Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute

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Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute
Directed by	Shohei Imamura
Release date(s)	1973 or 1975
Running time	70 min.
Language	Japanese
IMDb profile

Karayuki-san, the Making of a Prostitute is a 1975 Japanese film by director Shohei Imamura. It is a documentary on one of the Japanese "karayuki-san," who were women that were taken from their homes in Japan and used as prostitutes in the post-war period. Many of these women were told that they were doing this to support their families because of the extreme poverty that the war left much of Japan to live in. Imamura focuses on a particular such woman who was sent to Malaysia and never returned to Japan. Joan Mellen, in The Waves at Genji's Door, called this film, "Perhaps the most brilliant and feeling of Imamura's fine documentaries."

The Karauki-San women are not to be confused with the comfort women, who were namely Chinese and Korean women that were forced into prostitution by the Japanese during the period of 1936-1939 when Japan took over Nanking. See The Rape of Nanking (book) for more info on the Comfort Women.