One of three movies in 1935 directed by Mikio Naruse and also starring Sachiko Chiba, The Girl in the Rumor is one of Naruse’s most serious portraits of women characters in the thirties.
Father owns a sake shop which has fallen on hard times, mostly because Grandfather partied away all the money before retiring to his room to drink sake and play the shamisen. There are two daughters – Kunie the traditional elder who helps run the shop and the more modern Kimiko who wears western clothes, listens to jazz, and eventually “dates” a young man. Kunie receives a marriage offer from a wealthy family who will pay off the business debts, but Father is very hesitant because he had been very unhappy with his arranged marriage and still has a long-term mistress. When Kunie goes to the formal meeting with the young man, she takes along Kimiko. The young man is quite attracted to the brash, lively Kimiko and changes the marriage offer to Kimiko. This ought to make everyone happy, since this is the man Kimiko has been meeting for walks and chats, on one of which she is seen by Kunie. However, unaware it is the man she likes, Kimiko refuses to even consider an arranged marriage. At the same time, she learns that she is really a bastard, the daughter of the mistress but raised in her father’s home. She also refuses to acknowledge her real mother and is ready to leave home when her father is suddenly arrested. This ends the business and destroys all hope of marriage for either daughter.
The movie is from an original script by Naruse and is much closer in tone and storyline to his fifties movies than most of his pre-war sound films, so that auteurists can see him groping toward his later strengths. However, it is very short, less than an hour, and often feels a bit choppy. It is never clear what crime Father has committed, though it has to do with changing the sake in some way.
Unusually, it is Father who resists finalizing the marriage offer for both Kunie and Kimiko. The unhappiness with his dead wife haunts him, and de doesn’t want to send a daughter off to a husband who will eventually turn to a mistress, just as Father had done. Nor does he want Kunie to sacrifice for the family, though Kunie is more than willing to do so (though not particularly eager about this particular man). Ironically, the marriage offer to Kimiko would solve everything – the mistress could move in as the new mother, whom Kunie already loves, the business would be saved, and Kunie could stay in the shop where she is happy with Father until a proposal that she likes came along for a young man who could be adopted into the family and take over the shop.
The destruction of the family is simply taken for granted by everyone, which drains much of the emotion of the climax. No one says it, but Kimiko’s marriage would be off the moment it became known she was illegitimate, and Kunie could not go in her sister’s place even if she wanted to because the family has now been disgraced. All this is left unspoken because everyone understands it. The neighbors simply speculate about what kind of shop will take its place as Father is led away, the fact of the arrest taken as proof of guilt and that the family will disappear from the neighborhood because of the disgrace.
Interestingly, Sachiko Chiba, who had been the essence of the modern girl in Wife! Be Like a Rose, here is cast as the quiet, traditional daughter Kunie. Ryuko Uzemono rather exaggerates her “modern” attitudes with a hip-swinging walk, and it takes a long time before we realize that the movie is really about her and her father, not about the radiant Kunie. Kimiko, the most approachable character for Americans, eventually becomes the least likeable. She constantly interrupts the marriage meeting, her records disturb the entire household, and she instantly and rather brutally refuses to even speak to her real mother because she has been a “mistress,” something we have seen in numerous other movies where a mistress is considered even lower than a prostitute, including Naruse’s previous Wife! Be Like a Rose.
I can offer no explanation of the title. Neither Kunie nor Kimiko is the subject of gossip at any time. (It can be found on YouTube as Daughters in Rumor. but a search for “girl in the rumor” will produce a completely different movie.)
Japanonfilm 
Hi Japanonfilm – I’m glad you wrote this review; it’s a bit of a sleeper in the Naruse canon, but I think it’s quite good. A few bits of trivia: Sachiko Chiba was at the time of filming married to Naruse, but they split up not long after. This might have been her last film under his direction. As to the legal trouble the father gets into, that was depicted in those scenes where he’s sampling the sake, and the old man complains that it doesn’t taste as good as it used to. He’s watering it down to save on cost. He gets busted for selling an adulterated product.
As to the title, that’s a little mysterious, I agree. But I think the key to it is in the final moments, where Naruse pulls back while the father is being arrested and taken away, and in the foreground are some guys chuckling at the goings on – in other words, gossiping, trading in rumors. The title literally translates as “Rumor Daughter”, although I’m sure it’s idiomatic Japanese about which I’ll never be educated enough to understand. But the reveal that one of the daughters was the result of an affair, and that likely a lot of the locals knew but she didn’t, suggests the enigmatic title as well.
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Thanks. Watering the sake was the best assumption I could come up with as well, but I couldn’t quite see how that was an arrestable crime — it would just result in fewer customers. But then I’m no specialist in Japanese law.
All my reference books indicate that this was the last movie in which Naruse directed Chiba before they were married in 1937. They were not divorced until the middle of the war, after a child was born and Chiba went back to her family’s business and quit acting as well.
I appreciate your comments.
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