Tokyo Twilight (1957)

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.

Director:

Yasujirô Ozu

Writers:

Kôgo Noda, Yasujirô Ozu

Stars:

Setsuko Hara, Ineko Arima, Chishû Ryû

Cast

Credited cast:
Setsuko Hara	...	Takako Numata
Ineko Arima	...	Akiko Sugiyama
Chishû Ryû	...	Shûkichi Sugiyama
Isuzu Yamada	...	Kisako Aijima
Teiji Takahashi	...	Noboru Kawaguchi
Masami Taura	...	Kenji Kimura
Haruko Sugimura	...	Shigeko Takeuchi
Sô Yamamura	...	Seki Sekiguchi
Kinzô Shin	...	Yasuo Numata
Kamatari Fujiwara	...	Gihei Shimomura, noodle vendor
Nobuo Nakamura	...	Sakae Aiba
Seiji Miyaguchi	...	Policeman
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Eiko Miyoshi	...	Midwife

Storyline

Two sisters live with their father. The younger sister is embroiled in an affair and becomes pregnant. The elder sister has run away from her husband and returned with her child to her parent's home. Both sisters are astonished when their mother, long thought dead, turns up alive. The sisters are even more stunned when they learn what their mother's life has been.

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Plot Keywords:

long lost mother | japan | post war | sake | mahjong | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

19 July 1972 (USA)

Also Known As:

Tokyo Twilight

Company Credits

Production Co:

Shochiku

Technical Specs

Runtime:

140 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

Referenced in I Lived, But... (1983)

User Reviews

secrets and lies, Ozu style

A fairly dark story for Ozu, but you know what? I think that shows Ozu can do just a little different than what everyone expects of him. The ingredients of this stuff isn't just melodrama, it's soap opera - disappointed father, absentee mother, an abortion, and a closed off young woman who doesn't know what to do with herself, certainly not around the deadbeat man in her life. But it's how Ozu goes about - I felt deeply for this family since it builds from a place that just feels real - and awkward in its reality. I think in many of Ozu's films the kind of nice-ness people have to one another (I don't know if this is just in Japan or just elsewhere) is a cover for what they really think and feel.

A lot of what is in the early parts of Ozu films are mundane, just pleasantries, making tea, talking some minor gossip or 'how was your day' stuff. But then it goes into some areas that are much darker, or just can't be seen by the surface of the rituals of Japanese familial ties and relations. And in this film Ozu really made it a point that this family is torn by secrets and lies, and it's so under the surface that it becomes palpable. And there's a noirish quality here that works interestingly, as the sister Akika stews away with her secret in a bar, and doesn't even know the bigger secret about her birthright (and a tinny song Ozu plays often in the film, even in the most tragic scenes, adds a whole other level of the familiar but sadness).

I was touched by Tokyo Twilight, and it wasn't a sudden effect - it came over me gradually, like an old friend coming by and then finding out through a long and staggering conversation what hard times there have been. It's tragedy in full dimensions