Osaka Elegy

Osaka Elegy
1936 Japanese movie poster featuring Isuzu Yamada
Directed by	Kenji Mizoguchi
Produced by	Masaichi Nagata
Written by	Kenji Mizoguchi (Original Story) Yoshikata Yoda (Screenplay)
Starring	Isuzu Yamada Seiichi Takegawa Chiyoko Okura
Music by	Kōichi Takagi
Cinematography	Minoru Miki
Edited by	Tatsuko Sakane
Distributed by	Shochiku
Release date	May 28, 1936
Running time	71 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Osaka Elegy (浪華悲歌, Naniwa erejii^?) (originally Naniwa Elegy) is a 1936 Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi considered the film his first serious effort as a director, and it was also his first commercial and critical success in Japan. Osaka Elegy is often considered a companion piece to Mizoguchi's next film, Sisters of the Gion, which was released the same year and featured much the same cast and crew.

Although not among Mizoguchi's well-known works, Osaka Elegy continues to be acclaimed by critics.

Sumiko Asai (Yoko Umemura) is the owner of the Asai Drug Company. He is unhappily married with a nagging wife, who unashamedly visits the theatre with his male colleagues. Mr Asai tries to get one of his employees, telephone operator Ayako Murai (Isuzu Yamada), to meet him for dinner. She discusses this after work with a male colleague (and apparently boyfriend), Mr Nishimura, revealing that her father is in serious difficulties: unemployed and threatened with arrest after embezzling 300 yen.

After an argument at home she decides to take up Mr Asai's offer and become his mistress. She quits her job and lives alone in a modern apartment block, bored and waiting for Mr Asai. When they attend a Bunraku puppet show, Dr Yoko calls them out. His wife greets them, furious that they are having an affair. However, Mr Fujino, a business acquaintance of Asai intervenes, lying that Ayako was his date, not Asai's.

Ayako accidentally meets Mr Nishimura and explains her geisha-like attire as being due to now working in a beauty salon. She is told that her father is now working at her old company for Mr Asai. Mr Nishimura asks to marry her and she runs off in embarrassment. Due to a misunderstanding, the doctor goes to Mr Asai's house when he is told Asai is ill and the wife guesses that he is with Ayako and tracks him down in his sick-bed with Ayako tending him. Mrs Asai demands that the affair ends and it does, but Ayako has paid her father's debt and keeps her apartment.