A Note on the Musical Theme in Tokyo Story (Natalie Walker)

 


The music of the opening credits of Tokyo Story quickly develops from something dreamlike, to something you might expect in a war film, to something trivial, when finally, the main theme emerges: We will call it the yearning motif. The main theme fits the film in a general way. The music sounds romantic and subjective, written from the inside out; the drama of the film is almost entirely interior, left to be felt subjectively by the characters rather than communicated. I viewed the film again making an inventory of when we hear the yearning motif, and the list helped me to see a new unity to the film. 

We hear the motif something like six times:

1) When Tomi takes her grandson for a walk
2) When Tomi and Shukishi sit on the sea wall and decide it's time to go home
3) When the couple is practically homeless at the train station in Tokyo
4) When we are back in Onomichi and the children and doctor are sitting around Tomi's deathbed
5) After Tomi's funeral, after the departure of everyone except Noriko and Kyoko, and Shukishi is gardening
6) The ending, when Shukishi is alone looking out the window, and the last thing we sea is a boat on the water

Experiencing the story beginning to end, the yearning motif seems to capture the elderly couple's yearning for the children because of distance and mutual failures, disappointments, and neglect. The generational divide we feel when Tomi speaks to her silent grandson has been written about several times already; the trip to Atami and displacement that follows make the distance between the parents and their children explicit again. One child is not present at Tomi's deathbed and they all prove to be in a hurry to leave once their minimal obligations have been fulfilled. 

Looking back across the film, however, we hear the yearning motif only at moments that foreshadow or reflect upon Tomi's death, and specifically from Shukishi's perspective. He watches through a window while Tomi has the only conversation with her grandson she will ever have. She has her dizzy spell on the sea wall after they discuss going home. When the couple is at the train station, they are preparing to part ways for the first time in the film. 

The most explicit aspect of the unity between the themes of children and parents and mortality is what Keizo learns: "No one can serve his parents beyond the grave." We might expect the yearning motif when Keizo is mourning his failure as a son or when Noriko is returning to Tokyo on the train, but note again that the theme is reserved for Shukishi. I wonder how his relationship to his children and his attitude towards his own death is changed by Tomi's death? I wonder if the objects of his yearning change throughout the film?

 

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshNovember 3, 2021 at 10:40 PM

    Wonderful. So there is yearning for deep human connection and understanding, and yearning to undo the past -- both of them perhaps impossible yearnings, hence disappointments. The music is both acceptance and lament -- and also refusal to stop yearning!

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