### Eternal Farewell - The Postwar Family in "Tokyo Story" (1953)

### Eternal Farewell - The Postwar Family in "Tokyo Story" (1953)

The conversation between Noriko (Setsuko Hara) and her father-in-law Shukichi (Chishu Kasa) at the climax of Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu) is more than a simple family scene; it is a scene that symbolizes the transformation of postwar Japanese society. The setting is the moment of separation between Noriko, a widow who has lost her husband who was killed in the war, and her father-in-law Shukichi, who is approaching old age. After the funeral, the two face their loneliness and quietly discuss their feelings for each other.

Noriko reveals the feelings she has been suppressing, saying, "I am not such a good person," "I am a cunning person," and "I am waiting for something in the back of my mind. These words overlap with Setsuko Hara's own life as an actress, who during the war appeared in government-sponsored films as the "goddess of the Imperial Army" and after the war inspired the people as the "goddess of democracy," and the audience could sense her true face seeping through her words. Shukichi gives Noriko a pocket watch, a memento of his wife, and tells her, "There is no one like you. Noriko sobs and gazes at the pocket watch as they ride the train back to Tokyo. The image of Noriko is engraved as a symbolic image of a woman who supported postwar society.

The background of those days was the shaking of the family system and the shift to nuclear families, as well as postwar reconstruction and a change in values. The setting of an isolated elderly couple, with their children neglecting their parents, anticipates and depicts the "breakdown of the family" that Japanese society was beginning to face. Against this backdrop, Noriko's presence, transcending blood ties to stay close to her parents-in-law, symbolized both a traditional virtue that was being lost and the state of human relationships in the postwar era. This conversation is not merely a farewell between parent and child, but is still talked about today as a famous scene that condenses the emotions of Japanese people living with the war experience and the contradictions of postwar society.

--Noriko's words are more than mere dialogue; they resonate as the confession of an actress who lived through the "war and postwar period.