Ozu "Toda Family" Question

[Michael Kerpan]

The two Takamines came from different parts of Japan (Mieko = Tokyo -- Hideko = Hakodate) and were not related.  

Todas is interesting to me in that it is, in some ways (as to both tone and incidents), closer to McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow than Tokyo Story (which I view as more of a rejoinder to McCarey's vision rather than an adoption of it).



--- On Mon, 1/3/11, mccaskem at georgetown.edu <mccaskem at georgetown.edu> wrote:

> From: mccaskem at georgetown.edu <mccaskem at georgetown.edu>
> Subject: Ozu "Toda Family" Question
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Date: Monday, January 3, 2011, 4:16 PM
> Peter High (Imperial Screen, 268),
> and Donald Richie (Ozu, 227-230) both seem 
> to agree that Toda-ke no kyodai/Brothers and sisters of the
> Toda Family was 
> partly aimed at plugging Japanese settlement in
> Japan-Occupied China.
> 
> In the denouement, the problems of the widowed mother and
> her loyal daughter 
> are solved when prodigal-son-type Shojiro comes back on
> leave from his 
> unspecified "important job" in Tianjin, and invites them to
> start a new life with 
> him there. They say yes. That is the happy ending of this
> 1941 Ozu film. 
> 
> Japanese who actually did go to China to settle generally
> experienced unhappy 
> endings in 1945, but in 1941 that was apparently quite
> unforeseen.
> 
> I have two questions that I hope experts on this list may
> help with.
> 
> 1) Shojiro comes back from China wearing a sort of uniform
> without insignia. It 
> seems to be a kind of suit cut in a military style for
> civilian wear. It seems to me 
> that I saw some people wearing this sort of outfit, for
> lack of anything else left 
> to wear, in the year or two after the war ended, and I
> think they may have been 
> gray, or maybe some shade of khaki.
> 
> When Shojiro comes back to Japan from Tianjin, all other
> male characters are 
> still wearing regular Western suits. Only he seems to be
> wearing this outfit. 
> Would this have indicated to 1941 Tokyo audiences that he
> had some sort of 
> Japanese military or civil govt. job in Occupied Tianjin?
> 
> 2) Was the talented young actress Takamine Mieko, who plays
> Setsuko, the older 
> sister of Takamine Hideko?
> 
> I'd be very grateful for help with either of these two
> questions, which came to 
> mind in the course of a New Year's Eve spent watching this
> Ozu oldie.
> 
> Many Thanks,
> 
> Michael McCaskey
> Georgetown Univ. 
>