an institutional discourse, the structure and ideology of which inform this subject matter. Thus in view of the general feeling that the women in...