"Tokyo Story" - Film Review

What elevates Tokyo Story above the typical melodrama is how honestly and accurately (and sometimes profoundly) it captures family dynamics and intergenerational conflicts. The film articulates itself with an incredible amount of emotional nuance, complexity, and clarity.

Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) are a  retired couple living with their youngest, unmarried daughter Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa) in the countryside of southwest Japan in the small town of Onomichi. They decide to visit their children who have settled down in Tokyo. 

They arrive to find their son Koichi (So Yamamura) and daughter Shige (Haruko Sugimura) too busy with family and work to actually entertain them or have next to anything to do with them. The visit almost feels like an afterthought, and the parents just feel like they’re in the way. 

The only person who actually takes the time to show them around the city isn’t even technically family, but rather their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who does it out of a sense of lonliness and obligation. 

Eventually Koichi and Shige decide that it’s best to send their parents to a hot spring spa at Atami, than to try to deal with them. It’s a poorly thought out plan though; the hotel is overcrowded with young, noisy people who stay up for all hours and disrupt their sleep.

By the reunion’s end, the children are annoyed and bothered by their parents interfering with their everyday lives, and the parents are disappointed by what their children have grown up to be.

As the aging couple returns home, Tomi falls ill and the children rush back to be with her, at once feeling terrible about their treatment of their parents and yet never truly grasping the ramifications of their actions. 

Director Yasujirō OzuIt’s filmic style was known for a lack of camera movement, letting shots and content within speak for themselves. The film moves with a deliberate pace, taking its time with somber simplicity to depict small but meaningful moments. A keen, well-observed sense of detail turns these conflicts and misunderstandings between the parents and children into something at times painfully real. Each of the characters are well-drawn and their relationships are nicely mapped out to the point where every interaction speaks of whole unstated histories. 

It’s at once simple and specific, and yet beautifully complex and universal. As a meditation on aging, a sincere portrayal of intergenerational and family conflicts, and a moving drama, Tokyo Story delivers in strides. 

Grade: A