Kenji Mizoguchi directed more than eighty films before 1954. He enjoyed full recognition from his peers and from audiences in Japan as well as in Western countries. In 1952 his Saikaku ichidai onna earned the Silver Lion in Venice in 1952 and so did his Ugetsu monigatari in 1953. Masaichi Nagata, president and founder of the film production firm Daiei offered him a contract for Yokihi (Empress Yang Kwei-fei) which was to be Mizoguchi’s first colour film. This co-production with the Hong-Kong based firm Run Run Shaw is about an episode from the history of China and Japan: the tragic fate of Empress Yang Kwei-fei and her noble death. The tragedy had grown into a legend when two monks, Po Chu-Yi (772-846) and Tou-Fu wrote songs about the heroine, respectively known as “The Song of the Long Regrets” and “The Ballad of the Luth”. Though the political context in 1955 was a period of hostility between China and Japan, the film was made successfully and became known as Mizoguchi’s first colour film. How developed was the research in film and colour at the time? What was Mizoguchi’s own opinion of colour in film then? How did colour contribute to the transformation of the real figure of the Empress?