In yet another feature from Kinoshita, Koge is a mother and daughter saga with characters rendered brilliantly by Otowa Nobuko and Okada Mariko spanning over 40 years beginning in the 1920s. Based on a novel by Ariyoshi Sawako, a leading female author in Japan of the period, it is one of the best examples of the Bungei eiga (literature adaptation films), a popular genre in the 50s and 60s, often characterized by big budgets and female stars focusing on women’s issues, so as to compete with television in attracting the female audience.
 Widowed at the age of 20, Ikuyo(Otowa) soon remarries, leaving behind her mother and 5-year-old daughter Tomoko(Okada). An ironic fate brings them together at a Geisha house-the mother now a prostitute, the daughter a geisha trainee. The film depicts Tomoko’s fascination as a young child with her beautiful mother, her aversion to and jealousy of Ikuyo’s unrestricted sexuality, and her final acceptance of the bad mother. Okada expresses Tomoko’s emotional intensity and complexity in an honest and compelling way, while Otowa’s sensual beauty manages to elicit the viewer’s sympathy for this typical “bad” mother. Told in a typical Kinoshita chronicle fashion parallel to the country’s historical fate, the vicissitudes of the women’s lives are punctuated with exquisite landscapes, metaphorically projecting women’s fates. (Saito Ayako)