[8][9][10] The family was forced to move to the downtown district of Asakusa and gave Mizoguchi's older sister Suzu up for adoption, which in effect meant selling her into the geisha profession.

[8][9][10] The film critic Tadao Sato has pointed out a coincidence between Mizoguchi's life in his early years and the plots of shinpa dramas, which characteristically documented the sacrifices made by geisha on behalf of the young men they were involved with.

[10] He was also a frequent visitor of the tea houses, dance halls and brothels in Kyoto and Osaka,[8] which at one time resulted in a widely covered incident of him being attacked by a jealous prostitute and then-lover with a razor.

[8] The Water Magician (1933) and Orizuru Osen (1935) were melodramas based on stories by Kyōka Izumi, depicting women who sacrifice themselves to secure a poor young man's education.

[22] Fellow screenwriter Matsutarō Kawaguchi went as far as, in a 1964 interview for Cahiers du Cinéma, calling Mizoguchi (whom he otherwise held in high regard) an "opportunist" in his art who followed the currents of the time, veering from the left to the right to finally become a democrat.

[24] During the early post-war years following the country's defeat, Mizoguchi directed a series of films concerned with the oppression of women and female emancipation both in historical (mostly the Meiji era) and contemporary settings.

All of these were written or co-written by Yoda, and often starred Kinuyo Tanaka, who remained his regular leading actress until 1954, when both fell out with each other over Mizoguchi's attempt to prevent her from directing her first own film.

[25][26] Utamaro and His Five Women (1946) was a notable exception of an Edo era jidaigeki film made during the Occupation, as this genre was seen as being inherently nationalistic or militaristic by the Allied censors.

[6][28] Tanaka plays a young teacher who leaves her traditionalist milieu to strive for her goal of female liberation, only to find out that her allegedly progressive partner still nourishes the accustomed attitude of male preeminence.

Mizoguchi returned to feudal era settings with The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), which won him international recognition, in particular by the Cahiers du Cinéma critics such as Jean-Luc Godard,[2] Eric Rohmer[5] and Jacques Rivette,[29] and were awarded at the Venice Film Festival.

[2][3] While The Life of Oharu follows the social decline of a woman banished from the Imperial court during the Edo era, Ugetsu and Sansho the Bailiff examine the brutal effects of war and reigns of violence on small communities and families.

[39] Already with his autobiographical debut film Story of a Beloved Wife (1951), Shindō had paid reference to Mizoguchi in the shape of the character "Sakaguchi",[40] a director who nurtures a young aspiring screenwriter.

[43] Among the directors who have admired Mizoguchi's work are Akira Kurosawa,[44] Orson Welles,[45] Andrei Tarkovsky,[46] Martin Scorsese,[47] Werner Herzog,[48] Theo Angelopoulos[49] and many others.