• 母と暮らせば (Nagasaki: Memories of My Son, film), 7/26/25 (Sat)
• 父と暮らせば (The Face of Jizo, film), 7/27/25 (Sun)

Having seen the stage versions of these shows in the past days, I was eager to catch the films. The Japanese titles, literally Living With Mother and Living With Father, make the connection clearer; they are set respectively in Nagasaki and Hiroshima just after the war and are considered part of a trilogy alongside Okinawa-based Army on a Tree.

Yamada Yoji’s 2015 Nagasaki actually preceded the stage show and I suppose is considered the original. However, it takes the material in a direction that veers significantly from Inoue’s vision as seen in the other two parts of the trilogy. It opens with a prologue showing the boy in school when the bomb fell, destroying the building and everyone inside. As his body was never identified, the mother has never given up hope in the three succeeding years that he might have survived. The film also adds a major new character in the dead man’s fiancée, who is similarly grieving his loss and has vowed never to remarry. The mother has resolved on this day to accept the death and visits his grave to report that to him, a good lead-in (which the play did not maintain) to the ghost’s visit.

Unfortunately the film stumbles after this promising start, taking the easy sentimental route. In this version, the mother is still working as a midwife, weakening that metaphor considerably. The play adeptly has her returning to that profession only after the ghostly encounter as a sign that she has re-embraced life. Here, she actually rushes off to work just after the ghost appears, which seems a strange way to greet someone who’s come all the way from the other world.

The theme of reconnection with life is transferred to the fiancée, who finally accepts her loss and agrees to marry someone else. She brings her new lover to win the mother’s approval, which the mother gives wholeheartedly. Free from regret and happy to have released her would-be daughter-in-law from clinging to the past, the mother eventually succumbs to the lingering effects of the bomb. She is taken by the son into the next world as a choir serenades them with “Ave Maria”.

Aside from being embarrassingly sappy (not to mention a bit incestuous), this goes completely against the point. The whole reason for the ghostly visit was to spur her to realize that carrying on with life is the best way to honor his memory. Without that, the whole thing is meaningless. It’s nice that she guided the girl in that direction, but her own death makes no sense in that context. (It does have a Buddhist feel in that casting off all earthly attachments, meaning in this case bomb-related guilt or regret, is the key to entering heaven (nirvana). But I doubt that’s what Yamada had in mind.) The playwright obviously recognized the underlying flaw and altered the story accordingly on stage, getting rid of the fiancée and making the theme clearer.

Several commentators noted that Yamada was born before the war as opposed to the post-war playwright, thus taking a more nostalgic approach to the material. (Interestingly, a 92-year-old friend said the same thing about the film version of Tree.) The stage show is more concerned with how to deal with trauma and move on, whereas Yamada looks for happiness in reuniting the mother and son, even in death. I found the stage message more compelling. It’s impressive how the stage writer was able to distill the key points from Yamada’s dreamy rendering and come up with something credible, however flawed.

Yoshinaga Sayuri and Kuroki Haru (Every Day’s a Good Day) are first rate despite the syrupy moments that they have to deal with. Pop star Ninomiya Kazunari (who was stellar in Letters From Iwo Jima) isn’t able to rise above that, taking a rather generic approach. That said, he won a Japanese Academy Award for his performance, but I don’t get it at all. Yamada sweetened the story to its detriment. Inoue’s vision deserved better.

JIzo: The 2004 film version of this show is described interestingly as the final work in director Kuroki Kazuo’s War Requiem Trilogy, whereas on stage it’s best known as the first work in Inoue Hisashi’s postwar trilogy (albeit the only one actually written by Inoue). The movie, essentially still a two-person show, is unusually faithful to the stage text, repeating the dialogue almost word for word. It does stray slightly to accommodate scenes with the daughter’s suitor, who was only referred to on stage, but he’s given minimal dialogue (mainly voicing conversations that the daughter reported in the play) and remains largely out of the scene.

The director resisted going big for the screen, limiting the sets on the whole to the home (including the garden) and library where the daughter works. The effect was intimate rather than confining, which I thought was appropriate to the story. It avoided having the father fade in and out of the picture as in the clumsy Mother film. Sometimes the daughter would turn around and find her father gone, but we never saw him come or go. Also, the metaphor of the scarred Jizo head was clearer here in close-up, eliminating the need for the dumb line, “It’s Daddy on the day the bomb dropped!”

There were numerous long takes, which stage veteran Miyazawa Rie handled with aplomb. It’s a dialogue-heavy show as with all Inoue plays, but both Miyazawa and Harada Yoshio delivered their roles with tremendous skill, catching all the light humor that helped smooth the weighty theme. Harada in particular played the typical down-to-earth Showa country guy to perfection. The film was lucky to have them. The resulting acting and directing awards were well deserved. A young Asano Tadanobu did a good job as the modest suitor (he later played the even more modest suitor in Mother – it was a bit strange seeing him in both).

The film was a smart and moving rendition of the play, helped immeasurably by a fine cast. Recommended.