Tokyo Story

東京物語 | Tokyo monogatari | Tokyo Story

OZU Yasujiro

1953

black & white, 136 minutes

Japanese audio, English subtitles

With the exception of their youngest daughter, Kyoko, the children of Hirayama Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, have all grown up and moved away to busy lives in the city.

Eldest son Koichi is a doctor in Tokyo with a wife and two sons of his own.

Eldest daughter, Shige, is married to a bill collector and works in her own shop as a beautician, also in Tokyo.

Keizo is their youngest son. He works for an Osaka company.

Noriko, their daughter-in-law, is the widow of their second son, who was killed in the war. She’s remained unmarried and makes her way alone as an OL in a Tokyo trading company. Although they are her in-laws, she regards Shukishi and Tomi as parents and they regard her as their own daughter.

It’s been a long time since Shukishi and Tomi have seen their brood and they make the long, arduous trip to Tokyo on a packed train to visit, a trip that will be filled with disappointments.

Comments

No sooner did the old couple appear on the screen than I remembered seeing this film a long time ago. I don’t remember what my impressions of it were back then, but I have no doubt that time (and the fact my own daughter is now grown and living in a different city) has changed my perspective somewhat. By the same token, I think some things have remained the same because I’m not so distant from experiencing some of the same problems… like what to do with visiting parents when life requires you to work and jobs are rarely very accommodating.

Shukishi and Tomi’s children are stuck in this dilemma and I can sympathize with some of their attitudes, but I suspect it may be another of those cultural differences that when particularly my retired in-laws came to visit, I told them up front that I couldn’t take time off, but would be there to visit with them once the workday was finished rather than how the children kind of blew things off in the film. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s one of the things that drives me crazy in the Japanese culture I see portrayed in film and drama even today… total lack of communication due to uber-politeness and deference resulting in bad feelings all around. There’s no meeting each other half-way, or precious little of it anyway.

At the same time, it’s clear that the struggle has made the children selfish, whether they realize it or not. That, too, I can understand to a certain extent and I really think it’s symptomatic of city life, where the masses of people around you are strangers. It can easily make a person cynical and overprotective of what they have, making them a little more hard-spoken than they intend. I really wanted to smack Shige for when and how she requested some of her mother’s possessions, but when Noriko explained to Kyoko (who had the same reaction as me), my attitude softened because she’s right… life can make us seem harsher than we really are.

Another thing I’m seeing repeatedly referenced is parents’ disappointment in children… I’ve seen it expressed in just about every other film I’ve watched and it’s in Tokyo monogatari as well. Why do parents do that? (It’s not just a Japanese phenomenon.) Did it become more extreme in Japanese society as they moved into the 20th century and became more modernized, when there was an exaggerated generation gap between parents who grew up in a more agrarian society and the children faced a very different kind of hardship in the rat race of the cities that the parents simply couldn’t relate to or understand? Koichi is a doctor and yet his father is disappointed in him because he’s just a small neighborhood doctor. Excuse me? The son goes from a small town in the south to acquiring a college degree in modern medicine in Tokyo and he’s disappointed?

One comment I found interesting. Shukichi is drunk after a night of drinking with two old friends and says to one of them about how some sons are killing their parents to get rid of the burden of them. This is 1953 and it could’ve been something straight out of a film today… too often I’m running into headlines on Japanese news sites about children killing off their elderly parents these days. A symptom of financially difficult times?

Another Ozu film, more long, drawn-out shots, although he’s now including much more activity in them, making them more a part of the story, and they’re generally far shorter in duration. Up to this point, I still feel like he relies on them far too much.

Noriko’s story really touched me and I’m sure it was deliberately ironic that the one person who wasn’t related by blood and had the least to give was the kindest of all. I really liked that character and kept wishing she would just leave Tokyo and move in.

This kid, Koichi’s eldest… talk about someone needing a good throttling. Demanding, self-centered brat. Perfect casting finding this young actor… is that the very image of a spoiled brat or what? I’d love to know how he turned out years later (the character, that is).

Anyone who knows me will understand how this made me laugh. The scene is a spa that the children send their parents to to get them out of their hair (as well as being concerned that their parents aren’t able to rest well with so much activity going on and little time given to them). When I saw the guy highlighted in this picture I had to pause the film and remind myself that Yajima Ken’ichi, one of my favorite actors in Japan, hadn’t even been born yet when the film was made. The image I added of Yajima isn’t the best match, but I think anyone can still see how amazed I was to see this guy. ^_^

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