Fluffys 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 antiAmerican 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 hasnt been faithful and while away got himself an American wife. He brings his new wife to the womans house. Dick move if youre going to cheat why the hell would you bring your new partner to the old ones 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 isnt 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 couldnt 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/MadamaButterfly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MadameButterflyshortstory . The film seems pretty faithful to the book. Knowing this films 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 ChoChoSan or CioCioSan. The mans name is BenjaminFranklinPinkerton and their child is either named trouble book or Dolore lit sorrow play the American wifes 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.