{"id":82503,"date":"2026-09-16T09:31:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T01:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=82503"},"modified":"2026-09-16T09:31:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T01:31:45","slug":"karayuki-san-the-making-of-a-prostitute-1975","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=82503","title":{"rendered":"Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute (1975)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’m getting to be quite a fan of Sh\u014dhei Imamura with his predilection for covering the underside of societies. Here he highlights the plight of Japanese prostitutes who were tricked into coming to Southeast Asia in the early 20th century. What’s more, the primary subject is Kikuyo who arrived in Klang and so Imamura comes to interview her in Klang and other places in Malaysia in 1973. Not only does this reveal an almost certainly unknown part of history even to us, it’s a fascinating treasure trove of footage of life in Malaysia from that era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the early 1970s, Imamura travels to Klang, Selangor to speak with Kikuyo Zendo who was then 73 years old. As they move about the port town by boat and on foot, Kikuyo recounts how she was born to a poor family with many siblings and raised by her eldest brother after her parents’ early death. Wanting to find work, she was tricked onto a ship and arrived in Klang. To work off the debt of her passage, she is forced into sex work and shows Imamura the very building where she worked. She would later move to Singapore and eventually ended up in Ipoh where she married an Indian. Back in Japan, Imamura investigates her background and learns that her family were burakumin and therefore faced discrimination. We then see Imamura and Kikuyo visit a number of other karayuki-san in Malaysia, including one who seemingly speaks more Malay than Japanese and lives in a government-run retirement home in Kuala Lumpur. The film ends with them visiting the Japanese Cemetery showing the many Japanese buried and we can only imagine the forgotten lives they’d led.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kikuyo’s personal story of being deceived into prostitution and trafficked is a familiar one the world over. It’s still invaluable to hear it told in such detail and frankness. There are some fifty years in between her time in Klang and the filming of this documentary, but the shop lot where she lived and worked appears little changed and still seems to be a brothel. Imamura is a skilled interviewer as well. Noticing that she is indifferent to Japan’s loss in the Second World War, he learns of the burakumin background she never told him about and infers that she has at best mixed feelings about her homeland. Imamura consistently critiques Japan’s government and society in this film. He contends that these sex workers were effectively among the very first wave of exports from Japan back when the country was very poor. At that time, their remittances to their families helped contribute to the economy and open new markets. Later when Japan grew richer, the karayuki-san became a source of embarrassment and laws were passed to ban them. Yet the government never took any action to repatriate them and Japanese society chose to forget about them. It’s certainly eye-opening to me that at one point there might have been tens of thousands of them and today some of their descendants still live in Malaysia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For us Malaysians specifically, this film just keeps dropping all kinds of fascinating and salacious details. Kikuyo claims for example that her very first client and the man who took her virginity was a Malay police chief. She also comments on who their clientele were, that the Chinese were the regulars until conflict between Japan and China led to the Chinese boycotting all Japanese products which included the prostitutes. After that they started accepting more Indian clients. It’s a notable pattern that these Japanese women seem to have married Indians. Of course they have not all followed the same trajectory in life. Kikuyo never returned to Japan even after reestablishing contact with her family there and sending them money until a burakumin association helped her. Another woman seemed to have made several visits to Japan but always returned to Malaysia as she has already made a life here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As usual, Imamura never covers the suffering of any other parties. Kikuyo notes the presence of many more Chinese prostitutes in the neighboring brothels but they’re not part of the story here. Nor does the film have any curiosity about Malaysia itself or its people. Fair enough, so we have to content ourselves with the shots of what the country looked like at that time as well as the crowds of curious bystanders watching Imamura and Kikuyo. Like it or not, the karayuki-san were a part of the history of Southeast Asia and it’s great that Imamura spent the effort to document them. I always enjoy being reminded that the world is more diverse, more surprising and more interesting than anyone can imagine and this was a very good reminder indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m getting to be quite a fan of Sh\u014dhei Imamura with his predilection for covering the underside of societies. Here he highlights the plight of Japanese prostitutes who were tricked into coming to Southeast Asia in the early 20th century. What’s more, the primary subject is Kikuyo who arrived in Klang and so Imamura comes … Continue reading Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute (1975)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82503"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82593,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82503\/revisions\/82593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}