お蝶夫人の幻想

OCHOU FUJIN NO GENSOU

Drama

MOVIE

MOVIE
Dubbed
SOURCE
OTHER
RELEASE
May 16, 1940
LENGTH
12 min

DESCRIPTION

Butterfly, a faithful Japanese wife, waits patiently in Nagasaki for the return of her American husband, Pinkerton. She sees the Stars and Stripes fluttering atop an approaching ship and rightly surmises that Pinkerton is onboard. However, the feckless foreigner is arriving in the company of his "real" Caucasian wife, causing the heartbroken Butterfly to commit suicide. This masterpiece of Japanese silhouette animation makes the best of its source material.

(Source: The Anime Encyclopedia)

REVIEWS

FluffysheepFL
20/100
Small review of this short, recommended that you do not watch.

Fluffy's very short reveiw of Ochou Fujin no Gensou

To understand the short, you must understand the motivation to create it. For all of its modern history, Japan had been an empire. Taking after the European powers, it started to expand its realm. Starting with Hokkaido, an island north of the Japanese mainland; and continuing on until it had control over Korea --the peninsula now split betwixt the republic of Korea, and the democratic peoples' republic of Korea--; Manchuria-- an area above Korea, now controlled by the peoples' republic of china--; and parts of Sakhalin --an island now owned by the Russian Federation--. By the time this film released, Japan had fallen into virtual fascism, and started another war of conquest against china. Deteriorating relations with the United States led to it putting sanctions on Japan, threatening its economy.
To rally anti-American sentiment, the national government produced several propaganda pieces, such as this one.
Ochou Fujin no Gensou tells the story of a Japanese woman who falls in love with an American sailor, they uhh, have diplomatic relations before the sailor has to leave with his fleet. Years go by, and a child is born, becomes a toddler before suddenly the American fleet returns. But shock of shocks! The sailor hasn't been faithful, and while away got himself an American wife. He brings his new wife to the woman’s house. (Dick move, if you’re going to cheat, why the hell would you bring your new partner to the old one's door? I feel it would make you seem less faithful to both of them) this leads to our main character going to a Buddhist shrine, and killing herself. Leaving the child with the other woman.
I should say the suicide genuinely shocked me, I was not very much expecting it. A bit of a yikes, but all it serves to do is make you feel more for the Japanese woman. This is all purposeful, of course, to make the audience feel less trustworthy of Americans and other foreigners. As a small part of a campaign to justify why you should hate them, to justify war.
Even though this film isn't bad in a vacuum; it looks okay for what it is, makes good use of visuals and visual metaphor, has a decently engaging plot; it still disturbs me because of its sinister purposes, so I couldn’t even think of calling this thing good. I would rate it poorly because of that.

Correction and further information. Whilst this film was almost certainly still made for propaganda purposes, it is actually an adaptation of an 1898 short story and 1900 musical play by John Luther Long & David Belasco respectively. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madama_Butterfly , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Butterfly_(short_story) ). The film seems pretty faithful to the book. Knowing this film's true origins may influence your views on it, it also gives us the names of our main cast. Depending on the version, our lead, madam butterfly, is called Cho-Cho-San or Cio-Cio-San. The man's name is Benjamin-Franklin-Pinkerton, and their child is either named "trouble" (book) or Dolore (lit 'sorrow') (play), the American wife's name is either Adelaide (book) or Kate (play). The play and short story contain a few other characters, most importantly a maid named Suzuki. There are also a few different scenes in each version of the story, especially the play, which is the longest version. Most interestingly, whilst in the play and this film madam butterfly commits suicide, in the short story Suzuki enters the room and pinches the baby to make it cry, hearing this madam butterfly stops and dresses her wound. Score, amended to 20/100, was 15/100.
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