There is a melodramatic moment in No Regrets for Our Youth that represents a postmodern shift in Japanese cinema. Yukie (Setsuko Hara), a young woman trying to find her place amidst militaristic Japan of the 1930s, is being praised for finishing an intricate, traditional flower arrangement. Suddenly, she tears her creation apart, exclaiming, “This isn’t me!” She then drops a few, forlorn blossoms in a bowl of water—the leftovers of a deconstructed artwork, meant to represent her re-forming identity as a woman (and Japan’s as a nation).
No Regrets for Our Youth, then, also functions as a political project. Made immediately after World War II’s end, in the midst of American-enforced demilitarization, the movie traces the anti-imperialist resistance efforts that took place within Japan before and during the war. The framing for this is another melodramatic touch: a love triangle, with Yukie negotiating between a government-friendly lawyer named Itokawa (Akitake Kôno) and an underground resistor named Noge (Susumu Fujita).
With No Regrets for Our Youth, director Akira Kurosawa nudged Japan both politically and aesthetically into a new era. The movie begins by employing familiar, silent-movie film grammar, clearly communicating the dynamics of the love triangle by employing blocking and close-ups as the trio crosses a river while on a hike together in their student youth. From there, the film grows more experimental and sophisticated, never more so than a montage of a distraught Yukie striking dramatic poses against a door, the image transitioning from one to the other with a dissolve.
As Yukie, Hara gets a head start on the “Noriko trilogy” she would make with director Yasujiro Ozu (Late Spring, Early Summer, and Tokyo Story), where she plays similarly named single women who gently push back against societal expectations in varying ways. Here, her Yukie matures into just such a woman, with Hara registering the transformation via delicate facial expressions and telling gestures. The performance becomes more broad—back to silent-movie strokes—for the film’s extended final section, in which Yukie banishes herself to the difficult life of a rice farmer in a rural village. It registers not so much as a step forward as a punishing regression—a melodramatic symbol of a nation paying for its recent sins.
(5/14/2026)
