Tokyo Story / 東京物語 (1953)

Screenplay by: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu
Directed by: Yasujiro Ozu
Japanese, with English subtitles
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Japan has been a source of many of the things I find enjoyable. I love contemporary Japanese literature (though I read translated works), anime, and, for a period of time, J-Drama. It occurs to me now that I haven’t watched many Japanese films before, though the reason behind this alludes me.

I had the chance to watch Tokyo Story because the Japan Foundation was doing a free screening of it last weekend. I had read that it was a simple story about the relationship between parents and their children, and I thought it would be a good change in pace to watch something that seemed, from the trailer, quite slow and down-to-earth.

The trailer was not misleading. The film in itself does move along quite slowly. There are no action sequences, no huge fights, not even heated arguments. It merely tells the story of an old couple who travel to Tokyo to meet with their children, who have left the village to work. They reach the city and stay with their son. Then they move in with their daughter for a day or two, before they are sent on a holiday at some holiday hot pools.

The story quietly moves along, and slowly we see that the children, though they love their parents, find them quite disruptive in their daily lives in Tokyo. Their intentions of paying for their holiday at the hot pools are a mixture of goodwill, and selfishness. They say it’s so that they can make the most of their rare visit to Tokyo, and they also say that they really don’t have the time to take them sightseeing. It’s a matter-of-fact, they feel no guilt. That’s the way it is.

The couple have a son who died eight years before the story, and the daughter-in-law is, ironically, the only one who seems happy for them to come visit her. She portrays the kind of filial piety that most parents wish they could get from their own sons and daughters, and yet, for this old couple, the love and understanding comes from someone whose bonds with them hang only by the thread of the memory of their dead son, her dead husband.

The old couple are not oblivious to all this – they understand that they are not as welcome as they had perhaps initially thought they would be. Are they disappointed? Maybe. But it feels as though, at the back of their heads they accept it as only natural, and part of the cycle of life. They announce that they will be returning to the village, but just as the children think that their lives have returned to normal, they receive news that their mother is terminally ill.

The mother’s death was unexpected for me, but in hindsight, it added another layer of meaning to the bonds that hold parents and their children together. Perhaps the most difficult scene to watch, for me, was the meal the family had in their old house after the funeral. Two sons, two daughters and one daughter-in-law. The daughter from Tokyo says she almost wished it was her father who died first, because then it would be the mother they had to take care of, and they could do that by asking the mother to move in with them in Tokyo. She then asks to be given a couple of their mother’s things as keepsake. It feels wrong, to be asking for something so immediately after their death. But at the same time, you wonder if this is not something you would also do.

In fact, for the most part, we look at the children and wonder if we behave the same way with our parents today. It doesn’t matter that this movie was made so many decades ago, the strained relationship shared between parents with their children – and children with their parents – still exists today, and I suspect will continue to exist in times to come. It’s the expectations against reality; the understanding that it’s difficult, but wishing it were better.

And perhaps it’s also because it’s a Japanese film, there are so many moments in the film where it seems like everyone is just holding something back. Both in what they say, and what they do, none of them are eager to fully take off the mask and bare all. The ending was particularly touching, where the father says, without much emotional fanfare, that if he had known, he would have treated her (his wife) better. It was a quiet statement, but I couldn’t help but feel that it was his way of dealing with his immense sadness and loss.

This is a slow-moving, quiet film. But the story really packs a punch.