Ryoko Gi

The criminal library, dubbed the “Red Museum”, is a police facility that stores the investigation materials and evidence of major crimes where the statute of limitations has run out. Its director Saeko Hiiro is impassive and not good at communicating with people. One day, Satoshi Terada of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s First Investigative Division is assigned to be Saeko’s subordinate. Although he is bewildered by Saeko’s dispassionate demeanor, Terada starts to organize the data which is the primary responsibility of the museum. He encounters a traffic accident on the way to collect evidence. A truck has hit someone. When Terada rushes over, the victim utters the mysterious words “25 years ago... murder swap” and breathes his last. Once Saeko hears this, she declares a reinvestigation.

Set in the late 1950s, when geisha culture was threatened by moral crusades, it tells the story of Omacha (Miyamoto Maki), a young girl who sees the geisha life as a way to lift her poverty-stricken family from their hand-to-mouth existence. Through her eyes, we see the protocols and complex financial relationships which dictate the running of the geisha house. Fukasaku's film is a work of great delicacy with moments of hypnotic beauty, and his tender direction, often touched with a sense of wonder, fills the screen with lovingly constructed scenes. At its heart is the poignant situation of the women who must sacrifice their normal relationships to live an ambiguous life in which they are a key part of society while being kept, for the most part, on its periphery, like perpetual mistresses.

The ephemeral and vivid brilliance of three men and a woman run through Yokohama.