Repast (めし, 1951)

Women form the central concern of the films of Miko Naruse (成瀬 巳喜男, 1905-1969). Women play the main protagonists, the thematic concerns usually revolve around issues concerning women, his audiences were mainly women, and the narratives are often based on stories by women writers. Naruse’s 1951 hit film Meshi (めし/ Repast) is adapted from the final, unfinished novel by popular writer Fumiko Hayashi (林 芙美子, 1903-1951). He would later to go on to make five other films based on her literary output including Hourou-ki (A Wanderer’s Notebook, 1962) which was based on her autobiography.

If I were a teacher of Japanese, I could imagine using Naruse’s Meshi to teach students about one radical difference between men and women in Japan: the use of language. The different usages of language between men and women in Japanese is apparent in all family dramas, but in Meshi it is foregrounded by film’s title, which is also a key motif throughout the film. The difference between men’s and women’s Japanese rarely comes across in the subtitles because it is difficult to translate. The translators of Meshi had a real problem translating the title in particular and I’m not sure that they were successful. ‘Repast’ is a rather formal-sounding French loan word and it's in my estimation, a bit of an archaic word for a meal in English. In contrast, the Japanese word ‘meshi’, as I will elaborate in a moment, is very informal. I can’t really criticize whoever came up with the title ‘Repast’ though, because there would also be the complication of the different usages of words for meals among different regions of English speakers (supper and tea have very different meanings depending on what side of the Atlantic you are one for example). The noun ‘meal’ itself also has multiple meanings just to add to the translation difficulties.

Focusing on the Japanese meanings of ‘meshi’ though, the first dilemma when translating the title of the film is that it can mean both a meal and rice. As rice is the staple of all traditional Japanese meals ‘gohan’, the synonym for ‘meshi’, also means both a meal and rice. ‘Gohan’ is the word that most students of Japanese will learn and it is what women will use with each other and when talking to men. It is more polite than ‘meshi’, which men will use with each other and when talking to their wives.

In Naruse’s subtle depiction of a marriage, the husband Hastsunosuke ‘Hatsu’ Okamoto (Ken Uehara) often uses very blunt expression ‘Meshi ja nai ka’ to ask his wife Michiyo (Setsuko Hara) if supper is ready yet. It would be similar in English to a husband asking his wife ‘Isn’t supper ready yet?’ in a tone that implies that the meal should already be on the table. After five years of marriage, the shine has worn off. Their relationship is strained due to troubles making ends meet and Hatsu, worn out from his job, doesn’t see how the long, lonely days working as a housewife are affecting Michiyo. Her one solace is in the scraggly, tail-less cat who seeks her affection.

Michiyo’s feelings about living in Osaka are emphasized through the theme of ‘meshi.’ She finds that the imported , overpriced rice sold by a local woman tastes funny and longs for rice from back home. Without family in Osaka, Michiyo has grown tired of the endless chores of cooking and cleaning and wonders if she should return to Tokyo and find work for herself. Her husband works long hours and has become distant from her, leading her to lavish all her love on a mangy, tail-less cat.

The catalyst for change comes in the guise of a niece, Satoko, who drops in unexpectedly from Tokyo. Satoko has come to escape her parents and their marital expectations of her and seems to have a little crush on her uncle. Flirty, young, and naïve, Satoko’s presence reminds Michiyo of the woman she used to be, as does a reunion with her Tokyo friends. These women are important because they show the limited chances women had in the 1950s. Each suffers from their own situation (single vs. married) and thinks that the others have it better. After this interlude with her friends, Michiyo comes home to find that Satoko and her husband have done very little to contribute to the day’s chores and she decides that the time has come to make a change in her life.

From a modern perspective, Hatsu seems like a real jerk of a husband and in a lot of reviews of this film, Hatsu is described as being a stereotypical patriarchal husband. Thinking about him in the context of 1950s Japan, I actually found him quite a sympathetic character – especially when contrasted with the husband in Yama no Oto (Sound of the Mountain, 1954), another Naruse film starring Ken Uehara and Setsuko Hara as a couple with marital problems. Hatsu shows early signs of being a good guy – although he is curt in the usual way with his wife, he shows great patience when she’s angry with him and never responds with anger himself. Apart from his lack of contribution to household chores (which is sadly even today typical behaviour for men in many Japanese families), he also shows good judgment for the most part throughout. For example, he is always honest with his wife, telling her where he goes and with whom. He does not spend money overly rashly and avoids bad business decisions (ie the Marugaki scheme) despite heavy peer pressure. He also seems completely oblivious to the women who throw themselves at him during Michiyo’s absence.

While Naruse does give the husband’s perspective lots of screen time, our thoughts are never far from Michiyo. Unlike Fumiko Hayashi’s unfinished novel, which was written in the first person, Michiyo’s motivations throughout the film seem deliberately ambiguous. In doing so, Naruse allows his audience to use their own experience to interpret Michiyo’s actions and thoughts. This is only broken in the final scene on the train (no spoilers follow), where Michiyo is given a voiceover narration that explains her ultimate choice. This final scene was reportedly tacked on by the studio producers, much to the dismay of many critics. I think that it could have been left ambiguous with no voiceover dialogue. For me, the scene in the restaurant with Michiyo and her husband made the ending satisfying – especially when Michiyo laughs through tears as only Setsuko Hara can. This is a film that can be really appreciated by people, especially women, who have been married for a long time because it asks its audience to consider what happiness in marriage really means to them.

Setsuko Hara ¤ Michiyo Okamoto
Ken Uehara ¤ Hatsunosuke ‘Hatsu’ Okamoto
Yukiko Shimazaki ¤ Satoko Okamoto (niece)
Yōko Sugi ¤ Mistuko Murata (Michiyo’s sister-in-law)
Akiko Kazami ¤ Seiko Tomiyasu
Haruko Sugimura ¤ Matsu Murata (Michiyo’s mother)
Ranko Hanai ¤ Koyoshi Dohya
Hiroshi Nihon’yanagi ¤ Kazuo Takenaka (cousin)
Keiju Kobayashi ¤ Shinzo Murata (Michiyo’s brother)
Akira Ōizumi ¤ Yoshitaro Taniguchi

Mikio Naruse The Masterworks I / Japanese Movie

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009

Sound of the Mountain (山の音, 1954)

One of Mikio Naruse’s most acclaimed films, Sound of the Mountain (Yama no Oto / 山の音, 1954) is an adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata’s novel of the same name, which had been published in serialized form between 1949 and 1954. The film tells the story of Shingo Ogata, an aging Tokyo salaryman who begins to realize that his family is slowly coming apart at the seams. He has a rather perfunctory relationship with his wife Yasuko (Taruko Nagaoka), he learns that his son, Shuuichi (Ken Uehara) is openly cheating on his daughter-in-law (Setsuko Hara), and his daughter (Chieko Nakakita) leaves her husband to return to the family home in Kamakura with her two young daughters.

Having watched indulged in watching many of my favourite Ozu films in recent weeks, the sharp dialogue in Sound of the Mountain came as a real shock. Antipathy is not merely hinted at through gestures and averted gazes, but put into words designed to injure other members of the family. Shingo’s wife and daughter are both jealous of beautiful, dutiful Kikuko and try to bring her down by reminding her that she is childless. The daughter, Fusako, feels hurt by her father’s partiality for Kikuko and suggests that he neglected her when she was growing up. Yasuko clearly harbours some resentment for the fact that Shingo only married her because her older, more beautiful sister died. The son, Shuiichi injures everyone through his self-centered, disrespectful behaviour.

The one ray of sunshine in this dysfunctional family is the warm relationship between father and daughter-in-law. We are clued into this in their first scene together, when they meet up by chance on their way home for dinner. After Shingo points out a sunflower in a garden – an image that provides an unusual metaphor for Shingo’s theory about how wonderful it would be if people could wash out the insides of their heads and start afresh – as well as indicating that the film begins in the late summer. Naruse’s normally static camera becomes animated and tracks along with them as they walk home together. Their close relationship is first indicated by their pleasant banter and then emphasized when they discover that they both brought home shellfish for dinner at Enoshima’s local shop. Shingo bough sazae (sea snails) and Kikuko bought lobster and shrimp.

The film begins quite lightheartedly with many amusing moments designed to draw us into an identification with the main protagonist, Shingo. For example, early on in the film there is a wonderful scene where Shingo sits contemplatively at the door smoking, looking out into the moonlight at his perfectly composed back garden. His reverie is interrupted by the snores of his wife. He tries to read for a while, but her snores are too loud for that, and he pinches her nose in an effort to abate her snores. This moment informs us, with humour, of the difficult relationship Shingo has with his wife, but this lighthearted introduction to Shingo does not prepare us for just how startlingly bad his domestic life is about to come.

From the perspective of someone who has grown up in a predominately Judeo-Christian community, like I have, it was fascinating to see how matter-of-factly the very difficult subjects of adultery, divorce, and abortion are dealt with my the characters in Sound of the Mountain. The subject of abortion was pretty taboo in Hollywood films of the 1950s and in contemporary Hollywood films it comes with a lot of emotional and political baggage. I don’t know what the views of Japanese audiences in the 1950s would have been but we can gather a few things from the character responses in Sound of the Mountain. Kikuko, although desirous of having children, seems to put the prospective life of the child ahead of her own desire for motherhood. She looks at her sullen young niece Satoko, and sees how the child suffers because of her parents’ broken marriage. Although it is not said explicitly, the film implies that Kikuko does not want a child of her own to suffer in the same way. The other characters do not moralize on the subject, but instead react in highly personal ways to news of her abortion. Her husband takes it as a slight against him, that Kikuko would not want to have his child. Her parents-in-law are hurt that she made the decision independently and did not discuss her dilemma with them first.

My biggest frustration while watching Sound of the Mountain was that we never really learn what Kikuko’s thinking. As in Ozu’s films, Setsuko Hara’s character expresses herself through expression and gesture not words. It was not until I ruminated on the film overnight that I realized what Naruse was doing with the film. We can’t know what Kikuko’s thinking because the film restricts itself almost entirely to Shingo’s point-of-view. Any scenes for which he is not present, such as the brief cameo of his son-in-law in conversion with his son, he learns about soon afterwards.

Kikuko’s face is like the Noh mask that Shingo receives when a colleague passes away. This reference is made explicit when the mask is described as looking like the face of a child from certain angles. Kikuko’s husband had earlier told his father that he finds it difficult to consummate their relationship because he sees Kikuko as being too child-like. Noh masks are famous for their uncanny ability to appear to change expression when tilted. Like the mystery of the changing expressions on the Noh mask, Shingo spends the whole movie looking at Kikuko’s face and trying to decipher what she is feeling.

For me, the Sound of the Mountain is a kind of unrequited love story about the relationship between Shingo and Kikuko. As in real life, there is no neat resolution at the end of the film. The final scene takes place in quiet winter beauty of Shinjuku Park, where Shingo and Kikuko say farewell to each other. Although Kikuko’s future is uncertain, the openness space of the park contrasts with the confined spaces of the Ogura family home among the hills of Kamakura, suggesting the future possibilities for Kikuko now that she is free from the confines of her loveless marriage. With a minimalist visual aesthetic, Naruse has created a remarkable portrait of the internal workings of a 1950s Japanese family.

This film is available from Eureka as a part of the Masters of Cinema Naruse Box Set Volume One. No word yet on when we can expect the next volume of Naruse films (originally planned for release in late 2007), but the BFI does offer its own Naruse Boxset. Among other amazing Japanese classics in their catalogue, Eureka recently released the rarely screened Kon Ichikawa films Kokoro (1955) and Alone Across the Water (Taiheiyo hitori-botchi, 1963). They will be releasing Tokyo Sonata on DVD at the end of May.

To order the Japanese DVD of the film: Yama no Oto / Japanese Movie

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2009