Tokyo Story (1953)

(film 136 minutes)

Directed by: Yasujirō Ozu

Language: Japanese

Rating: 8/10 | Yaser Tohidi

September 2, 2019

A retired couple live with their youngest daughter, Kyōko, in a small town called Onomichi when they decide to visit their son, daughter and widowed daughter-in-law in Tokyo. Their eldest son, Kōichi, is a pediatrician, and their eldest daughter, Shige, runs a hairdressing salon. Old couple expect their son and daughter live comfortably in Tokyo but what they see is just a busy life in an industrialized city and their stay just adds to their problems. Kōichi and Shige don’t appreciate the presence of their parents although it might be the last time they visit them. Kōichi and Shige are occupied with economic and occupation circumstances and they think that their parents come to visit Tokyo and enjoy the city but parents just want to visit their children. Kōichi and Shige even plan to offer their parents a hot spring spa outside the city to get rid of them. It is even cheaper than taking them around Tokyo. But the spa hotel does not fit the old couple as it’s having young guests staying late at night drinking and playing cards. The old couple are again not happy there.

The only exception is Noriko, the widow of their middle son Shōji, who was missing in action and presumed dead during the war. Noriko is working in a trading company and she is happy to take time from her busy office job to take the old couple on a sightseeing tour of metropolitan Tokyo. She is happy to even invite the old couple in her modest room despite her difficult economic situation. She is willing to spare some time with them. She even helps them with money.

In spa hotel, the old couple remark on how their children have changed and decide to end their trip and head back home, but mother feels sick, as if this trip made her sick because she was healthy and solid in the beginning. On the way back, she feels sick again and they get off half way and stay with their younger son, Keizō. Mother dies upon arrival in Onomichi. Children gather for her last moments. Kōichi and Shige even bring funeral clothes and don’t seem much touched by the loss of their mother. They don’t care about their father and leave immediately. They ask Noriko to remain longer and she accepts.

After they leave, when Kyōko expresses to Noriko her anger about her siblings’ selfishness toward their parents, Noriko responds that everyone has his own life and it is inevitable that children leave their parents one day. Later Noriko informs her father-in-law that she must return to Tokyo. Father expresses his thanks to Noriko for her kindness despite not being related by blood. Noriko confesses her loneliness. She leaves Onomichi to Toklyo with a watch as a memento from the late mother-in-law. Father remains behind with solitude he must endure in his home in Onomichi.

Tokyo Story is a manifesto against capitalist growth that concentrates population in big cities and transforms people to money seeking beings competing all the time but void of love even to their old parents. Old folks playing still with old rules and lagging to catch up are homeless and lonely in these cities. Tokyo Story show the post war Japanese society. The society that is transforming rapidly and therefore is full of contradictions. The difference between older generation’s expectations and younger generation is huge. The transformation has been too fast. There is a contrast between people’s image - they live in traditional indoors, eat Japanese food and wear traditional clothes - and their mentally that is transformed to rootless beings. It’s a new area. Should we accept it or not? Is it inevitable? The complication around these dilemmas is put in Noriko’s character.

Noriko desires to keep the past memories like her love to her missing husband and his parents. She lives in a corridor room and she works in a trading company but despite these pressures to abide to the new rules, she resists and seeks what she desires although she accepts others’ ways of life. Her decisions are fast and doubtless. However, inside, she feels lonely and broken and she is anxious about her future. Her character rises to a symbol of scratch from a lost war that made a gap between children and their parents, children who left their old culture as they left their parents. Noriko remains to keep the hopes; still there is someone who didn’t abide by new rules although not sure and indecisive about her future. She might abide soon to the new rules because she suffers from being different. But anyways the hope is still there!

Character of Noriko is making Tokyo Story philosophic. She depicts a person who have lost her bright future not because of herself but because of outside circumstances. She just couldn’t rise up again. However, she still keeps on going but just to exist. Life is disappointing for her but still worth to try. She offers hope although she herself is full of despair. The past is a nice memory for her. No, she is not living in the past but when the past comes in any form, she cannot resist but to love it. She depicts delicately the human condition trapped in time and determinism of circumstances.

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