Did MGM ever really think audiences would want to see a movie about an American woman who married a Japanese diplomat and lived in Japan during World War Two? Well, the memoir on which this was based was a best seller and A Majority of One had been a hit on Broadway... but still, this flopped.
Truth be told it might have done better if it was more effective as a drama. This sounds like it has the material of an interesting film - Tennessee girl Carroll Baker falls in love with Japanese diplomat James Shigeta, and moves to Japan in the 1930s; they return to the US before Pearl Harbour then return to Japan during the war and have a horrid time.
But it's dull. First of all Baker and Shigeta don't have much chemistry as a couple, so it doesn't work as a love story; I've liked Baker and Shigeta in other movies, but I never got a sense here of what they saw in each other or why they were together. Shigeta's character was a little on the dull side - a worthy, conscientious Japanese opposed to the war, but Baker's wasn't that much more interesting.
There are scenes which should have worked but don't - Baker facing racism in the US and Japan, Shigeta under threat from Japanese militaristic forces (as exemplified by Testuro Tamba who was James Bond's sidekick in You Only Live Twice), Baker seeing the faces of US POWs while in a train. Maybe director Etienner Perier was miscast - it feels like a movie where everyone's going through the emotions but it's made without passion.
The biggest thing in the movie's favour is its novelty - there are hardly Hollywood movies which tell the story of a Western woman in Japan. But that doesn't sustain the viewer the whole time.
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