Record of a Tenement Gentleman

Japanese drama from Shochiku and director Yasujiro Ozu. Poor second-hand merchant O-Tane (Choko Iida) is put in a tough spot when her neighbors bring her a very young boy (Hohi Aoki) and ask her to take care of him. It seems the child was abandoned, and after searching for some time, no family for him could be found. O-Tane angrily agrees, but her grumpy exterior slowly softens as she spends more time with the quiet child. Also featuring Chishu Ryu, Reikichi Kawamura, Takeshi Sakamoto, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, and Eitaro Ozawa.

This was Ozu's first film after a five year break during WW2. It seems a warm return home, as his style is intact, and many of the same familiar Shochiku players return. Ozu regular Iida gets a spotlight role as the cranky old widow who slowly warms to becoming a surrogate mother. The film is also of interest for its glimpse of post-war Japan, and the struggles and hardships of maintaining a life in the rubble left behind. My only complaint would that, at 71 minutes, it's a bit too short.

It's such a shame that Ozu wasn't more of an outdoor director, because I've just found out his landscape shots are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. This is one of Ozu's most beautiful movies.

As always, Chôko Iida is absolutely amazing. It's a beautiful story, with a lot of light, funny moments and tender, emotional ones as well. It's not very different from Ozu's pre-war movies, but as such it's equally beautiful. I was somehow disappointed for Ozu not exploring even more the tenement's habitants, but overall I was satisfied with Chôko Iida performance and the tender story of the bond between her and a child.

A beautiful little film by Ozu, only 72 minutes long, about a young boy who was apparently abandoned by his father. He shacks up with Tané (exquisitely played by Choko Iida) for the first night, but when she can't find his father, he becomes a permanent fixture in her household. At first, she's bitter and mean about it. A middle-age widow, she believes, shouldn't have to deal with snotty-nosed bedwetters. But eventually her resolve weakens and she finds that she has missed a lot by never having had a child. The plotline is predictable and a little cliche (it's the kind of movie that Vittorio de Sica would be criticized relentlessly by trendy critics if he had directed it), but the breezy style of Ozu makes everything wonderful. It's really funny at times, and always very touching. I think it's the most enjoyable Ozu film, with the possible exception of I Was Born But..., that I've ever seen. 9/10.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman by Yasujiro Ozu is a heartwarming story of the power of love to heal the hardest heart. In this case the heart belongs to Tane (Shoko Lida), a stern and unforgiving middle-aged widow whose life is turned upside down when a taciturn little boy is brought to her home by a fortuneteller, Tashiro (Chishu Ryu). The boy, Kohei (Hohi Aoki) was lost or abandoned in Chigasaki and followed Tashiro all the way home. After Kohei wets his bed, Tane scolds him in a gruff manner and tries to pass him off to her neighbors but nobody seems to want to care for him.

Tane takes the boy back to Chigasaki to look for his father (Eitaro Ozawa) but learns that he has left for Tokyo. She returns home and reluctantly agrees to take care of the child a while longer. Shoko Lida beautifully recreates Tane's character showing her to be both tough and tender, her hangdog facial expression indicating that perhaps she is more burdened down by life than cold and rejecting. When the frightened boy runs away after being scolded one more time, Tane realizes that she has begun to have affection for him. Tane and Tashiro now belatedly discover how can children contribute to the quality of life and both develop a new understanding and compassion for the condition of children in postwar Japan. Record of a Tenement Gentleman is another small masterpiece from Ozu.

Postwar Ozu, and by contrast to prewar films, little has changed; clear, composed eye, quietly enduring lives, even in the face of near-complete destruction.

Once more, a primary point lies in the edifying fable of the thing. The father is absent, authority if you will, core social integrity, always a looming absence in Ozu, and the orphaned kid will have to rely on the fundamental kindness of the world. Of course that world rises to the occasion, overcomes ego, harshness, in this case no doubt fostered by the hard reality of the times. Instead of scavenging alleys for nails to piece back together destroyed homes, it is asserted that selfless love should take care of that.

This is asserted in a clumsily unsubtle way, straight to the camera. Ozu was back at Shochiku from wartorn Manchuria, and it should not be underestimated, so were many Japanese, back from whatever gruelling role they were forced to play in the war.

To better understand this conservative need for closure, you have to note the way Ozu closes the film. The woman wanting to take care of another orphaned kid is pointed to the direction of Saigo's statue in Ueno Park - where it stands to this day. Saigo was a popular hero famous in conventional history for the last stand of the old samurai faction against plans for a modernized Japan. The ill-advised Tom Cruise film portrays the events.

This is enough to give us pause. Here's a director who had been unerringly forward-looking 15 years ago, had fervently embraced modern foreign film and widely referenced Western mores, no longer a youthful cinephile but sobered from the experience of war, who points for inspiration to this paragon of samurai virtue and ethos. Japan might as well forget the bold experiment with an empire that ended in such humiliating defeat, and look back instead to the simpler times when feudal lords and their police maintained coherence of the world.

This is a pity. The eye is clear but dulled by emotion, making for languid flow but without insight. Japan would have to wait another 10 years for the next generation of forward-looking filmmakers to look deeper into the ruins.