Girls of the Night

In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman living in one of Japan’s newly established rehabilitation centers, which attempted to reform sex workers, struggles to build a new life. For this Toho production, Tanaka reunited with screenwriter Sumie Tanaka (Forever a Woman), and together they spent time researching correctional homes and the women who passed through them, recording their individual efforts and failures, their solidarity, and the past events that followed them through life. Without the slightest moral judgment, Girls of the Night forms an empathetic yet uncompromising portrait of sex workers and a sharp critique of the country’s mistreatment of these communities in postwar occupied Japan.