OKAERI

[Mirjam/Roger Fischer]

Dear Kinejapan

In my last e-mail I spoke about Tomio Aoki, Ozu's child-star Tokkan-kozu,
who plays a role as an old man on a park bench in OKAERI. 

Yuriko is sitting on a bench when he is arriving with his grand daughter.
Yuriko has to change the bench because the child wants to sit where she was
sitting. Then the old man begins to talk to Yuriko. The following excerpt
of the dialogue (= the english subtitles of the film) seems to me very
revealing. Last time I tried to make a connection between "Bounce koGALS"
and "OKAERI", maybe the excerpt can help to make that connection more
plausible.

				Old Man to Yuriko 
		(he tries to explain why he speaks to her)
"The other day I saw this High School girl there, alone, lonely. So I went
up and talked to her and she suddenly turned and said: Look Granpa - how
old do you think you are? - It was no fun, I can tell you. - I'm with my
grandchild and she's thinking like that. When I heard that I got really
upset about it. I told her that even if I was that kind, I'd never have
picked her. - But after that I told my wife and she got mad at me, asked me
how old I thought I was and I asked if she had forgotten. Oh, we really
went round and round. It's like this, well, she's really a troublesome
woman." 
(Pause)
"And she's strong too. Used to play the piano in this jazz band.

				Yuriko
		(as she played the piano, she gets interested)
"The piano?"


				Old Man
"Yes the piano for the occupying forces. Well, it can't be helped. America
and Japan had this silly war. (gets a bit emotional) I was still young and
it seemed to me like playing their music was just plain unpatriotic,
something like treason... "
				Yuriko
		(apparently she dislikes the situation)

				Old Man
"Of course I was playing sax there when I met her. Music is nice, isn't it?"

				Yuriko
		(gets up and leaves suddenly)

The Old Man is surprised. He watches her as she goes away. The child smiles.


				Child
"Stood up again. I tell Grandma."

The Old Man doesn't seem to like what she's saying. He grimaces.


Even if haven't seen the film, this dialogue excerpt shows clearly the two
levels of what the Old Man is saying. On one level, he adopts the vision of
today's modern Japan, on the other he is refractory to this same vision and
has extremely traditional views on women and the war. In "Bounce koGALS"
you find a more crass example for the latter. There an other old man speaks
to Lisa an revels in talking about comfort women and the second world war
(Anne Mc. also wrote about this in her e-mail). 

Besides, after viewing OKAERI for the second time on video, I liked it even
more. If you know more about Makoto Shinozaki as a critic and director (has
he made other films in the meantime?), I would extremly appreciate, if you
could answer me.

Thanks and best regards

Roger Fischer 


Miriam Fischer Roger Fischer
mrfischer at access.ch
Tel. 01 401 36 39