Tôkyô no eiyû

When Mitsugu Fujii was a child, he admired his widowed father as only a boy can. The man married widowed Mitsuko Yoshikawa so he would have not only a mother, but a brother and a sister. Then he disappeared, apparently dead. As Fujii grew into a man, he knew Miss Yoshikawa worked hard, but never quite knew what it was she did. As his sister's marriage fell apart, as his brother disappeared into the demimonde, Fujii studied and accepted the vague mysteries. Then he graduated, got a job as a reporter. In pursuing stories for his paper, the truth about his family was revealed to him through his work.

Do we ever really know the people we live with? Is it such hard work to ask the questions and risk the answers we fear, or is it better not to know. That is the question behind this movie, and the answer is.... well, it depends. I know what I take away from it. Maybe you would find something different.

Miss Yoshikawa was not a pretty woman, but she was a popular actress, working for all the leading directors of Japan's studio era, often in the role of a mother. She made the last of her 173 movies in 1984, and died in 1991 at the age of 90.

Unlike the later, lighter dramas Hiroshi Shimizu is mostly known for now in the United States, Hero of Tokyo is a rather dark melodrama. This silent film is about a widow with two children who marries a widower with a son. The husband mysteriously disappears shortly afterwards, leaving her to raise the three children as best she can. There is a lot of incident in this short movie and that is one of its biggest flaws. The plot covers fifteen years and so much happens that there is little time to linger over anything. The break neck pace combines with a series of incredible coincidences to strain the viewer's credulity. And the wafer thin characterizations and general improbability rob the movie of any emotional payoff. Some nice shots and the actors' attempts to overcome the weak script do add some interest to the movie, but not enough.