Shojo yutai / 処女受胎 (‘Immaculate Conception’, 1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #146

Ayako Wakao

 

This Daiei production stars Ayako Wakao as Aiko, a modernist oil painter who has hit a creative wall. Searching for inspiration, she comes to believe that having a child will solve her problems but, having no desire to get married, she decides to try artificial insemination. One of the sperm donors at the clinic she attends is a student, Satoru (Takao Ito), who likes to feel that his sperm is going to beautiful women. When he sees Aiko visiting the clinic and learns she is a patient, he pressures a nurse, Keiko (Sanae Nakahara), to ensure that it’s his seed that Aiko receives…

 

Based on a novel by Jugo Kuroiwa, (who had also supplied the source material for With My Husband’s Consent), this is a silly story in questionable taste and with a very poor ending. The film relies heavily on its star, who I believe has even more costume changes here than she did in Ojo-san – although in this case some of the clothes look like they could have come from Primark. In fact, the whole thing looks like it was shot on the cheap and in a rush, which may partly be due to shrinking budgets at Daiei at the time. However, the film’s short running time of 82 minutes and total lack of name actors other than Wakao also suggests that it was most likely a B-movie which played at the bottom half of a double bill. 

Takao Ito basks in Shima's trademark sunset lighting

 

Director Koji Shima had a weakness for the orange glow of sunset in his colour films, and this is featured in a number of scenes here. He also liked to make dramatic use of harsher kinds of weather, so it’s no surprise to see a rainstorm at one point. Another Shima trademark is his use of symbolic shots, which are mostly absent from this film, apart from this rather clumsy one which again indicates that haste was the name of the game in making this movie:

Sanae Nakahara and Takao Ito

 

I love a good dream sequence, but the one featured here is pretty mediocre and rather obviously shot through a layer of gauze (as are, for some reason, the scenes at the beginning of the film in which Aiko searches for inspiration in a windy field, at a flamenco dance and at a diving pool). 

 

All in all, Shojo yutai is a very shallow treatment of the theme of artificial insemination which tries to redeem itself with some awkward moralising towards the end before getting really weird in the final scene, when talk of Aiko viewing men as mere ‘fertiliser’ causes one character to act in a most peculiar fashion. 

 

Thanks to A.K., and to Coralsundy for the English subtitles, which can be found here. 

DVD at Amazon Japan.