Movie

Night of the Felines

Name: Night of the Felines
Released: 1972

1972 • Unknown

Woke Score

out of 10

Plot

Set in a Shinjuku bathhouse brothel, the film uncovers the sexual eccentricities of everyday people. Focusing on three female prostitutes, the colorful, unpredictable look into the hidden underbelly of Japanese nightlife is playful but also unafraid to explore the darker sides of the business. The fleeting nature of relationships in such an environment and the consequences of toying with feelings are presented with a melancholy tinge.

Overall Series Review

Night of the Felines is a 1972 Japanese drama that dives into the hidden world of a bathhouse brothel in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The film tracks the lives of three central sex workers, particularly Masako, and her complicated relationships with clients, fellow workers, and her bisexual neighbor, Honda, who has a male lover, Makoto. The narrative is a colorful, often melancholic look at the transactional nature of sex work and the emotional toll it takes on the people involved. It contrasts the selfish, ego-driven satisfaction of the male clients with the harsh, exploitative reality for the women, who are often pawns of Yakuza pimps. The story is an unflinching exploration of unconventional and fleeting relationships, sexual eccentricities, and the darker side of human desire, without offering easy answers or moral lectures.

Categorical Breakdown

Identity Politics2/10

The film’s setting and characters are historically and culturally authentic to 1970s Japan. Conflict centers on the economic exploitation of sex workers by Yakuza and the complexity of interpersonal relationships. The narrative does not focus on intersectional hierarchy or vilify a specific race; characters are judged by their actions within a corrupt subculture.

Oikophobia1/10

The movie is a Japanese production set in a specific, transgressive subculture within Tokyo. The film’s critique is aimed at the corruption and exploitation of the Yakuza-run sex industry. It is not Western media demonstrating hostility toward Western civilization, nor does it elevate external cultures as morally superior.

Feminism6/10

Female leads are depicted as exploited pawns, losing autonomy to their pimps, rather than as “Girl Bosses.” The movie explores the tragedy and emotional consequences of this career. The women's lives are defined by their transactional work, suggesting fulfillment is found outside the traditional family structure, which aligns with anti-natal messaging, though framed tragically rather than politically. Male characters are often exploitative or manipulative, but not universally bumbling idiots.

LGBTQ+7/10

Alternative sexualities are a central part of the main plot, which revolves around a relationship dynamic involving a bisexual man, his male lover (a prostitute), and a female sex worker. The narrative centers on this unconventional pairing and thus deconstructs the traditional male-female structure as the normative standard for the story's focus. The sexual ideology is openly explored and the core relationship is non-traditional.

Anti-Theism7/10

The core setting of the film is a commercialized, money-driven, transactional world where relationships are fleeting and a person's value is linked to their price. This environment reflects a spiritual vacuum and portrays morality as subjective, based on money and power dynamics between clients, workers, and pimps. There is no overt hostility or critique of organized religion mentioned, but the world lacks any source of transcendent moral law.