A Story Written with Water (水で書かれた物語, Mizu de kakareta monogatari) is a 1965 Japanese New Wave drama film directed by Yoshishige Yoshida, adapted from a novel by Yōjirō Ishizaka.

[1] The film's title derives from John Keat's epitaph: “Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.”[a][2] It follows the story of a young man torn between his fiancée and his long-suffering single mother, towards whom he harbors an oedipal attraction.

A Story Written with Water marked a radical departure from the more conventional cinema that Yoshida created during his studio career at Shochiku.

It inaugurated his celebrated cycle of "anti-melodramas," each of which starred Mariko Okada and challenged the genre's conventions regarding family and women's suffering.

It is more poetic that his previous films and utilizes a complex structure of fluid flashbacks that merge past and present.