Synopsis: Twenty-Four Eyes
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
See also this brief biography
Characters:
Oishi Hisako Sensei--Takamine Hideko--aka Koishi-sensei or Miss Pebble
Students:
Males:
1. Okada Isokichi—Sonki
2. Takeshita Takeichi
3. Tokuda Kichiji—Kichin
4. Morioka Tadashi—Tanko
5. Aizawa Nita—Nikuta
Females:
6. Kawamoto Matsue—Matchan
7. Nishiguchi Misako---Miisan
8. Kagawa Masuno—Machan
9. Kinoshita Fujiko
10. Yamanishi Sanae
11. Katagiri Kotoe
12. Kabe Kotsuru
In the idyllic, rural Inland Sea island of Shodoshima
in 1928, a group of children run towards a laden caravan in order to bid farewell
to their kind and affable sensei (teacher) who is leaving the village to be
married. A young, motivated teacher named Hisako Oishi (Hideko
Takamine) has been recruited from the industrialized side of the island
to serve as her replacement, but the villagers are skeptical of Miss Oishi's
suitability for the teaching position in the remote peasant community, observing
that the sophisticated and well-educated teacher commutes to the local school
on a fast, new bicycle (a rare sight in the poor, working class village) and
wears a modern, Western suit. Even the reserved senior teacher (Chishu Ryu)
at the elementary school humbly remarks "Why'd they send such a good teacher
here? The principal is a funny one." The novice teacher has been entrusted
to the care of twelve first grade students - seven girls and five boys - the
innocent and endearing twenty-four eyes who would look to Miss Oishi for guidance
during their formative first year of school.
The parents are quick to notice Miss Oishi's unusual teaching style: preferring
to address the children using their nicknames, learning about each student's
family, singing children's songs, playing outdoor exercises in the open forest,
teaching them traditional folksongs instead of prescribed school anthems. Her
unorthodox methods generate gossip within the community, a tension that is exacerbated
when a storm damages the coastal home of a student named Nita (Kunio Sato),
and a lighthearted moment with the children brings the frustrated and desperate
ire of another coastal resident. The school days pass uneventfully until one
afternoon in the playground when some of the boys decide to play a practical
joke on the unsuspecting Miss Oishi and unintentionally cause a disabling injury.
In a tender and amusing episode, the children decide to visit Miss Oishi, hungry
and ill prepared for the long and physically demanding journey, and the puzzled
teacher encounters the children crying uncontrollably as they walk along the
bus route to her house.
The happy reunion inevitably leads to reconciliation and community acceptance,
and a promise to return to the school when she is ambulatory. However, Miss
Oishi's prolonged recuperation prevents her from making the arduous nine mile,
50-minute bicycle trip to the village school. At the urging of her protective
mother (Shizue Natsukawa), Miss Oishi reluctantly agrees to transfer to the
combined, upper grade elementary school near her home, where she is able to
commute by bus.
However, Miss Oishi will again reunite with her class five years later, amidst
the austerity and toll of a global economic depression, Manchurian conflict,
and red scare, as the students, now adolescents graduating from elementary school,
struggle to retain hope and optimism in an environment ravaged by poverty, misfortune,
increasing militarism, and political uncertainty.
Based on the Sakae Tsuboi novel, Twenty-four Eyes is a haunting, compassionately
realized, and profoundly affecting portrait of humanism, innocence, and the
personal toll of war. Filmed from a low camera angle, and using exquisitely
composed crane, long, and medium shots, Keisuke Kinoshita visually conveys a
sense of distance that, in turn, reflects the innocence of the children's perspective
and the seeming insularity of the villagers: the long bicycle commute; the children's
outdoor activities singing folksongs; Miss Oishi traversing the empty school
yard after being admonished for broaching the subject of communism in class.
Note the increased frequency of close-up shots as the students leave the nurturing
environment of the classroom to face the austerity and turmoil of the outside
world, in essence, defining their individuality and character as adults: the
encounter with Matsue (Sadako Kusano) at a short order restaurant; the graduation
ceremony; the shot of the schoolboys, now enlisted men, marching off to war.
The final, bittersweet image shows the beloved, aging sensei, slowly traveling
through the inclement weather of the unpopulated, rural countryside, momentarily
stopping to allow a bus to pass through the empty road, before resuming her
lonely journey home - a poignant reminder of the dignity, perseverance, and
tenacity of the human soul against the travails and disillusionment of profound
and irrevocable change.
********
The farewell to childhood, a post-war view of a teacher's and her twelve students'
experience in prewar and wartime rural Japan; also, the traditional patterns
of
childhood and early education in Japan.
Music provides the emotional and thematic background of the film, Twenty-Four
Eyes. Framing the opening and closing is the song, "Aogeba
Totoshi," the "Farewell
Song" or "Song of Gratitude," traditionally sung by students
to their teachers at graduation. In the film the song is the graduation farewell
of the young students to their dearly loved sixth-grade teacher, Miss Oishi,
who had also been their first-grade teacher in their small, remote village elementary
school. The song is also their farewell to
childhood. The tempo is slow, the melody sad and mournful. It's sets the tone
for the film from the outset.
Appearing periodically throughout the film is a melancholy children's song about a Crow flying by and the children watcing her and hearing her cries ask, "Crow, why do you cry so?" The song is actually called "Nanatsu no ko" (or The Seven Children) because the Crow's response is that she is a Mother with seven babies waiting for her at home in her nest. For the Japaense lyrics, their English equivalent and a link to a website where you can hear the song, click here.
The setting of the novel and film is 1928 through 1946, on Shodoshima, a small
island in Japan's Inland Sea. For most of the twelve children, who graduate
from
middle school in 1934, their childhood has been a period of rustic simplicity
and
poverty, and a time of innocent tears and joys. But the world they and their
teacher
vaguely sense before them is one rushing toward inevitable war. We see this
time and time again when writing appears across the screen to describe the passage
of time, and tha narrator speaks of key events relating to the war. The young
people's lives are
being swept into a current of history over which they have no control. After
the
war, the survivors will look back on that period of childhood as a bittersweet
memory of something they have forever lost. For the author of the 1952 novel,
Sakae Tsuboi, and the director of the 1954 film version, Keisuke Kinoshita,
the
postwar view of prewar Japan is an attempt to come to terms with the Asia-Pacific
War, Japan's devastating defeat, and suffering of the people. The issue of Japan's
guilt in bringing about the war and causing widespread suffering throughout
Asia as
well as within Japan is not directly confronted. At most, Miss Oishi represents
the
few dissenting but ineffective anti-war voices in prewar Japan. She is a teacher,
a
wife and a mother who can only quietly protest, endure, and shed tears for the
victims of the war. If her voice is heard, it is by postwar Japan in its renunciation
of
war and its embrace of pacifism. The message of Twenty-Four Eyes, then,
is that of
a return to the historic and traditional roots of Japanese belief in the innocence,
sanctity, and promise of childhood.
Although the novel and film tell a story of Japan's tragic involvement in the
Asia-Pacific War, it is told through the eyes of children and their sensitive,
courageous teacher. This is the key to the success of both works in involving
the
audience; it is also the basis of the approach used in this unit to bring students
into
the intercultural experience. The story is about Japan and Japanese children,
of a
time past, but it is also about a timeless Japan's love and celebration of children
and childhood. It is about today's Japan and, with some vicarious projection
and
imaginative translation, it is also about the reader's and viewer's own childhood
and
early schooling, at any place and at any time.
The children, when we first meet them, are first graders, brimming with shyness,
tears, and playful laughter in their first experience of school. They are just
beginning the journey which will culminate in the beautiful and sad moment of
graduation farewell. We identify with them at the beginning of their school
journey
and early in their life journey. We can't know how these journeys will come
out:
whether the students will be successful or unsuccessful in school, whether they
will
follow and fulfill their dreams or meet with disappointment and disillusionment,
whether they and those close to them - parents, family members, and friends
- will
become ill and possibly die. This sort of reflection is for adults and teachers.
And
so this part of our consciousness identifies with the young teacher, Miss Oishi,
and
her devotion to her first class. All we can do is to observe and care and wonder
as
she nurtures the children and the promise of their lives and dreams toward
graduation and farewell.
As Miss Oishi takes her first roll call, we hear the students' names and nicknames,
see their faces, and perhaps learn a little about them from remarks and reactions.
But at first they are only twelve young children with faces and backgrounds
that
blend into a single image and generalization. We see them as simply "twenty-four
eyes." Gradually, as the novel and film unfold, the children's faces and
stories
emerge with clearer individuality, and we are able to follow their separate
but
related stories.
For the students studying Twenty-Four Eyes one approach is to have each
of them
identify with one of the twelve children at the beginning of the unit and then
create
a biography for that child as his or her story unfolds. This should help the
students
transcend cultural stereotypes and facilitate the intercultural experience.
Since all
of the childrens' individual stories are not equally developed, some students
will
have to draw from the collective narrative what may have happened to their child.
Of the twelve, one of the seven girls will die of tuberculosis, one will be
sold off
into servitude and apparently end up a prostitute, and one will vanish with
her
impoverished family.
At the end of Twenty-Four Eyes five of the seven girls will attend their
reunion
with Miss Oishi, who once again is a teacher in the remote village school teaching
three of their children. Of the boys, three of the five will die in the war
and one will
return blind. We will observe only their growing up, their departure for the
war, and
the return of the few survivors; we will never learn how or where those others
died.
A provocative question is what nature of soldier they became and whether they
too
participated in the barbarism of some of the Japanese military. But this, too,
we
will not learn. The limitation of our point-of-view is that of their teacher,
who saw
only their childhood innocence and fragility as they were swept into history
and
their individual fates.
*********
Some interesting lines:
Principal to Miss Oishi:
"Teachers have a duty to build a citizenry that will serve
the nation."
Miss Oishi talks to her son, Daikichi, around the dinner table on two occasions:
I
Daikichi: I would like to be bigger so I could enlist.
Mother: You want to die? After I worked so hard bringing you up? You want me to cry for the rest of my life?
Daikichi: You’d be the mother of a patriot.
Mother: I don’t want you to die. I just want to be an ordinary mother. All I want you to be is just a human being (tada no ningen). Just an ordinary person who values living.
Daikichi: Nobody else talks like that.
Mother: They may not say it but they think it.
Daikichi: My teachers don’t.
Mother: That’s why I quit.
Daikichi: Coward! You’re a coward.
Mother: I don’t care if I am. I love my children.
II
[Around the dinner table Mrs. Oishi talks with her son, Daikichi, about the end of the war.]
Daikichi, there is no need to worry about it. Children can now be children again.
Mother, didn’t you hear that we surrendered?
I heard. It’s good the war is over. It’s the end of the killing. The survivors will come home.
We didn’t die for our country.
And that is good.
Are you glad?
Stop talking like a fool, Daikichi. Your father was killed. He won’t ever return.
Aren’t you going to cry because we lost, Mother?
I cried for the dead. I cried and cried.
[End of that discussion around the dinner table.]
Another brief notice:
Twenty Four Eyes, 1954 Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita This best-loved
human drama recounts the lives of 12 children and their inspirational teacher
as War takes its toll upon them all. A dramatic masterpiece that brought an
entire nation to tears.
The title "Twenty-four Eyes" refers to the 12 pairs of eyes belonging
to the young students of a small branch school on Shodo Island in the Japanese
Inland Sea. The story unfolds in the spring of 1928, when Hisako Oishi (Hideko
Takamine) takes over as the new teacher at the local grammar school. At first,
the small village does not accept the young schoolteacher who wears Western
clothes and rides a bicycle to school. It doesn't take long, however, before
the pupils, their parents, and the entire village fall under the spell of this
special teacher. However, trauma does not lie far. The peaceful lives of Shodo
Shima contrast the war occurring just over its horizon. This is truly one of
the best-loved human drama films, which brought the nation to tears.
Selected as No. 1 film of 1954 by Kinema Junpo outshining the "Seven
Samurai."
After you have finished watching the movie, click here
to see a summary of the characters and what becomes of them.
Two more short reviews:
Twenty-Four Eyes
Reviewed by 1. Wong Lung Hsiang 2. Sinnerman
Japanese Title: Nijushi no hitomi
Director: Kinoshita Keisuke
Writing Credits: Kinoshita Keisuke, Tsuboi Sakae (novel)
Cast: Goko Hideki, Takamine Hideko, Watanabe Yukio
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Color: Black and White
Year Released: 1954
Runtime: 154 min
1. Review by Wong Lung Hsiang
Rating: **** (out of four stars)
It was with high expectations when I watched this 1954 antiwar classic, especially having seen the rather disappointing 1987 remake, Children of the Island. The Japanese title of the film remained the same for both films, and it literally means 'twenty-four eyes'.
The story starts off around 1928, on an idyllic rural Japanese island, and centers around a newly recruited progressive school teacher, Miss Oichi. Initially the children's parents and her colleagues are concerned about her unconventional style, both in wearing Western clothes, addressing students by the nicknames rather than their surnames, and teaching traditional folk songs inside of the proscribed anthems. However, the students warm to her, and they play mischievous games and tricks on her. Unfortunately one of these pranks causes her to break a leg. The students decide to pay her a visit while she is recuperating at home. They do not realize how far they have to travel, and they lose their way, and start to cry. To their relief they meet up with the teacher near her home.
The story builds in emotional intensity as we follow the fate of the teacher and her students over the course of the next couple of decades. There is the looming militarism as World War II approaches, and the students, now in their adolescence, are recruited into the army, as is her husband. Gradually she loses both the boys as well as her own husband. As the war progresses, the island descends into further depression and poverty.
There is a haunting scene which takes place many years later, in which the teacher visits her sick student at her humble, bleak cabin. In the 1987 remake, it takes place on a stormy day, and both of them exchange information about the tragic fates of the classmates.
However, in the original version, this corresponding scene takes place on a sunny day, where some children are marching outside the cabin, accompanied by a patriotic tune. Through their exchange, we learn that some girls are actually living a better life, while the boys have yet to be enlisted. They will in the next scene, and only two of them survive the war, one of whom becomes blind. As a potential tear jerking scene, it remains exceptionally calm, until the later part when the sick student talks about her own ill fate, and to enhance the atmosphere, we hear the sounds of insects getting progressively louder. The camera then shows a close-up of the group photo of the teacher and the 12 students when they were in grade one, and scans each face. Instead of a direct antiwar protest, as in the remade version, this scene emphasizes the illusion of these children's early dreams.
Director Kinoshita, is known for his excellent choice of locations and beautifully photographed scenery (in the only other film of his that I have seen, Big Joys Small Sorrows [1986], he brings us around to over 20 lighthouses all over Japan). In Twenty-Four Eyes, he demonstrates his strength of compositions in several scenes, such as the one featuring the 12 young students with their teacher. He seamlessly blends the breathtaking albeit degraded photo into the little island in Seto Inland Sea.
Two and a half hours, and I did not feel time passing by, such was the intensity of the film. I generally consider myself quite immune to crying while watching movies. But this film is one of those rare exceptions, where I welcome being manipulated by the film-maker. It is a film that everyone must watch.
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2. Review by Sinnerman
Touted by many critics as the most tear jerking Japanese films of all time. Keisuke Kinoshita took his time to unveil the pathos buried within this exceptional work. Modern films almost never do that anymore.
It begins in happier times, and Twenty-Four Eyes was framed in mid to long-distance shots. One thus finds it hard to feel for any one individual. But this stylistic decision was purposeful, for it helped to first establish the idyllic tranquil of the movie's place and time; a small coastal town still untouched by the ravages of what's to come. In this universe, the folks led simple lives. Most of them were not yet calibrated by the country's rising tide of industrialized modernity. Most were not/ would not be ready to cope with its impending social upheavals.
Let's start with some chirpier ramblings first. This village was a place where excitement would rise on the sighting of bicycle riding women (the teacher, played by the luminous Hideko Hirayama [Takamine??]), where even such slightest of stirs would rip through the grapevine. This is a very close knit community.
With broad simple strokes, Kinoshita also managed to paint a collective mood of contented joys and youthful idealism between the teacher and her first twelve students. Via episodic presentation of their communal activities, from light-hearted classroom chats, to jovial sing-a-long field trips, the bonds that bound these souls would help set in motion the melodramatic wheels of this unstoppably tear-jerking film.
By the film's halfway mark, Twenty-Four Eyes kicked up its dramatic gear. With an increasingly corresponded framing of closer proximity shots, illuminated faces were put onto the characters we once viewed from a distance. But the happy smiles were slowly wiped from these faces. There were changes in the country's indoctrinated campaign for militarism. There was incremental stifling of free thought, in a land bent on instilling fears and subservience. There were sickness and deaths amongst friends and families (some by the ravages of war, some not). Children were put up for adoption and families were literally uprooted by poverty. Students were giving up their studies for all sorts of reasons; family obligation, blindsided patriotism or just plain helplessness. Free spirited idealists (e.g., the teacher), would be pounded into submission by events beyond their control. Young girls who sacrificed their happiness for the love of their families were crushingly, not loved in return. Young boys were shipped off to war, full of misguided allegiance to country and glory, bearing false hopes of returning victorious.
Beware: Spoilers
How ironic then, that a generation of boys would die, never to become grown men, that girls would blossom into womanhood, only to discover their aspirations shackled by a patriarchal society. Those were all signs of the times.
By the closing chapters of this unbelievably melodramatic film, all the devices that could be used to wring tears out of its audience, had been exhausted. It's indeed a marvel how Kinoshita accomplished it all with such wild abandon. In fact, for those people who are easily put off by dated melodramas, you'd best be warned; people cried a lot in this sweeping weepie.
Twenty-Four Eyes is a great film in my eyes, despite no water flooding them. I have absolutely no qualms about why it was named the most tear jerking Japanese film of all time. For unapologetically, this film placed the hearts of the Japanese people firmly in its mind. Made and released in the early 50's, less than a decade after the trauma of World War II, Twenty-Four Eyes must have seared the still raw psychological wounds of its intended audience. Its subject matter and thematic content spoke to them; from children of the lost generation to the parents who had lost these children. From people who were once ravaged by poverty, sickness, war and loss, to people still imprisoned by these compounded disenchantments.
Viewed as a social document, Twenty-Four Eyes might thus have served as a balm to those still haunted by that recent past. With grateful tears, the audiences shared in the collective journey of this good-hearted movie. Assimilating with their own personal experiences, this cathartic tale might have helped in mending the hearts of millions. It might have gently coerced a kindred population of broken lives into finding their respective closures. When a film accomplish such a feat, it becomes more than a movie. It becomes a pure and humanistic work of art.