8/8/2019 Class 8 Response - Jeremy Heilman - Tokyo Story

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Jeremy Heilman

Class 8 Response - Tokyo Story

Topics in Japanese CinemaProfessor Hori

October 26, 2010

In his article Piss and Run: Or How Ozu Does a Number on SCAP, David Fowler

suggests that a series of closing shots of Tokyo in Ozus 1947 filmRecord of a TenementGentleman propels the fictional story line into the real world of postwar deprivation andcompels us to reconsider our own subject position as spectators of the film we have just

viewed (275). Taken with the unmissable, but uncommented upon, presence of an American

flag in a scene in which it is urinated upon, Fowler proposes the film as a subversive protest

against the American occupying forces. What makes Fowlers argument here especiallycompelling is the extent to which Ozus work has been characterized by many other writers as

being motivated primarily by aesthetic and universally humanist concerns. If his films have not

been seen as totally apolitical, they have generally been harmlessly contained within the

conventions of the family melodrama. Fowlers decision to readRecord of a TenementGentleman against the grain raises the questions of whether we can see other Ozu films, such as

his 1953 effort Tokyo Story, in the same light.Tokyo Story is a significant film in the Ozu oeuvre, largely because it has emerged as the

de facto critical favorite of his works, especially in the West. Much of the discourse surrounding

the film involves its supposedly universal themes of family and change. Its tale of elderly

parents Shukichi and Tomi, and their gradual realization that their children have disappointedthem, brings about emotions of loneliness and regret that are as graspable for Western audiences

as for those in Japan (where Ozu was a critical darling). That universal reading ofTokyo Storys

timeless and apolitical (Fowler 279) qualities oversimplifies what was the work of ameticulous director who left nothing to chance working in a very specific setting.

Another famous critical discourse that surrounds Ozus work is his continuousengagement with the lives of ordinary Japanese citizens. This blanket characterization of thedirectors films seems to ignore the common critique that his work found itself increasingly

concerned with bourgeois characters as his career wore on. If his work is meant to focus on the

ordinary Japanese family, there seems to be a marked shift in what could be consideredordinary in the change in focus from the tenement dwellers of his early comedies and crime

movies to the notably middle-class families of his late color films. One must question why Ozu

insists on presenting all of these diverse characters as ordinary.

There is no doubt that there are elements in Tokyo Story that ask us to consider thecharacters as ordinary. For example, when Ozu first introduces the doctors wife Fumiko, he

does so by following her around her average home as she completes her chores. This sequence,

which spans far more shots than would be necessary to merely establish the locale, is finallyinterrupted by the arrival of the young boy Minoru, who is returning from school, as he

presumably does each day. Although much ofTokyo Story observes the way that Shukichi and

Tomis visit to their children upsets their routine lives, Ozu is sure to ground these visits with asense of the ordinary first. Scenes such as those depicting Fumikos chores or Norikos work life

go a long way toward setting Tokyo Story in the realm of the quotidian. The question of the

political ramifications of this milieu naturally arises.

One must remember that although Tokyo Story seems to take place in a world that we allrecognize, it also takes place in a very specific socioeconomic context. Japan, less than ten years

8/8/2019 Class 8 Response - Jeremy Heilman - Tokyo Story

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after World War II, was in a period of massive change. The country was making a rapid shift

toward a democratized, urbanized culture, without taking much time for an honest appraisal of

what was being lost in the process. Looked at this way, Tokyo Storys heavy emphasis on regretand nostalgia, when combined with its grounding in the ordinary, becomes indicative of the

nations widespread uneasy relationship with its rapidly shifting reality. Nostalgia becomes

political here because it offers a mode of both suggesting that things used to be better in someways and that life is not currently satisfying on all levels. Change is not damned directly, as we

would generally expect in a political film, but is critiqued via the characters uneasy attitudes

toward the facets of modern life.Much is made, for example, of the new relationship to space that arrived with Japans

railroad system. The familys scattered state becomes the source of much of the drama here. The

distance between the children in Tokyo and the parents home in Hiroshima could literally be

seen as a contributing factor in Tomis death. Just as overwhelming for Tomi and Shukichi is thevastness of Tokyo itself. Looking out at the skyline, Tomi tells her husband, If we got lost, wed

never find each other again. In another scene, the suggestion is made that the sheer number of

people in an urban environment makes it much more difficult for any individual to succeed.

Alongside these overt remarks, is the films overriding subtext, which implies that the capitalistfocus on career has taken its toll on familial bonds. Ozu, by positioning his characters as

universal and by encouraging audiences to feel empathy toward their attitudes and emotions,enlarges his characters critiques to all of Japanese society.

The frequent observations of Tomi and Shukichi that things have changed are echoed

constantly, such as in the moment during their bus tour when the guide points out the 500 year

old Imperial Palace. She states that the palaces quiet setting with its green pine trees and moatis quite a contrast to the bustle of Tokyo. The postwar period brought with it massive changes,

but Ozu alludes to them only obliquely. Instead of didactically explaining to his audience that he

feels ambivalent about postwar Japan, he includes transitional shots of construction sites,smokestacks and trains, emphasizing the passage of time and the inevitability of progress. Were

it not forTokyo Storys final scenes, however, it might be easy to see this attitude as specific to

an older generation. When Ozu drops the startling revelation of good-hearted Norikosloneliness, he further implies that discontent with the status quo is endemic. In a moment of

direct audience address, she confesses plaintively, Sometimes I feel that I cant go on like this

forever, finally making it clear that the modern anomie that afflicted Tomi and Shukichi extendsfar beyond them specifically. Ozu, making a film in a particular setting at a particular postwar

moment, seems to be overtly dramatizing the largely unspoken public sentiments of that

moment.

Norikos subsequent speech about the universal inevitability of change anddisappointment in life undercuts such a reading somewhat, but to deny the specificity that Ozu

conjures would be to miss a blatant political point, which is that that suffering through the war

might not have resulted in a completely positive change in quality of life in all respects. Bynodding toward the universal aspects of his story, namely the distance that parents feel from their

children, Ozu is able to mask the specificity of his political commentary. While the American

flag inRecord of a Tenement Gentlemanbecame masked by its immersion in a gritty milieuwhere things were commonly repurposed, the opposite seems to hold true in this film. In Tokyo

Story, the milieu itself arguably becomes obscured by the invocation of the universal. That is not

to deny the presence of universal themes here, but rather to suggest that Ozu may have slyly

made a film that is more topical and political than it first appears to be.