In 1939, probably under pressure from an increasingly watchful military government, Mizoguchi turned away from his "social tendency" films of the mid-thirties to the Meiji period drama, which allowed him to develop a favorite, entirely contemporary theme-the problem of female self-sacrifice-under the guise of romantic fiction. Mizoguchi of course transforms the genre into a masterpiece of modern storytelling in The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, the first and only surviving film of a trilogy he made about Meiji period theater. In a famous quote, he spoke of the appeal of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), to which he was repeatedly drawn throughout his career: "Let us say that a man like me is always tempted by the climate of beauty in this era." Based on a fictionalized account of the life of a kabuki actor who owes his artistic development to his lover's encouragement and ultimate self-sacrifice, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums marks a peak in Mizoguchi's art. With about one-quarter the number of shots found in a normally edited film, the work is Mizoguchi's first use of the one-shot/one-scene approach to mise-en-scene.