The Upbeat Life of Constant Apprehension

I see a few people have claimed that 1952's Mother (おかあさん) is upbeat for a Mikio Naruse movie. I guess the music is a little more whimsical and there are a few amusing moments earlier in the film but it's still the kind of desperate tale of common economic woes that Naruse excelled at. This "upbeat" Naruse movie has two deaths during the course of the story and many of the relationships and desperate circumstances we see are due to deaths that occurred before the narrative begins. There is a definite charm to this one, though, with Kinuyo Tanaka in the title role and especially due to Kyoko Kagawa as her eldest daughter.

Kagawa, better known for her roles in Sansho the Bailiff and Tokyo Story, is usually pretty somber but here she gets to be a vivacious and petulant teenager with pigtails. She narrates the film, fondly describing her self-sacrificing and tireless little mother.

Toshiko (Kagawa) has an older brother at the start of the film who escapes from a sanatorium to die at home, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, begging their mother (Tanaka) to sleep beside him one last time. Toshiko has another sibling, a little girl named Chako, and their cousin, a little boy named Tetsu, stays with them. His father was killed in World War II and his mother, Noriko (Nakabe Chieko), is unable to care for him as she struggles to find a career of her own. But when financial trouble deepens for the film's subject household, they're forced to take seriously an offer from a neighbouring family to adopt Chako.

Tanaka's husband runs the family business, a laundry, and, when he falls ill, his friend played by Daisuke Kato shows up to help out.

Like most of Naruse's films, the story is an endless give and take of tension as new misfortunes or sudden small strokes of luck create a delicate balance. In this case, whether or not the characters come out ahead by the end is open to your interpretation, and obviously many feel that they do. I would argue the film actually ends under a cloud of doom, though. But your mileage may vary.

Mother is available on The Criterion Channel.

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A thousand steps were taken past the coin.
The longest mollusc shrank to fit a ball.
A smiling idol jumped from out the loin.
We hung a folded picture 'long the wall.
Suspicions start as salmon jump to mouths.
The busy forest glowed with simple songs.
The '80s synth ascends as Heaven bows.
The sleeping fish was laid between the prongs.
The shifting crowd produced an extra star.
A total six dismissed the leading rank.
They're lining glass across the lacquered bar.
Let's carry cakes to feed the money bank.
The snug and tiny flee before the spray.
The smug and smarmy flea adored the clay.

A Bad Bento

The great Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse is famous for his movies presented from a woman's point of view. Often the men are less sympathetic characters in his films but that wasn't always the case. One such exception is 1953's Wife (妻). It's kind of the anti-Meshi, Naruse's more famous film released two years earlier. Like Meshi, Wife is based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi and it's also about a married couple drifting away from each other. But unlike Meshi, Wife seems to put the blame much more on the wife. The result is a film lacking Meshi's subtlety but there's still plenty of the understated, keenly rendered characters Naruse excelled at creating.

We meet Toichi (Ken Uehara) and his wife, Mihoko (Mieko Takamine), as he's leaving for work one morning. We hear their thoughts in voice over, both of them expressing dissatisfaction with their marriage. Mihoko laments the amount of work she must do in order to maintain the household while Toichi more vaguely questions the loss of interest he has in his wife and home. He thinks the arguments he and his wife have can't be pleasant for her, either.

This is the first little clue that the fault lies more on Mihoko's side. In Japanese culture, where considering the needs of your friends, coworkers, and family is seen as a mark of good character, the fact that Mihoko only thinks of her own troubles while Toichi also worries about the effect of the situation on Mihoko is significant. As the film continues, these little signs never really become enormous except in their cumulative effect. Just as it's easy to see why Mihoko is to blame, it's as easy to see that she would have trouble recognising it.

Toichi glumly opens his little bento lunch at work. Rice, sardines, two slices of takuan (pickled radish), and an umeboshi (pickled plum). Everything but the rice is from a can or jar. When he picks up a piece of takuan, there's a hair on it.

Nearby is the desk of his beautiful young coworker, Sagara (Yatsuko Tanami). She opens her own bento, filled with fresh fruit and sandwiches.

The boss comes in and compliments her on her always delicious looking lunches, which, she confirms, she makes herself every day. She modestly explains that she skips breakfast every day so she puts extra effort into lunch. She also makes a plate of croquettes and salad for Toichi at work.

The red umeboshi on white rice is supposed to look like the Japanese flag, it's a traditional bento component, while all of Sagara's food is conspicuously western. She also dresses in western attire while Mihoko usually wears a kimono. These are all pretty familiar signals from post-World War II Japanese films. Among other things, it marks Sagara as being receptive to the idea of divorce and remarriage. Mihoko, despite her own dissatisfaction with the marriage, proves unwilling to consider it.

Another familiar topic for Naruse is money trouble. Toichi and Mihoko run a boarding house, Toichi works in an office, and Mihoko has a side job knitting. Mihoko complains about the amount of work she has to do but when Toichi finally asks her why they need so much money she struggles to respond. She can only answer lamely that Toichi will need some new clothes soon.

The boarders provide means of showing Mihoko and Toichi's characters by contrast. There's a bohemian painter who fantasises about having many beautiful girlfriends (but has none). There's a kept woman whose lover's wife clearly takes it much harder than Mihoko when she finds out her husband is having an affair.

But as usual with Naruse, there's no simple solution to Mihoko and Toichi's problem and the more they struggle with it, the worse it gets.

Wife is available on The Criterion Channel.