Tokyo Story

“Take care of your parents while they are alive. You cannot help them from beyond the grave.” –Japanese proverb

Let us not try to interpret, as many people have throughout the years, Tokyo Story as a film more complex than it really it. How many reviews have I read insisting on its deeply rooted social commentary on post-war Japanese society (a label that often gets slapped on Kurosawa’s Ikiru as well), or a heavily themed parable about parental neglect? Too many, in pages and pages of interpretation that understand the notes but not the soul of Yasurjiro Ozu.

I’ll grant that both of these themes might tie into Tokyo Story, but if you truly pay attention to writer/director Yasujiro Ozu’s straightforward tale of an elderly couple’s visit with their children in Tokyo, often cited as one of the ten greatest films of all time, you will realize that you have to read pretty deeply to find any statements so glaringly complex. This film is exactly what it appears to be on its surface: A simple, elegantly-made picture of an elderly couple re-examining their accomplishments and their failures as they use their grown children as mirrors for themselves. It seemingly has no message or punch line deeper than the revelation that sometimes, life is simply life, and there is no punch line.

For me, the scene that speaks the most volume is when the two aging parents, Shukichi and Tomi (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama, respectively), stand atop a railing overlooking all of Tokyo, and their widowed daughter-in-law Noriko (Setsuko Hara) points over unseen buildings, revealing where all of the couple’s various children live throughout the city. As she points, the camera rests behind them, revealing only their backsides, so we do not see the buildings where the children live. But we do see the towering skyscrapers of the city beyond them, and we realize that whether or not we see where Noriko is pointing doesn’t matter: The children are as far away as those skyscrapers themselves. They are emotionally detached, annoyed at their visiting parents’ company, and desperate to dump them on Noriko, who loves them dearly. It is appropriate, then, that Noriko is the only one we can see—she is the only one really close to them.

That is as complex as this story gets. The film follows Shukichi and Tomi’s travels about Tokyo as they visit various children and grandchildren, who smile and pretend to be happy to see them. Ozu parallels these scenes with the desperate children wondering how much longer the parents plan to stay and how much money it will cost them to put them up. Their parents are not beloved guests, but liabilities. Shukichi and Tomi seem to be aware of this, but they are nevertheless content with the opportunity to see their children under any circumstances.

It would be tempting to think that their children are cold and even bad, but against all odds, they are responsible people with families of their own, and there are scenes that reveal that at least Shukichi was not a great father himself—he drank too much when he was young, and it is now too affable when he is old. You reap what you sew. Everyone in the film, at least, is pleasant enough, if emotionally detached from one another. That Noriko’s husband was an alcoholic before he died (he was killed in the war) indicates that he picked up some of his father’s bad habits. All the same, no one seems bitter about their questionable childhood—they’re too busy; besides, cinematic bitterness is better reserved for more complex, melodramatic exercises than Tokyo Story, which is content with capturing how such a detached family would probably interact in reality.

A proverb keeps popping up periodically throughout the film—“Take care of your parents while they are alive. You cannot help them from beyond the grave”—but it is not something that occurs to any of the children save Noriko before it is too late. The final act of the film concerns the death of one of the parents. Even then, the proverb doesn’t seem to hover over the children for very long, or the remaining parent for that matter, who accepts the death with quiet, withdrawn restrain.

Does Ozu think that the neglect of what is seemingly such a universal idea of love and “honoring thy father and mother” is sad and unfortunate? Maybe, yet the film does not seek out to directly challenge or defend this statement. It merely points out that Shukichi and Tomi’s children haven’t thought about it much, and that perhaps most children do not. But it’s not a tragedy—it’s simply life, and life, as Noriko eventually points out, “is disappointing.” Perhaps Ozu is arguing that only when you strip away idealisms and recognize the disappointment in life can you truly begin to find contentment—a theory reinforced by a powerful closing scene when the remaining parent nonchalantly thanks Noriko for loving the elderly couple more than their children ever cared to. For the parent, this statement is less of a regret and more of a mellow observation.

Such emotional detachment reminds me of Akira Kurosawa’s heart-wrenching scene in Ikiru in which the aging hero, realizing that he has stomach cancer, sadly sings, “Life is Brief.” I make the comparison because Tokyo Story has the opposite effect on our emotions, and it takes the message of Kurosawa’s film to the next level: For the remaining parent and the children, the death is certainly a confirmation that “life is brief.” But for them, life also goes on, and after a few brief tears, they return to their lives. If Ikiru’s hero laments that he never accomplished anything in life except for a dead-beat son, the parents of Tokyo Story seem to recognize that sometimes, dead-beat but successful children are enough to die peacefully.

Yasurjiro Ozu is considered one of the greatest directors in the cinema, and Tokyo Story is probably the best example of his simple storytelling method that works so effectively to convey life and, more specifically, the human soul. If Akiru Kurosawa is the Martin Scorsese of Japanese cinema, utilizing stark, startling images and full-throttled acting to paint vibrant pictures about the weathering of the human heart, then Ozu is the Robert Altman. I think it is completely fair to compare Tokyo Story specifically with Altman’s Nashville because they are accomplishing the same thing: Both films use unspectacular filming techniques and follow around realistic characters, allowing their interactions and experiences to speak for themselves and create their own themes and ideas.

Whereas Kurosawa’s work was generally embraced by the international world, Ozu’s was often labeled “too Japanese” for the rest of the world to comprehend—they were slow, quiet, meditative, and seemingly uneventful. I don’t know that the world’s reaction was to Nashville, but it couldn’t have been much different than reactions to Tokyo Story. In both films, there are no gripping moments of cinematic drama or standout performances of Shakespearian proportions; rather, they simply exhibit people walking about in their everyday lives and reveal the choices that they make hour to hour. Unquestionably, Nashville remains an invaluable piece of filmmaking: By capturing a day in the life of a few Americans, Altman captured the heart of America. Ozu has done the same here with the heart of Japan in Tokyo Story. In its simplicity, the film is breathtakingly beautiful and profound.

Cast:
Chishu Ryu: Shukichi
Chieko Higashiyama: Tomi
Setsuko Hara: Noriko
Kyoto Kagawa: Kyoko

A film by Shochiku Films Ltd. Written and directed by Yasurjiro Ozu. No M.P.A.A. rating, but contains no questionable material. Running time: 134 minutes. Original Japanese theatrical release date: November 3, 1953. Japanese with English subtitles.