(1953; b/w, Japanese) Director Yasujiro's poignant, understated portrait of the modern Japanese generation of Tokyo less than a decade after the end of World War II depicts them as too busy to find time to spend with their rural, retired parents.

Leaving their young, unmarried daughter Kyoko, a teacher, at home, Shukishi Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) and his wife Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) take a tiresome train trip (more than a day's ride) from Onomichi to visit with their son Koichi (So Yamamura), daughter Shige (Hauko Shugimura), and daughter-in-law Noriko (Setsuko Hara) in bustling Tokyo.

The first night the parents stay with Koichi, a neighborhood physician, and his wife Fumiko and their two boys. Plans to go for a Sunday outing are dashed when Koichi must attend to an ill patient; the ill-tempered older boy, Minoru, complains bitterly. When the old pair goes to their daughter's house with her husband, who brings home small cakes as a treat for the guests, Shige, a beautician in her own house, complains that they are too expensive: "Crackers would have been enough." She calls Noriko asking a favor to take the old ones out the following day because she's too busy.

Noriko takes the day off from her job to go on a bus tour of Tokyo with Shukishi and Tomi. Meanwhile, Shige ("How long will they stay?") and Koichi confer and decide to send their parents to Atami Hot Springs, a spa on the coast. After a sleepless night among much livelier, younger guests, Mr and Mrs Hirayama feel homesick and leave. As well Tomi experiences a spell of dizziness.

Back in Tokyo - "Why, you're back so soon," exclaims Shige - they decide to split up, Tomi going back to spend the night with Noriko while Shukishi ("We're really homeless now") visits with the Hattoris, an old friend and his wife, he hasn't seen for 17 or 18 years. The old man and Mr Hattori (no room in his small home with a room rented to a boarder) accompany a third crony from years before the war to a bar and get drunk on sake. They reminisce, mourn the loss of children ("enough of war"), and deplore the new generation's lack of spirit and ambition, while admitting too much cannot be expected of their children in a city too full of people.

Feeling she's become a burden to others, Tomi urges her daughter-in-law Noriko (she had been the wife of the Hirayamas' second son, Shoji, killed eight years earlier in the war) to remarry so that she won't be lonely when she's older. Unwilling to complain, the only one who has not behaved selfishly, Noriko says she's happy just as she is.

The police deliver a pair of inebriates, Mr Hirayama and his other companion, to the home of the Kanekos; Shige is irate with her father.

At the train station, as if comprehending a premonition, Tomi bids her children farewell, urging them not to make the journey to Onomichi if anything should happen. On their way back to Onomichi, Shukishi and Tomi stop in Osaka, because Tomi has been ill on the train, where they also visit with their youngest son Keizo. Back home Tomi's health rapidly deteriorates into a coma.

The film has a very deliberate, slow pace, which may make it seem humdrum to the modern viewer.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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