Panpan Girls, Lesbians and Post-war Women’s Communities: Girls of Dark (1961) as Women’s Cinema

Yuka Kanno uses the final chapter of the book to examine Girls of Dark (Onna bakari no yoru, 1961), a film which follows the lives of ex-prostitutes in a rehabilitation facility. Within an exclusively female community as diverse in age as personality, Japan’s first lesbian film character emerges, defying traditional representations of lesbianism in Japanese popular culture. Kanno argues that this unusual character is pivotal to understanding of the desire, solidarity and conflict which characterises the female community in the film. The female continuum is presented as both diegetic and relational by including the narrative space of the film and that embodied by the three women who collaborated to produce it: Tanaka Kinuyo (director), Yana Masako (novelist), and Tanaka Sumie (scriptwriter). Using queer and feminist theory, Kanno’s fascinating and innovative discussion seeks to relocate the concept of women’s cinema within Japanese film history and film theory.