Remaking on TV

[Aaron Gerow]

Did anyone happen to catch the television remake of Ozu's Tokyo Story on 
Saturday? Since I was busy writing, I only watched about half of it, but 
that was enough to give me a sufficiently bizarre experience. A film I 
have seen over 10 times now reappears with the same characters, different 
actors, same dialogue (in places), but completely different style. It was 
of course updated for the new century (e.g., Hara Setsuko's character was 
played by Matsu Takako and her husband died in Nigeria while serving in 
an NGO, not during the war). Watching it reminded me of Hasumi's 
stipulation that Ozu is an emotional director because he is utterly 
unemotional. The TV version was emotional because it used all the same 
old stylistic tricks to be emotional (the worst part being when, after 
the mother's death, all the children find albums the mother made of their 
childhood, and thus regret how bad they'd been to mom. Ozu would never 
steep to such melodramatic tricks.) An interesting text for understanding 
TV stylistics.

And just when I thought I recovered from that, one of TBS's drama for 
this season is none other than Taiyo no kisetsu, a contemporary remaking 
of Ishihara Shintaro's novel, the first film adaptation of which 
propelled Ishihara Yujiro to stardom. 

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171