When a Woman Ascends the StairsOnna ga kaidan wo agaru toki
Move over, Douglas Sirk: we’ve just seen a ‘women’s picture’ that makes us forget all others. Japanese director Mikio Naruse’s 1960 drama When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki) is simply a masterpiece, a superior story about life as it is lived in the Ginza district of small bars. Hideko Takamine’s supervising hostess feels the economic pinch that gives ulcers to small business operators all over the world. Nobody seems to be on the side of an independent woman. Creditors, competitors and potential ‘patrons’ all want a piece of her life.
Beautiful widow Keiko “Mama” Yashiro (Hideko Takamine) is a Ginza district bar hostess slipping into debt. She supervises several younger bar girls, whose job it is to entertain and serve businessmen in need of relaxation and support. Some of the girls, including the cute Junko Inchihashi (Reiko Dan of Red Beard ) turn ‘pro’ and sleep with the customers, but Keiko has avoided becoming the mistress of any of the married industrialists that frequent her bar. Keiko is pressured to increase the popularity of her bar but can do nothing when ex-employee Yuri (Keiko Awaji) lures away her best clients. As a number of financial and emotional setbacks begin to wear her down, Keiko considers going the kept woman route.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs could also be titled ‘when a woman goes into business.’ This absorbing drama takes a character we would normally associate with film noir into the real world of the Ginza, where a hostess’s fortune is measured in how many men she can attract to 
her bar. Keiko is not a prostitute, although many of her girls regularly sleep with clients for money. She’s also not a Geisha; one client brings a painted, traditionally attired Geisha with him to her club. Keiko is a firm-minded woman trying to survive in a business climate cruelly slanted against women. The businessmen run up large bills for the illusion of being ‘special’ and the prestige of having beautiful women wait on them. They can withdraw their patronage at any time. Individual hostesses must decide how best to behave in a climate that encourages men to make passes. Keiko is convinced that being too easy isn’t good policy. Besides the personal degradation, she feels that sleeping with a casual beau would lessen her attractiveness in the long run.
Through it all, bar manager Kenichi Komatsu (Tatsuya Nakadai) stays secretly in love with Keiko, convinced that she’s above the venality around her
Behind everything is the illusion of carefree prosperity. Even Keiko must spend on a fancy wardrobe and an attractive apartment to maintain a false front of success. Her clients play games of false humility, praising the success of others while talking poor and spending big. The nature of the job requires Keiko to be two-faced to all of them. Only Komatsu thinks he sees the real Keiko behind her placid guise as the respected Mama-san, the impeccable hostess devoted to her dead husband.
They offer the financing Keiko needs to gain independence, but always with the price tag of sexual favors
Several of Keiko’s high rollers have shifted their business to Yuri’s new bar. Yuri looks successful but has run up enormous bills and is losing money. Keiko is advised to emulate Yuri’s hip, modern attitude but resists changing from what works for her. She doesn’t wear flashy kimonos or western dresses and isn’t as flirtatious as her girls, who can come on as real gold diggers. Keiko’s clients owe big bar tabs, but she doesn’t hound them with phone calls as does Yuri; it’s just not polite. If Keiko doesn’t collect the money, she must pay it herself. In fact, when a competing hostess dies, heartless creditors immediately descend on her penniless family.