The movie Tokyo Story is about family relations, how kids forget their loved ones specially parents and get occupy with their day to day life. Movie carries a story of an old married couple who plans to visit their kids, whom they haven’t paid a visit for a very long time. They realize that their lives are reaching the end, and wish to see what their children’s have done for themselves in their life. The couple travels to Tokyo a city in Japan, after their arrival in Tokyo, the parents are greeted warmly, but were treated ordinarily, and Kids are constantly busy with their work, present lives- appointments and have no time to spend with their old parents. The old couple was sent on sight-seeing tours of Tokyo, especially to places unsuitable for elderly visitors. Parents were not given due respect by the kids, for example when the son bought cake, daughter in law didn’t allow them to eat it, as she felt it was too expensive for them to have it. Their other daughter in law who was widow was the only family member who accepted them analysis gracefully in her house and was nice to the couple. After they left for Tokyo, on the crowded train station, the mother becomes ill and minutes after getting home she dies. The story of the film consists of a social observation on Japanese middle-class family life and an analysis of human mentality and modernity. The film didn’t focus on Japanese cultural, but overall it shows you how the younger generation view and treat their elders, especially parents. The film discusses that the children don’t like their parents once they are mature enough and they start earning money. Kids are developing American life by living independently from parents. In a daily life of ordinary people, Sense of deep a... ... middle of paper ... ...ra that added to the naturalism and reality of the film. These invisible techniques are products of the cinematography, miseen- scene, and editing that brings the focus to exterior elements of the film without disturbing the diegesis. Finally, I felt this film is a great example of Ozu’s style as a director and as a reflection of 1950’s attitude of young generation especially, Japanese culture. Tokyo story deals with the different ways the two old people and the four young people deal with the various kinds of time. Some parts are extremely emotional and can suggest ideas on more than one level of thought. The story is purposely simple in understating the necessity of the formal system and the need to guide the direction of the film. The deeper meanings and observations arise, throughout the evolution, the transition, and the non-diegetic portions of Tokyo Story.
Akira Kurosaw’s Seven Samurai is a film that encompasses various ideologies in order to allow the audience to understand the lives of Japanese people during the 1600’s. The film delves deep in social issues of the roles of the people within the society, the expectations as well as the obligations within the respected castes and elements within groups of ; suffering, working together, protecting family and working for the better good of the community.
The signs plastered all over town creates an unpleasant atmosphere in the woman 's life which affects her psychologically in several ways. She was associated with the middle class as seen in her silk dress and white gloves. However, nine days after the evacuation notice, she still was not finished packing which left me to believe she and her family were not ready to face the unknown or unfamiliar events yet to come. During the Internment, all who were taken were called not by their own name, but only by numbers. The unnamed characters left a distinctive perception of how the woman
Therefore, G. Gotanda’s ‘The Sisters’ Matsumoto’ has been a great epitome of indescribable pain that can be shown as a play to people in America. The play itself has become a general narrative of Japanese people who had terrible experiences from the outbreak of internment. Especially, the play indirectly mentions people from the Issei generation as they are the people who are true victims of racial segregation from a democratic country. They are the victims of the tragic event created by the country that holds values highly on equality. Therefore, people should acknowledge their voices that had been lost as they had lost everything that they had worked for during the internment. And it was more painstaking for them as their children also had to suffer discrimination from their community. For example, Gotanda has used Togo Matsumoto, father of Grace Matsumoto, to show the voice of people of Issei generation. The author has not made Togo to appear in the play, but his presence to other characters is massive as they hold reminiscences of him even after his tragic death in the internment. Togo Matsumoto is a respectable man as he holds lots of wealth and properties, but like others from Issei generation, he has lost everything including his pride of being a successful businessman. It is tragic to see that a
The mothers really struggle to transform their daughters, but the daughters finally realize that they want to be Chinese, not because it is cool, but because they come to understand who they really are. All four daughters are able to learn something from their mother that can be used to further their relationship and bond. Despite the differences first presented, the girls each find ways to bond with their mothers and make a happy connection between their American lifestyles, and their Chinese backgrounds.
At first, the four main characters are all nameless but with the appellation---the father, the son, the daughter and the mother. Generally speaking, if authors want their writings to be understood easily, they always choose to set names for the characters, which also can avoid confusion. But in this novel, the author must mean to express a special meaning through the nameless main characters. On one hand, it is thought that the experiences of this nameless Japanese American family is not a single example but the epitome of what all Japanese American encountered at that time. Nearly 120,000 Japanese American were taken from their homes in the spring and early summer of 1942 and incarcerated in concentration camps by the United States government.(Roger Daniels, 3) On the other hand, what is more significant, the namelessness of the characters also indicates the loss of their identities. Because they are Japanese Ameican, they are different from the real American natives in their habits, w...
Like walking through a barren street in a crumbling ghost town, isolation can feel melancholy and hopeless. Yet, all it takes is an ordinary flower bud amidst the desolation to show life really can exist anywhere. This is similar to Stephen’s journey in The Samurai’s Garden. This novel is about an ailing Chinese boy named Stephen who goes to a Japanese village during a time of war between Japan and China to recover from his disease. By forming bonds with several locals and listening to their stories, he quickly matures into a young adult. Throughout the novel, Gail Tsukiyama shows how disease forces Stephen into isolation; however, Matsu’s garden and Sachi lead him out of solitude.
But for some of the Japanese Americans, it was even harder after they were discharged from the internment camp. The evacuation and the internment had changed the lives of all Japanese Americans. The evacuation and internment affected the Wakatsuki family in three ways: the destruction of Papa’s self-esteem, the separation of the Wakatsuki family, and the change in their social status. The destruction of Papa’s self-esteem is one effect of the evacuation and internment. Before the evacuation and internment, Papa was proud; he had a self-important attitude, yet he was dignified.
Like walking through a barren street in a crumbling ghost town, isolation can feel melancholy and hopeless. Yet, all it takes is something like one flower bud to show life really can exist anywhere. This is similar to Stephen’s journey in The Samurai’s Garden. This novel is about an ailing Chinese boy named Stephen who goes moves to a Japanese village during a time of war between Japan and China to recover from his disease. By forming bonds with several locals and listening to their stories, he quickly matures into a young adult. Throughout the novel, Gail Tsukiyama shows how disease forces Stephen into isolation; however, his relationship with Sachi and his time spent in Matsu’s garden lead him out of solitude.
There were many events that happened in the past which people were fighting for their rights and freedoms. In the novel “When The Emperor Was Divine” by Julie Otsuka, she uses this novel to tell the readers about the importance of freedom and human right. In the story, she did not mention the name of the main characters, but the characters that involve in this novel is a Japanese family who get arrest by the American because of their ethnicities. First, their father got arrested by the American because the American doubted that this man was a spy from Japan. Then their whole family got arrested into the Japanese Concentration Camp in the desert. They were ordered not to go through the fence of the camp or else they will get kill by the soldiers who guarding the camp. This means that their freedoms were taken away by the camp. In the story, the girl’s personality was changed because of this camp. She starts to realize that this “camp” was nothing but a jail. So she started to give on her life and not to care about anything. She used to eat with her family, but now she never did; also she started to smoke cigarette in her ages of 14 to15. Also their human rights were being taken while their were in the camp. They were being force to admit to America for their loyalty. It makes all the Japanese people to feel low self-esteem for their identity. Therefore, the author uses this novel to show the changing of this family by the lack of freedom and human right.
...successful collaboration of sound, colour, camera positioning and lighting are instrumental in portraying these themes. The techniques used heighten the suspense, drama and mood of each scene and enhance the film in order to convey to the spectator the intended messages.
The movie, The Last Samurai, filled the theatres in 2003 with its suspenseful plot, exciting battle sequences and historical reference within the script. In the film, The Last Samurai, Americans were portrayed as an influential world power. Thus, a troubled American, Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is hired to teach the Japanese, American war tactics in order to fight in combat against the Samurai. Through a brutal journey of battle and strife, Nathan is faced with the life or death situation of fighting for his new home and for the last of the Samurai or battle for the land, he is not proud to call his own. The film makes use of the time period, politics, technology, and violence to illustrate the horrors of the real, America.
We follow the life of Sayuri, who begins as a peasant in a fishing village, as she becomes a geisha. The real interest of this book is in the first half - her training and schooling. After that, the book devolves into a rather standard romance-novel-type plot concerning Sayuri's love for the Chairman, an important figure in her life.
The setting takes place in many different locations in the short. The author mastered creating a story within a story and magnificently mastered shift tenses. The story starts off with Tengo at a train station in Koenji. “He had nothing planned that day.”The story then stated that, “Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him.” (Town,1) It is important to the story because it shows a sense of power that was absent in Tengo’s childhood. After pondering on what he should do for the day, he decides to visit his father, who resided in a sanatorium in Chikura. The sanatorium is for people who suffer from cognitive disorders. After deciding to visit his father, the narrator describes Tengo’s relationship with his father. He stated that, “He had never much liked the man, and his father had no special love for him either.” (Town, 2) The reader then finds out that Tengo has only visited his father twice since he was put in the sanatorium, four years ago. The story then discusses why Tengo doesn’t like Sundays. We discover that as a child Tengo worked every Sunday for his father, who worked as a bill collector for the NHK, Japan’s quasi-governmental radio and television network. Tengo dreaded Sundays because he went door-to-door with his father and never had much time to be a kid on the weekends. Tengo w...
A comparison between modern Western countries and Japan emphasizes a large discrepancy in beliefs regarding cultural growth in the separate parts of the world (Leonardson, 2004). According to many scholars and much research done on Japan the culture is the perfect example of what cultural homogeneity means as a whole. The cultural homogeneity affects the Japanese youth in how they grow, develop, affect their communities, and live their future lives in the community; this also plays a role in forcing out crime in the country. It also affects the procedures of the police force when interacting with citizens and planning new procedures that require the help and cooperation of Japanese citizens. The cultural
First of all, the movie has an unusual opening. When the movie begins, there are just many people on the screen; and I cannot find any clue to the plot or the setting. However, I think this opening shows Bonnycastle¡¯s idea of postmodernism which is ¡°it is hard to know what you might encounter next or what kind of transaction might be expected of you¡± (Bonnycastle 232); in other words, I think the opening wants to show us there are various people on the earth, and their fate and destiny are different. After this unusual opening, the main characters Manni and Lola appear on the screen; however, after they finish their phone call, I understand what has happened. In addition, Lola has a mere 20 minutes to get a large amount of money to her boyfriend so that he will not be killed by his boss. In fact, it seems impossible to do such a thing in 20 minutes; however, I think this is what the audiences will find the most attractive. In addition, I guess the director wants each member of the audiences to imagine the next 20 minutes in their own mind before they see the result of the movie. However, I am sure that each person¡¯s ending will be different as this is a reflection of the uncertainty of the postmodernist view of life. Consequently, the first part of the movie only interests me in what will be going on in the next 20 minutes.