The Affair at Akitsu

A special project to commemorate star actress Okada Mariko’s 100th film, The Affair at Akitsu is Yoshida’s first big-budget production and colour film. Based on a novel by Fujiwara Shinji, Yoshida completely changed the story, discarding the original happy ending in favour of a haunting tale of unrequited love and post-war disillusion. The story of the fatal attraction between a spineless intellectual and a strong woman is conventional, but its enactment is radically new. Yoshida completely focuses on the very few days that the two protagonists meet each other at the hot springs resort of Akitsu within a period of seventeen years, each in a different season, and omits the extended intervals of longing and waiting. The confrontation between Yoshida’s formal sophistication and production company Shochiku’s staple genre of melodrama resulted in an exquisitely beautiful film. It is also the first collaboration between Yoshida and Okada, who produced this film and before long was to become Yoshida’s wife.