Sandakan No. 8

Tanaka won the Best Actress Award at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival for what may be considered her last great role, in Kei Kumai’s Sandakan No. 8. Released just three years before her death, this adaptation of Tomoko Yamazaki’s pioneering work takes on the subject of karayuki-san, the young women forced into sexual slavery throughout Pacific Rim territories in the early 20th century. A young female journalist (Komaki Kurihara) tracks down one such person—Tanaka’s character, now an impoverished older woman living in isolation—who gradually divulges painful memories of her experiences at a brothel in Borneo. Prompting the film’s dreamlike flashbacks, in which Yoko Takahashi plays the younger version of the former prostitute, Tanaka guides the harrowing saga into the present with knowing magnetism. 35mm print courtesy of the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute.