Tôkyô no kôrasu

Here we follow the tragi-comic story of one Shinji Okajima, a young Japanese man who seems more destined in life for clowning about than being a responsible, productive worker. We meet him early on, in his college years (which some people may mistake for a military training camp), acting pretty much the goof-off or "class clown," basically doing everything he can to diss his exasperated instructor while at the same time hamming it up for his beloved classmates.

Fast forward a few years, and we now find our hero married, with children, and working for an insurance company. One fine day - bonus day, at that - he takes it upon himself to stand up to the boss, who has just fired one of Shinji's older co-worker who seems adept at writing policies for people who promptly die or somehow meet a quick demise, forcing said insurance company to pay out big yen. The boss apparently doesn't have a yen for doing that on a regular basis. Our hero passionately (TOO passionately) sticks up for the older man, which in turn ends up costing him his job as well. The story continues from there, showcasing the travails of our not-so-happy-go-lucky hero and his young family as they soberly tread the muck and mire of Depression-era Tokyo, rife with unemployment, stodgy with traditional Japanese values and honor, treacherous with impending shame if you do the wrong thing in the eyes of your family and peers.

There's a poignant scene in which Shinji, erstwhile white-collar professional, is reduced to plying the streets of Tokyo, carrying an advertising banner and passing out leaflets for a small restaurant run by his former college teacher, whom we met earlier. When his kids and wife become aware of this "degradation," the shame of it all nearly devastates the family.

This movie is a fascinating portrait of a man, of a time, a place, a culture, that all seem so foreign yet so instantly recognizable. Like many silent movies from this era, this movie is NOT in good condition, heavily marred here and there with scratches and "salt and pepper." And yet you sometimes have to remind yourself that the movie was made some 80 years ago in pre-war Japan: in spite of conspicuous examples of an earlier Japan - people wearing kimonos or being transported via rickshaw - there are nevertheless ample scenes of modernization and Westernization. You'll almost do a double take when our hero is served a plate of rice and curried pork chops, and is then given not chopsticks, but a large spoon with which to eat it. In some of the scenes where the men are gathered and dressed in crisp Western-style business suits and ties, you almost expect any one of them could whip out a cell phone and call a client across town…

The point is, the movie is nearly timeless in its keen observations of the human experience, and that's what makes it such a joy to watch. Not to mention that it ends on basically a hopeful and uplifting note. One sad note is that the actor, Tokihiko Okada, who plays our hero, died a mere three years after this film was made. He was only 30! I marvel at what wondrous films director Ozu could have made with him, had he lived on.

Anyway, with this film Ozu has crafted a wonderfully hopeful world, and in so doing gives the viewer a chance to glimpse inside that world and be a part of it for nearly 100 minutes. Those, in my opinion, are 100 very well-spent minutes of your life. See it if you get the chance.

It is reasonable to read about this period in history, because there are quite a lot of Ozu's films from this time about unemployment. When you understand more about Great Depression then the topic looks more clear to you when you watch the film.

"Tokyo story" is another silent movie of Yasujiro Ozu, of witch "I was born ... but" (1932) is the most well known.

Just like "I was born ... but" "Tokyo chorus" is about young parents and young children. In later years Ozu would concentrate more on the relationship between adult children and elderly parents. The obvious explanation would be that the stage of life of Ozu himself was leading in the choice of his subject. Given that Ozu was a bachelor all his life this explanation is however not true.

Just like "I was born ... but" "Tokyo chorus" is about shame with the employment of the father. In this case however it are not the children who feel the shame but the wife. Moreover in "Tokyo chorus" the "inferior" employment of the father is the result of his solidarity with an older colleague which was treated unfair. With this solidarity he showed his courage (unlike his other colleagues) but ultimately he only achieved that he was fired as well.

In Western eyes this gives the film a certain social engagement. Not very typical for Ozu! I wonder however if Ozu really meant it this way. In the beginning of the film we see that the main character was a rebel in his student years. In in between shots we see images of laundry drying in the sun. Another (more Japanese?) interptretation is that the main character is immature at the beginning of the film, insufficiently aware of his responsibilities as a father (symbolized by landry drying in the sun). Only through misfortune (of his own making) he finally grows up.

Whatever the interpretation, already in 1931 the style of Ozu was taking form, both regarding subject (family life) as regarding style (the use of in between shots).

Tokihiko Okada is a salaryman at an insurance company in Tokyo. He has a wife, Emiko Yagumo, a son, a daughter (played by Hideko Takamine) and a baby. Money is tight, but a bonus is coming his way. Unfortunately for him, a fellow worker is fired in a manner that suggests the boss wants him gone before his pension vests. Okada goes to speak to the boss, gets into a shoving match with him, and is fired himself.

At first it seems that it will be a matter of picking up a new job, but he soon finds himself one of the "Tokyo Chorus" of the unemployed. Matters grow worse and worse...

This movie starts out as a comedy, with Physical Education teacher Tatsuo Saitô terrorizing his students -- including Okada -- like a cop in a Hal Roach comedy writing tickets. As the movie goes on, the tone begins to take on a more serious tone, with outbursts of real problems -- like when Miss Takamine has to go to the hospital -- amidst the comedy, which grows ever more wan. When Okada goes to work for his former teacher, handing out leaflets advertising his restaurant, his wife sees him doing so, and is humiliated; Okada, who starts this movie like Harold Lloyd trying to keep up with the Joneses, has crashed through the floor of the educated middle class, into the lower class; this is not America, where he can be redeemed and restored, but Japan, where appearances are more important than the reality. This is no longer a comedy, but a tragedy.

The print I saw on TCM was certainly not pristine; the titles were worn, and there was extensive chipping. The story was also far more episodic than fluid. This is not the Ozu of the 1950s, but a different one, with slapstick and tracking shots. These last points raise an issue I have been thinking of. Ozu is famous for the way he directed his later movies: long, still takes shot from floor level. Why the change? The late introduction of sound movies into Japan meant that the problems of moving cameras had been solved by the time Ozu made his first sound feature in 1936. He only gradually abandoned tracking shots, and was still using them as late as 1949.

I have concluded that a good movie is composed of story, character, incident and camerawork, and as Ozu entered the 1950s, he settled firmly on character and the interactions between them as his interest. With his often-repeated plots, his people's relationships were the stuff that fascinated him and his audience. Incident (in the form of slapstick comedy) and camera movement were matters that distracted viewers from the people, and made it too easy for them. By removing the overt comedy, Ozu removed the distraction. By removing the camera movement, he made his audience work harder at understanding the characters, which invested them in the process

Anyway, that's my understanding at the moment. What's yours?

I enjoyed this as much as any Ozu movie that I've ever seen. I think the silent medium inclined the director more to light-heartedness, not that it was ever absent from his films. Near-slapstick leads to genuine pathos on a much more naturalistic way than it ever would in, say, a Chaplin film. Ozu always recognized and appreciated a great face. In his silent films, however, his reliance on the face is much more active, using lighting and framing to convey expression as much as the performers' inherent ability. Ozu may be unique in that the performances in his silent films seem more like "movie acting" in the western sense than do those in his talkies, in which the actors seem more indebted to the tradition of the Japanese stage. But then again, everything about Ozu's early films seems more western. He had not yet become the mandarin we know him as from his peak years. The director's sense of humanity, however, was fully on display. His silent faces rank with Dreyer's, or Rembrandt's for expressiveness.