Farewell to Dream (1956)

Shinji Tanaka: Yôichi Akimoto

Photos 

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Yôichi Akimoto : [standing somberly and contemplatively alone outside his shop]  Here I am standing in the sunlight of a spring day. My name is Yoichi. I'm 20 years old. Don't I look handsome? I'm only kidding. You ask what I'm looking at? I'm not looking at anything. It doesn't matter. I'm busy working at my shop anyway.

• Yôichi Akimoto : [narrating]  This is where I sleep, right by this window. Well, I guess you don't know much about the house when my dad was alive, or about me when dad was alive. Why don't you pick up those binoculars? Hold on to them. And look through them at the window of that house there against the sunset. Just pretend you're me four years ago, the perfect young man from the fish shop. This is the last chapter of his youth, full of innocent dreams.

• Seiji Harada : What's wrong? You're not the same today.

  Yôichi Akimoto : Don't you smell fish on me when you walk next to me?

  Seiji Harada : Just a little, but I'm used to it. So don't worry.

  Yôichi Akimoto : I don't like it. When I'm on the train or in a movie theater, I don't know what to do when the person next to me makes a face. I just want to get away.

  Seiji Harada : You shouldn't worry about that.

  Yôichi Akimoto : I used to get teased a lot when I was in school. Everybody told me to get away because I smelled like fish... I'll be a fish vendor the rest of my life.

  Seiji Harada : Don't be pessimistic. You must always have hope.

  Yôichi Akimoto : But I'm a fish vendor's son, after all.