Kyo Machiko: East meets west

Abstract

The Venice Film Festival of 1951 introduced the world to the previously undiscovered cinema of post-war Japan. Kurosawa Akira’s Rashomon (1950, Japan) was the first Japanese film to be entered into competition at the festival and went on to win the Golden Lion for best film. Although modestly budgeted by Western standards, the film was acclaimed for its direction, narrative structure, cinematography and performances - initiating a wave of interest in Japanese cinema that would last throughout the decade and into the 1960s. Rashomon featured a number of established leading actors such as Mifune Toshiro, Shimura Takeshi and Mori Masayuki. However, the performer who would go on to become the most familiar to foreign audiences was the film’s leading actress, Kyo Machiko, a relative newcomer to the Japanese audience as well as to an international one. To Western viewers, Kyo became the embodiment of an exotic oriental femininity: demure, mysterious and alluring. However, in Japan she was something completely different; she represented a model of a modern Westernized femininity: independent, outspoken and overtly erotic. In Japan she was a ‘bad girl’, a perfect example of the increasing Westernization of Japanese culture and a reflection of the social policies actively promoted by the Allied occupation forces who were intent on eradicating the militarism and emperor worship that had led to the war and replacing them with peace and democracy.