Portrait of Madame Yuki
1950 film by Kenji Mizoguchi
Portrait of Madame Yuki (雪夫人絵図, Yuki fujin ezu), also titled A Picture of Madame Yuki, is a 1950 Japanese drama film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.
Plot
The story is seen through the eyes of a star struck new maid. Yuki Shinano, a descendant of the once powerful Shinano family, is living in an unhappy marriage with her husband Naoyuki. Although he treats her disdainfully and has an open affair with his mistress Ayako, whom he even brings to Yuki's residence in Atami, she is tied to him through sexual dependency. Yuki and koto teacher Masaya have a mutual affection since childhood, but are too weak-willed to change the situation.
In an attempt to gain autonomy, Yuki opens an inn in her residence, but Naoyuki makes Ayako the head of the business, only to find out later that he himself has been bought out by Ayako and his lawyer Tateoka. Yuki, pregnant from her husband but suspected of adultery through a scheme contrived by Tateoka, drowns herself in the lake.
Cast
Michiyo Kogure as Yuki Shinano
Yoshiko Kuga as Hamako Abe
Ken Uehara as Masaya Kikunaka
Eijirō Yanagi as Naoyuki Shinano
Sō Yamamura as Tateoka
Yuriko Hamada as Ayako
Kumeko Urabe as housekeeper
Haruya Kato as Seitaro
References
External links
Portrait of Madame Yuki at IMDb
"界の溝口健二の名作が ものすごくムカつく理由。『雪夫人絵図』│山内マリコ「銀幕女優レトロスペクティブ」 (The reason why Kenji Mizoguchi's masterpieces in the world are so irritating. "Portrait of Madame Yuki" │ Mariko Yamauchi "Silver screen actress retrospective")" (in Japanese).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Portrait of Madame Yuki” is 1950 film by Kenji Mizoguchi. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Portrait, Madame and Yuki, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3222239. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portrait of Madame Yuki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.