Nanmura, a soldier convalescing at a spa resort, accidentally steps on an ornamental hairpin and injures his foot. Emi, a geisha and owner of the hairpin, had already left the resort but comes back to retrieve the object and to apologize in person. A friendship that might or might not have romantic undertones ensues between the two. In the end, Nanmura has to return to Tokyo and leaves behind a somewhat melancholic Emi.
This rather simple story gives a lot of room for interpretation. On the DVD box, Michael Koresky writes: “Though it begins with the makings of a perfect comic “meet-cute,” Ornamental Hairpin goes on to pragmatically deconstruct Nanmura’s and Emi’s desires: for him, all is poetic, and therefore illusory; for her, life with a cruel patron has become unbearable, and she doesn’t want to return to the city.” On the blog Old Roads, Martyn Smith objects. Citing Nanmura’s assertion that his “sole has been pierced by poetry” when he stepped on the hairpin, Smith writes: “This comes from the mouth of Nanmura, but it is immediately amplified and interpreted by the older scholar sitting next to him. We see a young man who is aware of the poetic and beautiful moments of his life, and expresses them through a line like this, but that poetic moment is transformed into a narrative by the older scholar, who decides that the young man is love-sick and dreaming of a beautiful young woman connected to the hairpin. (…) The film can be seen as a warning of the use of narrative to interpret people and their motivations.”
Both sides make a compelling case but I would submit yet another interpretation. Ornamental Hairpin was shot in 1941 when Japan’s efforts in the pacific war began to intensify. There is a scene in which an old professor briefly mentions food shortage but then complains that the food at the spa is of mediocre quality. Upon hearing that it struck me how apolitical most of Shimizu’s films are. He might treat big and important themes in his movies, but he certainly treated politics in a much more oblique way than some of his contemporaries. Upon further reflecting, however, I realized that Ornamental Hairpin, by refusing to acknowledge the war and presenting the country as a paradise-like idyll, made very much a political statement by creating a sort of parallel world in which audiences could take refuge, much like Nanmura who, at the end of the movie, most certainly had to go back to combat but spent a few careless days at the spa.
The characters themselves acknowledge several times that their days at the spa take place almost in a different world, and there is a sort of dread at having to go back to Tokyo, and thus re-entering reality (“I don’t want to go back that gloomy life”, says Emi). In one scene, The group of characters Emi and Nanmura interact with all dine together and vouch to meet again once back in Tokyo, but there is a clear sense that it will never happen. This dinner does not take place in the same realm as their lives in Tokyo and they will most likely never meet again. When the characters finally do leave for Tokyo, we don’t see them do so but read about it in a diary entry. With every other person leaving, the dream state Emi and Nanmura reside in is threatened more and more.
The melancholic vibe present in the movie finds its climax in a bittersweet scene in which Nanmura finally leaves the spa. He had been walking around on crotches due to his foot injury, and we got several scenes of him doing walking exercises. In one final exercise, he attempts to ascend a set of stairs without any help. A success means that he goes back to Tokyo, a failure means that he stays longer. Of course Emi wants his foot to heal and she encourages him throughout his attempt – which also means that she roots for his departure. When he is successful, she can’t be happy for him. The last scene of the movie shows her climbing the same steps Nanmura did. Only this time, she is alone and has to finally face reality.
Thus, all the talk of a piercing of Nanmura’s sole “by poetry”, the imagined dream-like beauty of the hairpin’s owner, the timid romantic longing of Nanmura and Emi for each other ties neatly into the characters' dream-like stay at the spa. They all hide from war time reality. The hairpin is another distraction and a reason to continue to hide. War is hell. Better stay away from it.
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