Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story is a 1953 Japanese film directed by Yasujirō Ozu, produced by Shochiku and starring Chishū Ryū and Setsuko Hara. Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama travel from Onomichi to Tokyo to visit their adult children, who are occupied with their own work and have little time for them; the couple are passed between households and are eventually shown the city by Noriko, the widow of a son killed in the war. Tomi falls ill on the return journey and dies shortly after reaching home. The camera is placed low, at roughly the eye level of a person seated on a tatami mat, and rarely moves; close-ups and shot-reverse-shot are used sparingly, and the distance between the family members is conveyed through ordinary conversation and staging rather than through dramatic incident. The film drew a modest response on release in Japan. It circulated internationally from the 1960s and has since placed near the top of a number of critics' and directors' polls.

Ozu keeps the camera at the height of someone kneeling on a tatami mat and moves it almost never. Within that constraint an elderly couple travel from Onomichi to Tokyo, are shunted between their grown children's households, and end up in the care of Noriko, the widow of the son who died in the war. Nobody quarrels, the neglect is never named aloud, and the whole of it is transacted in courteous conversation, which is what makes it land. Tomi dies shortly after the return home, and Shukichi, left alone in the emptied house, remarks that it is going to be another hot day; the film's judgement about families sits inside that flatness, which is to say that affection thins across distance and time and that the people it happens to tend to notice only once nothing can be done about it. Setsuko Hara's Noriko is the exception, and her kindness costs her something the film is careful not to resolve on her behalf.

Mainland China

东京物语

Hong Kong

東京物語

Taiwan

東京物語

English

Tokyo Story

Original

東京物語

• Chishū Ryū
• Setsuko Hara