Director: Yasuzô Masumura
Stars: Raizô Ichikawa, Ayako Wakao, Hideko Takamine
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Japan
The Wife of Seishû Hanaoka is set in feudal Japan. Its two central characters are based on the wife and mother of Japanese physician Seishû Hanaoka (1760-1835). Hanaoka developed a herbal general anesthetic, “Tsusensan”, some forty years before the better-known innovations of his American counterparts Long, Wells and Morton.