| Life of a Woman | |
| Director: | Kaneto Shindō |
| Starring: | Nobuko Otowa |
| Music: | Akira Ifukube |
| Cinematography: | Takeo Itō |
| Editing: | Hidetoshi Kasama |
| Studio: | Kindai Eiga Kyōkai |
| Distributor: | Shintoho |
| Country: | Japan |
| Language: | Japanese |
is a 1953 Japanese drama film written and directed by Kaneto Shindō. It is based on Guy de Maupassant's 1883 novel Une vie.[1]
Shortly after graduating from high school, Fujiko Shirakawa is married to Shintarō Yamazaki, whose parents run a lucrative restaurant. Fujiko soon finds out that not only her father-in-law has two mistresses, but that Shintarō has an affair with maid Yuki. Pregnant with Shintarō's child, Fujiko gives in to her parents' and parents-in-law's appeal to stay with her husband. When Yuki also turns out to be pregnant and is sent back to her parents, Fujiko manages to talk her parents-in-law into raising Yuki's son Jirō together with her own son Tarō in the Yamazaki household. Some time later, Shintarō dies, and with the outbreak of the Pacific War, Tarō and Jirō are mobilised.
After the end of the war, Fujiko manages the still flourishing restaurant of the Yamazaki family. Her son Tarō, who has returned from the war while Jirō has gone missing, rapes one of the maids and disappears. Fujiko takes in the maid's child to raise it in her household.
Reviewing the film in their 1959 book The Japanese Film – Art & Industry, Donald Richie and Joseph L. Anderson saw a "strong evocation of the past", but faulted Shindō for going too far in the depiction of the story's "unpleasant aspects".