The Wife of Seisaku

Considered a major work within Yasuzo Masumura’s remarkable and underrated filmography, The Wife of Seisaku finds the Japanese auteur again collaborating with his muse, Ayako Wakao (Daiei Studios’ top actress at the time). During the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War, Okane (Wakao), a widow, returns to her home village, only to be ostracized when she falls in love with an intensely idealistic young soldier. When he returns from the front wounded, Okane goes to extreme lengths to ensure that he won’t return to the battlefield. Masumura’s restrained, even minimalistic stylization is an elegant stage upon which Wakao enacts a psychodramatically rich and politically provocative tour de force. A Janus Films release.

The film was restored in 4K at IMAGICA Entertainment Media Services from the original 35mm negative films. For the sound, a direct print was generated from the 35mm sound negative, and the audio was digitized and restored. In this digital restoration, we aimed to repair the damage to the images and colors caused by the age-related deterioration of the materials, while at the same time restoring all of the texture and beauty that remained in the film at the time of its release. The grading was supervised by Masahiro Miyajima, a former member of Daiei Kyoto Studios’ Cinematography Department, who worked for many years as chief cinematography assistant to Daiei’s legendary cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and is familiar with Daiei’s look. The method that surprised Martin Scorsese when The Film Foundation restored Ugetsu (1953) was used again this time: storyboards of all the cuts were transcribed, and the director’s and photographer’s aims were analyzed based on the cut divisions and other information.