Older Brother, Younger Sister

Mon, the elder daughter of a rural family, returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with college student Kobata. Her parents fear a scandal that might threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San. Also, Mon, as the film suggests, supports San's education by prostitution, as the father's business had to close down and the mother hardly manages to finance the family by running a small store. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of a disciplinarian, first beating up Kobata when he visits the family to apologise, and later Mon. Still, Mon forgives him and returns to the capital.

• Machiko Kyō as Mon
• Masayuki Mori as Inokichi
• Yoshiko Kuga as San
• Eiji Funakoshi as Kobata
• Kumeko Urabe as Riki, the mother
• Reizaburō Yamamoto as Akaza, the father

Six years after the film's premiere, film historian Donald Richie objected that by "attempting to move from realism to naturalism, Naruse is occasionally at fault in manipulating his characters a bit too obviously".{{cite book |last1=Anderson |first1=Joseph L. |last2=Richie |first2=Donald |author-link= |date=1959 |title=The Japanese Film – Art & Industry |location=Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo |publisher=Charles E. Tuttle Company |pages=195–196}} In 2008, film scholar Alexander Jacoby called Older Brother, Younger Sister an "uncharacteristically brutal film in which the emotional tensions […] explode into physical violence".{{cite book|last=Jacoby |first=Alexander |date=2008 |title=Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors: From the Silent Era to the Present Day |location=Berkeley |publisher=Stone Bridge Press |page=209 |isbn=978-1-933330-53-2}} Keith Uhlich of Slant Magazine gave the film 3.5 of 4 stars for showing Naruse's "considerable skill at portraying household dynamics".{{cite web|url=http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/older-brother-younger-sister/1822 |title=Older Brother, Younger Sister review |last=Uhlich |first=Keith |magazine=Slant Magazine |date=6 November 2005 |access-date=21 January 2021}}

First published in 1934, Saisei Murō's short story Ani imōto had won the Bungei Konwakai Award. It had been adapted for the screen the first time in 1936 by Sotoji Kimura{{cite book|editor-last2=Phillips |editor-first2=Alastair |editor-last1=Fujiki |editor-first1=Hideaki |date=2020 |title=Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts |location=London and New York |publisher=The British Film Institute/Bloomsbury |isbn=978-1-8445-7679-1}} and again in 1976 by Tadashi Imai. The story has been translated into English by Edward Seidensticker and is available in the anthology Modern Japanese Stories.

Older Brother, Younger Sister was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1985{{cite web|url=https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/6228/releases/MOMA_1985_0082_79.pdf |title=Mikio Naruse: A Master of the Japanese Cinema Opens at MoMA September 23 |website=Museum of Modern Art |access-date=20 July 2023}} as part of its retrospective on Mikio Naruse, and at the Cinémathèque Française in 2016 and 2017.{{cite web|url=https://www.cinematheque.fr/film/60846.html |title=Frère et sœur |website=Cinémathèque Française |language=fr |access-date=20 July 2023}}

{{Reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|0045507}}
• {{cite web|url=https://mikionaruse.wordpress.com/older-brother-younger-sister/ |title=Older Brother, Younger Sister |website=A Mikio Naruse Companion |date=5 April 2016 |access-date=21 January 2021}}

{{Mikio Naruse}}

Category:1953 drama films

Category:1953 films

Category:Japanese black-and-white films

Category:Japanese drama films

Category:Films based on short fiction

Category:Films directed by Mikio Naruse

Category:Daiei Film films

Category:Films scored by Ichirō Saitō

Category:1950s Japanese films

Category:1950s Japanese-language films

Category:Japanese-language drama films