Sumie Tanaka

Writing

Sumie Tanaka

Born — Died

1908-04-11 — 2000-03-01

Place of birth

Tokyo Prefecture, Japan

Known for

Writing

Credits

28 titles

Sumie Tanaka (田中澄江, Tanaka Sumie, 11 April 1908 — 1 March 2000) was a Japanese screenwriter and playwright. An outspoken feminist, her stories often focused on women struggling with familial and societal expectations. She was a long-time collaborator of film director Mikio Naruse and wrote screenplays for Japan's first major female director Kinuyo Tanaka.

Known for

Behind the camera

Forever a Woman poster
7.5

Fumiko, mother of two and wife to an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In her final stages, Fumiko meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her experiences.

Forever a Woman

1955

Repast poster
7.6

In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.

Repast

1951

Girls of the Night poster
6.5

In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life.

Girls of the Night

1961

Undercurrent poster
6.2

In Kyoto a young kimono maker with traditional ideas gets involved with a married professor.

Undercurrent

1956

Twenty-Four Eyes poster
NR

TV adaptation of the novel "Twenty-Four Eyes", combining animation with a few live-action scenes.

Twenty-Four Eyes

1980

A Wanderer's Notebook poster
7.2

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

A Wanderer's Notebook

1962

Dancing Girl poster
8.0

In Asakusa, Tokyo, a couple of a violinist Yamano and a revue dancer Hanae lives in poverty. One day Hanae’s little sister rolls into their apartment and begins to stir things up with her riotousness.

Dancing Girl

1957

Little Peach poster
6.1

Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.

Little Peach

1958

Night Butterflies poster
6.5

A traditional bar mistress in Kyoto clashes with her Tokyo rival.

Night Butterflies

1957

Lightning poster
7.3

The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.

Lightning

1952

Flowing poster
7.2

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portrays the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.

Flowing

1956

The Journey poster
7.0

After the death of his parents, railway worker Yuichiro Murofushi returns to his hometown and agrees to an arranged marriage at the insistence of his uncle and aunt. However, the arrangement soon falls through due to various circumstances.

The Journey

1967

Dispersed Clouds poster
7.0

Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing a few days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako’s recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature and her determination to punish the world for the loss of her mother.

Dispersed Clouds

1951

Home Sweet Home poster
6.8

The Ueki family may not be wealthy, but smiles are never in short supply. The father is awarded prize money for 25 years of service to his workplace, but has it stolen on the way home from the ceremony...

Home Sweet Home

1951

Onna no hashi poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Onna no hashi

1961

Woman Unveiled poster
8.0

A childless lawyer and his wife take in the quiet daughter of an imprisoned client, whose presence eventually creates romantic tension with the husband. The household dynamic is further disrupted by the arrival of a bold friend from Osaka and the wife's chance encounter with a former flame.

Woman Unveiled

1958

Eddy Currents of Life poster
NR

It is 1922 and Fumiko is a high school student. Her family is poor but she loves to study literature. Her father, a peddler, does not return home and Fumiko finds herself in financial trouble, not being able to pay for her schooling and her school excursion trip. Still, she gets a temporary job at a factory and tries to make ends meet. A film about bright side of youth adapted from the television serial of the same name.

Eddy Currents of Life

1964

The Orphan Brother poster
6.3

After their father quarrels with local military men, Anju and Zushio are forced to flee, but they are captured and sold into slavery. When their mother dies, they are sold to Sansho the Bailiff, a cruel man who subjects them to hideous torments. While Anju falls into a lake and is transformed into a swan, Zushio escapes and after being adopted to a nobleman grows to a young man. He will then fight to defeat the evil Dayu and free all the slaves.

The Orphan Brother

1961

Boyhood poster
6.9

When a family has to relocate due to the war, they are ostracized by their new community.

Boyhood

1951

Women in Prison poster
4.0

The woman prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her.

Women in Prison

1956

Seagull of the Night poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Seagull of the Night

1957

Aiyoku no sabaki poster
NR

Motoko Fujikawa works in the Seisen Church as an assistant to pastor Maki Inokichi. Motoko falls in love with Inokichi's virtuous character and devotes herself to the rehabilitation of a delinquent girl, gradually finding her job at the institution more worthwhile than the marriage recommended by her parents. Meanwhile, inside Inokichi's heart a flame of unknowing love for the single-minded Motoko begins to burn...

Aiyoku no sabaki

1953

This Is Home poster
NR

Yasue (Todoroki) and Fumikichi (Oda), a married couple, have no children, but they take in children from other places and wind up raising three kids.

This Is Home

1956

An Heir's Place poster
10.0

This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh actors. The heir, Hosho Yagoro, is played by Hasegawa Kuzuo who went on to become familiar among Ichikawa Kon fans as Yukinojo in An Actor's Revenge, which was also co-written by Ito, adding to the relatedness of An Heir's Place.

An Heir's Place

1953

The Izu Dancer poster
NR

Love story between a student and girl whose parents are itinerant entertainers. Set in Japan in the 1920's.

The Izu Dancer

1960

Red Fan poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Red Fan

1952

Beauty the Enemy poster
7.5

In a rural district of Tokyo, the owner of a farm is abandoned by his two daughters who are attracted to the life of the big city.

Beauty the Enemy

1959

Kokoro ni hana no saku hi made poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Kokoro ni hana no saku hi made

1955