A silent era gem where forbidden love collides with cultural chaos — and gambling debts.
Kimura, a drunk and a gambler, has no affection for his daughter Kiku-San, who falls in love with Dick Tower, an American college friend of her brother Okuma.
Acting
Shirley Mason's expressive eyes do ALL the heavy lifting.
Direction
Durning navigates dicey racial politics with surprising nuance.
Director
Bernard J. Durning
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This film emerged during the 'Yellow Peril' panic, yet surprisingly centers Japanese characters with relative sympathy — a rarity for 1918 Hollywood.
Nearly all prints were destroyed in a 1937 Fox vault fire; surviving fragments suggest the interracial romance ending was more explicit than censors preferred.
US
