"One year after the war ended, Mizoguchi's Japanese military overseers were replaced by American ones. Suspicious of films that might rekindle enthusiasm for feudal or militarist values, they encouraged themes that would illustrate democracy in action. Women were to be given special prominence in building a newly democratic Japan. Mizoguchi, who in many of his pre-war films had been obsessed with the theme of women victimized by society, embraced the new directives wholeheartedly" (David Owens, Japan Society). Victory of Women is the story of a determined young lawyer, Hiroko (Kinuyo Tanaka), engaged to a student critic of the wartime government who is released from prison seriously ill. While defending a destitute woman who has killed her baby rather than see it grow up an orphan after the war, Hiroko's opposition to the harsh sentences meted out to wartime dissidents is radicalized: now she sees the problem in terms of the oppression of women. This was Mizoguchi's only collaboration with Kogo Noda, longtime scenarist for Yasujiro Ozu, who co-wrote the screenplay with future director Kaneto Shindo.