War movies rarely target the women behind men.
Japanese director Katsuyo Honki, however, used a fun film called "Rice Riot" to depict a group of Japanese women before the outbreak of World War II.
This article contains spoilers.
1
Every July and August, it is called the "Broken Pot Month" by the people on the toyama coast – although the rice is abundant here, it is transported out for sale, and due to the decline in summer fishing, the villagers have no seafood to produce, and the dry pots are broken.
In order to support their families, men have left their homes to work, leaving only women to carry rice to make ends meet.
Although women work hard to make money, the shipper's salary is only enough for a man to pay for rice a day, but when the price of rice rises, it will face the problem of no rice under the pot.
Afraid of what's coming.
Japan is about to invade Siberia, the rice on the market is being bought by the army and the state, and the price of rice in Toyama Prefecture has begun to rise.
At first, everyone could barely support themselves hungry, but the price of rice doubled, and the women who stayed behind could not hold back.
The elderly Qing mother-in-law took the lead and led the women straight to the beach, trying to prevent merchant ships from transporting the county's rice out by force.
The petty dispute was described by newspapers as a "women's riot," which attracted ichinose, a young journalist at Osaka's new newspaper.
Knowing that the rice merchants had contacts with the police station, the women still ran to the door of the rice merchants overnight to protest, and begged the rice merchants to reduce the price.
Because he witnessed the persistence and efforts of the Toyama woman, Ichinose's true feelings depicted everything he saw.
However, when the article appeared in the newspaper, the "rice riot" was whitewashed by the editor-in-chief as a revolt or even a revolution for the toyama women, which puzzled Ichinose - is it true that the report is only eye-catching and not true?
What everyone did not expect was that this false report attracted the attention of men in other regions, who believed that women could be so brave that they could not lose in this matter.
As a result, a commotion about the price of rice broke out throughout the country, the government opened warehouses to release grain, adjusted the price of rice, and the women of Toyama Prefecture finally survived the terrible broken pot month and exchanged hard work and effort for a temporary and peaceful life.
2
As a work depicting female group portraits, "Rice Riot" features many women with different personalities.
Seemingly crazy and insane, but in fact, the main heart of the mother-in-law who maintains principles and never compromises.
Whenever something big happened to a woman, she would be the first to come to justice, and even if she was arrested for protesting in the middle of the night, she still did not eat the food that came from her and insisted until she was acquitted.
She has no culture, but she knows that the so-called ideals cannot be filled immediately, and all actions must be based on survival as the first law.
Secondly, there is the "military division" of the entire group- Ah Ito.
When she was a child, she read books for several years, but she could not bear the trick of fate and was forced to marry to Toyama, and because her husband went to sea to work, he has been earning money to support his family.
As the only literate woman, she often read newspapers to everyone, and always made a clever move at critical moments to turn the crisis into safety.
Along with them in the rice commotion were Ah Yuki, who was dependent on her daughter, Ah Xuan, whose husband had cheated, and many hard-working wives whose husbands were not around.
In addition to this group of women who are often in crisis of survival, there are several women who are very different from them who are also fighting.
One is Aku, a restaurant girl, who has been living on men before the rice riot, but seeing that Aji has successfully reduced the price of rice by her own efforts, Aku also decides to make a living on her own hands.
The other is The snow teacher who teaches the children in the village, as a spectator of the incident, she is in the upper class and knows the book, she can accurately understand the woman's mind, and finally integrate into it, and together become a fighter against those in power.
Although these women are not perfect brave people and will choose to compromise, they have withstood all kinds of hardships and become strong women.
Corresponding to these women, there are also a variety of men.
Mr. Kuroiwa, the richest rice merchant in Toyama Prefecture, represents all power and oppression, and the collusion of officials and businessmen has made every effort to make women go astray in order to make money.
The husband of Ah Ying, who stayed in the village, superficially obeyed his wife, but in fact he was the owner of the house who saw through everything and manipulated his wife's choice to participate in the turmoil.
A young journalist who suddenly came to the village, Ichinose, who lacked social experience, thought that Toyama women were already very powerful, and only later did he understand that everything was forced by life under the guidance of Yuki-sensei, and he had a heartfelt admiration for them in a difficult situation.
The three men show the other gender's view of women from different perspectives, while oppression, control and admiration present the motivation behind the rice riot in a three-dimensional way - they are not real heroes, but they have exploded with unprecedented perseverance on the way to survival.
In order to make the story more interesting, "Rice Riot" also has a "storyteller" who breaks the fourth wall from time to time, who reviews and evaluates the whole thing in various forms, and is the audience's spokesperson in the movie, following the protagonist's footsteps together and shaking the society where the woman is always trampled under her feet.
3
"Rice Riot" does not tell a humiliating and difficult story like other female films, but jumps between comedy and drama through cheerful background music and comedic characters.
"Japanese Sugi" Inoue Masayoshi changed his previous style, his thin face with dark skin, sometimes full of desire for the outside world, sometimes helpless to survive, and had to make the audience believe that she was the helpless young woman from the sea.
However, "Rice Riot" is very immature in the form of presenting the theme.
In order to make men understand the helplessness of women, the snow teacher who wanders between the upper and lower levels is like a moving "central idea", she constantly explains to reporters the mental journey of Toyama women, but also to the audience to interpret the motives of the characters' behavior, coupled with the men who continue to output various evaluations, the film exudes a sense of preaching urgency.
This means that even the main creative team itself is well aware that the plot is not yet full enough to make the theme surface, and the extension of the value of the work also needs lines to be clear.
The real reason for this lack of self-confidence is that the so-called commotion has not reached the level of "riot" or "revolution" at all, and women have indeed succeeded in bringing down the price of rice, but this is the end of the whole movement.
As Ah Ito's mother-in-law said, self-righteous men always try to create some new world storm, but the one who really pays the price for it, no matter what era, is the woman behind them.
The "expedition to Siberia", which made the price of rice soar, was the prelude to World War II, and what awaited these women was a more brutal test, and the comedy from a gender perspective was only the starting point of the next tragedy.
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