Ozu "Toda Family" Question

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

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 Yea