Utamaro and His Five Women (1946)

"Prison made me want to draw more!"

Utamaro and His Five Women told a fictionalized account of the famous Japanese painter who was arrested for not following the censorship laws in 1804 and was manacled for 50 days. The title stretches the premise thin as most of the women were far more involved with other men.

Koide Seinosuke is furious that Kitagawa Utamaro has disparaged the art haven he works for and challenges Utamaro to a duel. Utamaro instead challenges him to an art duel which Seinosuke loses causing the young man to leave his art school and his fiancé whose father runs the famous school. He begins to follow Utamaro and experiences the floating world from an artistic perspective as well as a carnal one. Utamaro is utterly devoted to his artwork. Unlike others around him he is not consumed with love affairs that drive them to break hearts and even murder.

I’m always keen to learn about historical figures and Utamaro was an artist who works have survived through the centuries. He also heavily influenced the Impressionists in Europe. His incarceration shone a light on the detriments of censorship and artistic restrictions. While the film did focus on his compulsive need to be inspired by beautiful women and to paint, it strayed into obsessive love amongst his circle of friends. Two different love triangles developed which ended in tragedy.

Utamaro and His Five Women was an imaginative glimpse into the master’s work near the end of his career. I wish they would have explained more about his arrest and life which were glossed over. The melodramatic relationships were less enthralling to me as they showed the destructive nature of unrestrained desire. Okita’s desire was to experience love like Utamaro’s obsession with art, passionate to the point of death. Other women in the film thought of her as a role model while I viewed her as a cautionary tale. Seinosuke became a prisoner of his physical desire, something his artistic endeavors failed to live up to. Within this torrent of hormonal cravings or perhaps in spite of them, Utamaro found the inspiration for his paintings.

21 June 2025
Note: I could not find a restored version of this film. It could be quite blurred at times making it difficult to see the action or who was talking.

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