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Keisuke Kinoshita - A Japanese Tragedy (1953)


In my last blog entry I argued that Kinoshita used period pieces to make poignant observations about post-war Japan. With A Japanese Tragedy, Kinoshita sets his movie in post-war Japan to comment on what must have seemed to him like a "lost" generation. Haruko, the widowed mother of Utako and Seiichi, is struggling to offer a better life for her kids. She pays for Seiichi's college education and wants to make sure that Utako marries a man that enables her to ascend the social ladder. In order to support her family however, Haruko has to work in Inns and offer her services to men. Her children, in turn, interpret her stints in nightclubs as personal amusement and don't recognize her struggle. Seiichi wants to be adopted by a rich man and Utako entertains the idea to run away with her English teacher. Haruko, who sacrificed everything for her children, is ignored by them and left behind.

Kinoshita parallels this rather heavy melodrama with news footage and newspaper headlines of the tumultuous post-war years, thus drawing a direct parallel between Haruke's fate and the state of the entire country. In an effort to distance themselves from the generation that participated in a devastating war, the film argues, the Japanese youth even rejected everything that came before it. Unable to separate the struggle of the everyday people with those who brought about the war, they severe themselves from any previous lineage, paving the way for a sweeping westernization. What I label the “lost generation” are people who suffered through the war, had to pay bitter consequences for it, and didn't get their footing in the post-war years. Haruke is a prime example.

Kinoshita interjects the story with sudden flashbacks to the days when Utako and Seiichi were kids and Haruke struggled gravely to make ends meet. Seeing the bleak reality Haruke's kids choose to ignore underlines the cruelty of their behavior towards their mother, but I am not sure that it works as a narrative device. Oftentimes, flashbacks are ill-reputed as bringing the main narrative to a halt. This is not the case in A Japanese Tragedy. Rather, the flashbacks function as a sort of rhythmic device that spice up the story. What irked me about them was the sometimes jarring tonal shifts we were subjected to. Some of the flashbacks, for example, played out in utter silence, signaling very clearly that we leave the main narrative. But in contrast to a lot of other technical pirouettes Kinoshita displayed in his other films, this didn't seem to amend the story and was more of a distraction than anything else. Although some of the flashbacks are beautifully edited and integrated into the main narrative (particularly one involving the telling symbol of a broken window pane), they took me out of the story, rather then make me comprehend it more.

I have the same complaint with Kinoshita's attempt to bring modern-day politics into his film by resorting to news footage and newspaper headlines. He abandons this device before the halftime mark and concentrates fully on the characters. It is then that the movie truly gathers steam and one wonders if the film couldn't have been better off without the blatant want to make it socially relevant. I understand why it's there, but the execution is not as smooth as one might have wanted. The character drama, however, is very well written, staged and performed and once the story finds its cruising speed, the patient viewer is in for a treat. A Japanese Tragedy might be a good entry way into Kinoshita's body of work, as he displays all his strength as a singular artist, and shows us glimpses of how innovative and exciting his work could be, even if it is not fully successful in this case.

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