Meanwhile Hirayama’s oldest son, Koichi (Keiji Sada), and his wife Akiko (Mariko Okada), still leech off the old man to buy them household items — like a refrigerator, as well as luxuries, like a set of used golf clubs or expensive leather purses. That Koichi is weak-willed and gives in to his wife, who finally relents and allows Koichi to buy the clubs on installments, creates many a humorous moment. It also allows for the natural insertion of Miura (Teruo Yoshida) — a work colleague of Koichi’s, whom Michiko has feelings for, and becomes a possible rival for the man Hirayama’s pal wants to set her up with.
But, the bulk of the tale follows Hirayama meeting characters from his past. He has a reunion of middle school classmates with their old teacher, a man called Sakuma (Eijiro Tono), known as The Gourd to them. He has fallen on hard times- from a respected teacher to the cook and owner of a greasy spoon noodle shop. He has his own old maid daughter, Tomoko (Haruko Sugimura- in a sympathetic role in an Ozu film), who lives with him, and rues her father’s lowly station and the drunken state he returns home from with Hirayama and his former students.
At The Gourd’s noodle shop, Hirayama, on a mission to impart charity funds from his classmates for his old teacher, encounters a man who was his underling aboard a destroyer in the Pacific theater of World War Two. The two ex-sailors go drinking at a more upscale eatery, and the sailor tells The Gourd, whom he calls Pops, that they need to eat somewhere better. The Gourd laughs it off, then slumps in a neon haze of tiredness, despair, and frustration. It is a touching scene made all the more powerful because it comes after an earlier scene of his daughter breaking down over her father’s drunkenness and personal failure, and because it is followed by a funny sequence where Hirayama and his former underling drink and wonder of Japan’s fate had it won the war.
After trying to visualize the Japanization of America, both agree that Japan’s loss was best for all parties, even as the old sailor dances to a war march, and salutes to Hirayama and the bar owner — a woman (Kyoko Kishida) Hirayama claims looks like his dead wife — one of many recurring themes throughout Ozu films (the use of the same first and surnames is another).
Article comments