Noh Way-a picture book retelling of Noriko's shame by Lozuaway McComsey

This is the definitive interpretation of the Noh scene. 

I wrote it before I watched the rest of the movie so that it would be unbiased.


Dad sees his potential wife and is happy.


Noriko sees her potential step-mom and is polite.


Potential step-mom is glad to see him and is polite to Noriko.


Noriko's polite face is gone. We can see her judging- 


-and now reflecting and even seething. 


She is not happy. Dad is happy. But she is not happy. But why is she not happy?


She looks back at her potential step-mom to confirm that she is unhappy. But why, Noriko? She hasn't made up her mind about the whole situation. "Should I be angry? Should I hate her? Who even is this woman?"


And turns back to herself. "How is this going to affect us?" she thinks to herself.


The shame starts to hit. She realizes she wasn't considering her dad, only herself.


 Look at him: happy. Look at her: sad. Will she notice?


She's stuck in her own head. "Am I being a bad daughter to him?"


She looks at Dad to glean how he feels.


Boy, is he happy. 


She looks back to her enemy. 


But she realizes that "her enemy" is the cause of her dad's happiness. She is ashamed at how selfish she has been. 

She has been thinking it is all about her, as we saw in the parallel situation with the other professor. She felt bad for his daughter and thought he was gross for getting remarried. She couldn't see this future step-mom as a person, only as a homewrecker and someone who stands against Noriko's sense of propriety. And someone to come between her and her dad.

But her dad is happy. And as her father's caretaker, doesn't she want her father to be happy? She is ashamed as she has not acted as though she did, because she does want him to be happy. She will get better from here, and be nice about their pending marriage. Good job, Noriko. 

Comments

  1. IrkirschbaumDecember 8, 2021 at 5:58 PM

    This seems to me like a very solid play-by-play of this scene. I agree with your interpretation. It raised some ideas for me that I hadn’t at first considered while watching the movie. First, I wonder how much Noriko’s father is aware of the situation. We know that he and the aunt had a (one-sided) conversation about his potential marriage, but we don’t know how he feels about the prospect or how prominent it is in his mind. Does he think of her as his potential wife who he is excited to see, or does he think of her as an acquaintance who he politely greets? I’m not sure what the answer is, but whatever it is, it affects our understanding of the current dynamic between Noriko and her father. If he is more or less oblivious to the possibility of marriage, then he might be totally baffled by Noriko’s behavior in the previous scene. The thought of either of them getting married made a huge impression on Noriko, but maybe her father doesn’t see it as a big deal and therefore can’t imagine why she’s so upset.

    On the other hand, it’s also likely that he is very aware of the situation. After all, the main “plot” of the movie so far has consisted of everyone either telling Noriko that she should get married or telling Noriko’s father that Noriko should get married. Her father is very aware that his current responsibility is to make sure that she gets married, so marriage is probably at the forefront of his mind. As people pointed out in class, he looks a little guilty during the scene when Noriko comes home after talking to her aunt. He probably knew that the marriage conversation was going to happen between them, and maybe even instigated it.

    Another thing you mentioned is Noriko’s shame. I didn’t originally interpret her expression as one of shame, but I think you might be right. As you say, she hasn’t made up her mind about the situation. To me, Noriko seems to display some immaturity. This is most clear in the context of this question of marriage. She is incredibly upset, but she can’t articulate how she feels. She exudes contempt towards the people around her, even though her anger is totally out of proportion with the things they do to provoke her reaction. In all likelihood, she isn’t even able to explain to herself why she’s so upset. Her anger is mostly irrational. (I don’t mean to say that she has no right to be upset or that her anger is totally unwarranted or that we can’t sympathize with how she feels, but I think that the extent of her anger and her inability to express it indicate that her reaction is overblown.)

    But I also think that she recognized all of this, and that’s where the shame comes in. Noriko might be a little immature sometimes, but she’s not stupid or unfeeling. She still cares very deeply for her father, and she knows when she might be wrong. If she sees that something makes her father genuinely happy, of course she would be ashamed of having such a strong negative reaction to it.

    Another idea: maybe part of the reason Noriko is so upset is not so much because the idea of her father re-marrying upsets her, but because she felt bad that she wasn’t consulted about it first. She did make a comment about this in the scene with her aunt, and it would explain why she was so upset but so unable to communicate why. It would also make her more ashamed of caring so much about something that matters relatively little in the grand scheme of the situation.

    I wonder where this internal conflict of Noriko’s will lead. I agree with your observation that her expression moves from anger to shame, which suggests that she has realized something or decided to change something. Since it’s hard to know exactly what she was feeling in the first place, it’s also hard to know what might change. Maybe what follows in the second half of the movie will shed some light on whatever thought process she is going through in this scene.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Krishnan VenkateshDecember 22, 2021 at 10:20 AM

    Great points, both of you. Ms. Kirschbaum, I think you may be right at the end -- that she is furious at the attempts to manipulate her, which she feels as disrespect and betrayal, especially if her beloved father is suddenly on "their" side.

    ReplyDelete

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