ヨコハマメリー

By the end, she'd become an art object. "Yokohama Mary" arrived in Yokohama's Isezaki district in 1961, at the age of 40, and disappeared suddenly 35 years later, in 1995. She must have been the most striking hooker in Japan, and not only because of her age; she was always made up in whiteface and usually dressed in white too. during her years on the streets many people noticed her, gossiped about her, speculated about her past. She influenced butoh dance, she provoked S-M novelist Dan Oniroku, she starred in photographer Mori Hideo's book Mary, Pass of the Habour - and now Sugiyama Giho has staged a play about her.
　　
With the help of chanson singer Nagato Ganjiro (Mary's long-term friend and benefactor, himself a former hooker, now ravaged by cancer), Nakamura Takayuki's documentary pieces together the facts of Mary's life, from her origins as a hooker for American GIs in Yokosuka to her current berth in a home for the elderly. It's a fascinating trip, partly because it explores a hidden subculture, and partly because this kind of investigative cultural history is almost unknown in Japanese cinema.

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