This movie has caused considerable misunderstandings - both concerning the use of a Japanese term in the title as well as the Japanese signs shown in the movie. Let me say that this film is about the cross-cultural relevance of Japanese traditions for a fairly simply-minded Bavarian couple. She could never fulfill her dream to become a Japanese shadow-dancer and he did not realize that their homely harmony was merely a facade. After his wife's death, the man is told by his son that he did not know who his wife was.
She had a dream to see the Fudjiyama, but although her husband is diagnosed terminally ill, she passes away six months before him. He does not know his disease. Crowded with guilt he decides to fulfill his wife's dream. He puts on her clothes under his owns and flies to Tokyo where his son lives. Because the welcome is rather frosty and the staying together problematic, he meets an 18 years old girl who understands that he is traveling with his wife on his body and determined to show her the beloved Fudjiyama.
A very long time ago, people invented signs merely for the sake of communicating absent, far or abstract objects. The signs should substitute the objects by representing them. If people needed the objects, they could stick to them and just let the signs aside. However, what should they do when the original objects are gone? Then, there is the memory in the heads, the memory also consists of signs, but they are dissipating and fragile. So, the yearning for the objects behind the signs was coming up. Was there a kind of magic who would transform the picture of a person into the real person? On the idea that the clothes that have touched the body of a saint, are holy signs, the whole relic-system of the Catholic church is built. People travel around the world to visit the places where famous persons lived - as if their "ghost" would still house in their ancient apartments. People believe in the traces that beloved people left, because when the people are gone, this is all that is left. That the man decides to put on the clothes of his passed wife, has a nice parallel in many languages where the clothes that are most closely to the body are called "little body" like German "Leibchen" for "Leib" (body). The bra that held once a part of the wife's body possibly still holds her scent, so a part of her must still be present in this bra, and although the bra is only a sign for her, this is the ultimate approximation that her husband can reach towards her after she has been gone.
She had a dream to see the Fudjiyama, but although her husband is diagnosed terminally ill, she passes away six months before him. He does not know his disease. Crowded with guilt he decides to fulfill his wife's dream. He puts on her clothes under his owns and flies to Tokyo where his son lives. Because the welcome is rather frosty and the staying together problematic, he meets an 18 years old girl who understands that he is traveling with his wife on his body and determined to show her the beloved Fudjiyama.
A very long time ago, people invented signs merely for the sake of communicating absent, far or abstract objects. The signs should substitute the objects by representing them. If people needed the objects, they could stick to them and just let the signs aside. However, what should they do when the original objects are gone? Then, there is the memory in the heads, the memory also consists of signs, but they are dissipating and fragile. So, the yearning for the objects behind the signs was coming up. Was there a kind of magic who would transform the picture of a person into the real person? On the idea that the clothes that have touched the body of a saint, are holy signs, the whole relic-system of the Catholic church is built. People travel around the world to visit the places where famous persons lived - as if their "ghost" would still house in their ancient apartments. People believe in the traces that beloved people left, because when the people are gone, this is all that is left. That the man decides to put on the clothes of his passed wife, has a nice parallel in many languages where the clothes that are most closely to the body are called "little body" like German "Leibchen" for "Leib" (body). The bra that held once a part of the wife's body possibly still holds her scent, so a part of her must still be present in this bra, and although the bra is only a sign for her, this is the ultimate approximation that her husband can reach towards her after she has been gone.