Nijûshi no hitomi

Considered by some Japanese critics as one of the ten best Japanese films of all time, Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-Four Eyes is a moving tribute to a teacher's dedication to her students and to her progressive ideals. The film spans twenty years of turbulent Japanese history beginning in 1928 and continuing through the end of World War II. Though to Western eyes it can be at times oppressively melodramatic with its overuse of such sentimental melodies like "Annie Laurie", "Auld Lang Syne", and "Bless This House", the film was extremely popular in Japan, beating out such highly regarded classics as Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, and Naruse's Late Chrysanthemums for Best Film in Japan and Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.

Adapted from a novel by Sakae Tsuboi and set in the rural island of Shodoshima, the title refers to the eyes of seven girls and five boys, the twelve students of first grade teacher Hisako Oishi (Hideko Takamine), endearingly called "Miss Pebble". As the film opens, a confident new teacher, Miss Oishi, rides to the school on her bicycle dressed in modern Western clothes but soon has problems being accepted by the working class villagers who think that she is a wealthy outsider. The senior teacher (Chishu Ryu) at the primary school even asks why the authorities would send such a good teacher. Miss Oishi is also criticized for calling the students by their nicknames, inquiring into each child's family life, and singing folk songs instead of the school anthems.

Later, during the Japanese invasion of China, she is suspected of being a "red" because she discourages her young pupils from becoming soldiers but does not protest when the headmaster burns one of her books. Proud but traditionally passive, she refuses to intervene in a family dispute when one of her students, a gifted singer, expresses a desire to attend the conservatory rather than go to work in a café, and does not attempt to raise funds to send one of the poorest students on a school trip. Miss Oishi is able to gain a share of acceptance, however, after an injury to her leg sidelines her for several months and the children visit her without being aware of the length of the journey. It is only when she meets the crying children on their way to her home that reconciliation with the community begins to take place.

Unfortunately, the length of the trip to the school forces Miss Oishi to transfer to the middle school closer to her home and she will not teach the same children for five years. Miss Oishi is a compassionate teacher who does not want to see her bright young students killed in the war but the growing conflict in China and the increasing poverty in the village force the young men to become cannon fodder for the militarists with unfortunate results. Twenty-Four Eyes to our modern view has many excesses including its almost three-hour length but the purity and radiance of Takamine as the compassionate school teacher shines through and the film allowed Japanese audiences to experience a cathartic expression of the sadness and loss caused by the war.

24 eyes is based on a novel that was written in 1952 by Sakae Tsuboi. It's a story about the life of a school teacher in three different time period (1928 to 1947) of Japan, namely pre- war period, during war, and post war Japan. Sakae was also born in Shodo-shima island like the main character of this movie Ms. Ooishi (Hideko Takamine). The movie has a strong anti-war theme to it as well as showing how tough life was when Japan was still a third world country.

In 1928 new school teacher named Ooishi (her first name is never mentioned in the movie) comes to the satellite school in Shodo-shima island, where there are 12 children. The place is a real country side and Ms Ooishi has a problem with the local customs, but she try's to be a good teacher. One day the children plays a prank and Ms. Ooishi falls into a hole dug by the students. She severs her Achilles tendon and has to take a long leave of absence. But the children wanting to see her travels a long way to see her, braving hunger and loneliness. Ms. Ooishi recovers, but soon she is assigned to the main school. Due to depression, many of her former students has to quit school and go to work. Ms. Ooishi gets married, but she quits being a teacher saying she hates the brain washing pro military education. War starts and many of her students and even her husband dies in the war. Long war ends and Ms. Ooishi returns to the satellite school. Many of her students are the children of her former students. As she gives roll calls, memory hits her hard, and she starts crying. Children not knowing the reason, call her cry baby teacher. Soon old students suggests a class reunion. Her old students, now grown adult gives Ms. Ooishi a bicycle like the one she used to ride to school. Ms. Ooishi cry's again seeing her old students once again.

The movie won the Golden Globe award's best foreign movie, and also won the first place in Japanese movie magazine, surpassing Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai that came out the same year.

Movie tells the life of children living in the country, but it also shows how war affected their lives. In the 1930s, Japan was trying to become one of the great nations. Their role model were United States, France, England, Dutch, and Germany. They saw that other great nations were using colonization to expand their empire, and decided to create their own empire in the name of Great Asian Co-prosperity Region. Japan won the Russo Japanese war and was big headed about their military might. All this worked for Japan to charge head in into militarism. While the Japanese navy who had their over seas envoy knew the foolishness of fighting the allied force, the army headed by Tojo insisted on taking the country to war which had deadly consequence for Japan and its people. The movie shows how very ordinary people got entangled in the tides of time, and young and impressionable people went willingly to war thinking it was patriotism. Now China who was on the receiving end during this war is only a hair trigger away from making the same mistake.

What is most striking about the movie is the innocence people had at the time. Despite their hard life they weren't crooked, or violent. Each character in this movie had an endearing qualities. Keisuke Kinoshita who was perhaps Japan's first gay director was a master at depicting people in their family settings. Hideko Takamine marries the assistant director of this movie Zenzo Matsuyama a year after this movie was made.

All this makes this one of a kind memorable movie of all time. Once you've seen it, you'll never forget it.

25 years ago I made up my mind I would move to Japan. So I wrote to people in Japan who had lived there for over thirty years, and asked them what would be the #1 movie I should watch that encapsulated the spirit of the Japanese.

They all suggested "24 Eyes".

Now, after having lived in a strictly Japanese environment for five years, and having seen well over thirty Japanese movies, not to mention over a thousand hours of TV shows and animae, it is still the #1 to me.

By today's standards it will seem extremely "G" rated, a little too slow and a bit too long. But for those who want to really understand people, and where they are coming from, I can't think of a better movie to recommend. I wish every culture, particularly those that may be going extinct, would use this movie as a guideline to tell their story.

Mostly unknown and frequently dismissed in the West, this film is often considered by the Japanese to be one of their very best films, if not their best. I concur with the Japanese. I can understand the issues people have with it, namely that it is overly sentimental, but I think it mostly earns the tears that are shed over it. It's a film in the classic teacher genre, like Goodbye Mr. Chips. Hideko Takamine plays Hisako Oishi, a young woman who begins the movie as a first grade teacher on a small island in 1928. Being a small population, she ends up staying with the same students for several years. The film ends in the 1950s, so you kind of know what will probably happen to her male students, and what she and her female students will have to experience. It may be somewhat predictable, but it's incredibly heartbreaking. The film is beautifully made, and filled with Japanese folk songs (strangely, the score of the film is made up of a bunch of Western music, including "Bonnie Annie Laurie" and "There's No Place Like Home"; it's definitely a flaw). Takamine, who starred in several Mikio Naruse films around the same time, is exceptional.

Compared to a film like "Pigs And Battleships", or even "I Live In Fear"; Kinoshita's film is a middlebrow, mainstream, even sentimental take on the Japan's war years and it's aftermath.

Still, the film is graceful and touching, with what Pauline Kael called "concealed art." Kinoshita's approach seems to be to take potently maudlin situations, and film them from an objective distance; with as direct and simple emotion as possible.

This may short change the great Takamine a bit; we seem to be an hour into the film before the great actress receives a close up. Still, her performaces gains power as the film goes on.

Though politics are kept in the background, as perhaps they had to in a Japanese film of this nature; but there is an anger lurking in the backgroud; an inditement of a culture that would waste the strength of it's woman and worse; reduce it's men to cannon fodder. Was it something in Japanese life; rather than just it's military, that led to it's disasters? Even the country's great filmmakers seem hesitant to speculate. In any event, another strong film of interest to all those who have fallen under the spell of great Japanese film.