The Garden of Women (1954)

Established in 1908 by its current President, Shorin's Women's College in Kyoto is a private institution of higher learning - a boarding school - although most treat it as a glorified finishing school for the primarily wealthy student body to emerge as suitable candidates of wives for prominent husbands. The policies and teachings of the school are old fashioned, strict and repressive, almost like the students are in a jail without the locks. The policies and teachings are all under the guise of the administrators caring for the girls, whereas they are arguably most concerned about the view of the school to the outside world, they relying on donations from wealthy industrialists to survive. As the administrator with who they deal most often, the girls see as the primary face of that oppression being the dormitory matron, Mayumi Gojô. Most of the students want more humane conditions at the school, but the administrators are able to use whatever dissent that emerges from the students against them, in dividing and conquering based partly on lies and partly on different motivations of the students. The stories of two of those very different students are told in their fight for a better life at the school. One is Akiko Hayashino, largely seen by the students and the administrators as the chief agitator, some believing she being a card carrying Communist, any political thought which is contrary to policy. The daughter of a wealthy industrialist, she is given much leeway as her father is one of the school's chief benefactors, and as she holds damaging information about some at the school in her privileged state. Two is working class Yoshie Izushi, whose father is trying to arrange her marriage to a prominent businessman, whereas she truly wants to learn - she having difficulties catching up after being away for three terms needing to work - and eventually marry her poor activist boyfriend, Sankichi Shimoda, with who her father won't even allow her to associate.