hecker

Amateur essayist, anime & manga fan

Resident of Howard County, Maryland, systems engineer, and amateur essayist and data scientist. Author of the book That Type of Girl: Notes on Takako Shimura's Sweet Blue Flowers. Staff writer for Okazu.


Twitter
@hecker
Mastodon
@hecker@mastodon.social
Bluesky
@hecker.bsky.social
Email
frank@frankhecker.com

I originally hypothesized that Yasujirō Ozu’s 1951 film Early Summer could be seen as “a queer film subtly but firmly protesting compulsory heterosexuality, made by a (possibly) queer director and starring a (possibly) queer actor.” My second post looked for evidence in favor of this thesis, as did my third post. In this post I discuss the final section of the film.

NOTE: This post contains spoilers for Early Summer.


My previous post concluded with a scene of sexual innuendo and (arguably) harassment, as Noriko’s boss interrogated Noriko’s best friend Aya about Noriko’s interest in men and marriage, and made some not-so-subtle insinuations about Aya herself. We then switch to a scene featuring Noriko and her next-door neighbor Kenkichi.

Recall that Kenkichi decided to accept an offer as a department head in a hospital in Akita, several hundred kilometers north of Tokyo and on the opposite coast. Noriko meets him in a café before her brother Kōichi is to host him at a farewell dinner party, and they talk about Shoji, Noriko’s other brother who went missing in action during the war. Kenkichi recalls how he and Shoji were best friends in school, often eating at this very café, indeed at this very table. Kenkichi tells Noriko that he still keeps a letter that Shoji sent him, with a stalk of wheat enclosed (probably indicating that Shoji was deployed in northern China). Noriko asks if she can have the letter, and Kenkichi agrees.

Afterward Noriko visits Kenkichi’s mother, while Kenkichi himself is still at his farewell party. Kenkichi's mother tells Noriko her secret dream (“please don’t tell Kenkichi”): “I just wish Kenkichi had gotten remarried to someone like you.” She apologizes and asks Noriko not to be angry (“It’s just a wish in my heart”), but Noriko stares at her with an intense expression (her usual smile absent), and asks her, “Do you mean it? ... Do you really feel that way about me?” Kenkichi’s mother apologizes again, but Noriko presses on: “You wouldn’t mind an old maid like me?” Then before Kenkichi’s mother can respond, Noriko speaks: “Then I accept.”

Kenkichi’s mother is incredulous. She asks Noriko several times to confirm what she’s saying, thanks Noriko effusively and weeps tears of joy at her good fortune, but continues to question Noriko about her decision even as Noriko leaves to go home. (Incidentally, this scene features a bravura performance by Haruko Sugimura.)

After she leaves the house, Noriko encounters Kenkichi, just returned from his farewell party. Noriko exchanges some small talk with him, but says absolutely nothing about what she just told his mother.

Noriko's decision then plays out across multiple scenes:

At first Kenkichi doesn’t understand what his mother is trying to tell him (“She accepted.” “Accepted what?”). When he finally gets the message (“She agreed to marry you. To become your wife!” “My wife?” “Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?”), he looks absolutely gobsmacked. His mother breaks down in tears again telling him how happy she is, and how happy he should be. He tries to play along (glumly echoing, “Yes, I’m happy”), but he looks for all the world like a man who would sooner eat nails than enter into another marriage.

Kenkichi’s mother doesn't understand why he’s not happy. She concludes, “What an odd boy you are.” The Japanese word here appears to be “hen,” which I understand to be a softer adjective than “hentai,” and not sexual in nature. But note that Kenkichi is now the third person after Noriko and Aya to be referred to as not normal in some way.

Meanwhile Noriko is interrogated about her decision by her family, especially by Kōichi, in a beautifully framed and shot scene — Noriko in white, her head bowed, her brother in black, barking questions like a prosecutor cross-examining a criminal. Noriko is unrepentant: “When his mother talked to me, I didn’t feel a moment’s hesitation. I suddenly felt I’d be happy with him.” Her parents retire upstairs to chew on their disappointment — Noriko walking silently past them on her way to her room — while Kōichi tells Fumiko, “What could we do now? She’s made up her mind. You know how she is.”

The next day, after Kenkichi boards the train to Akita, his mother visits Noriko at her office, and they tiptoe around the question of what others thought: “Did your parents approve?” “Yes.” “And your brother?” “Don’t worry.” and “What did Kenkichi think?” “... He’s overjoyed. He didn’t sleep last night.”

The next two shots echo the beginning of the film, a shot of a bird in a cage outside, and then Noriko’s father inside with the other cages, caring for the birds. Noriko’s mother laments that Noriko didn’t make a better match, Fumiko nods in agreement, and Noriko’s father goes for a walk to buy more birdseed, silently contemplating their life going forward, in one of those quiet scenes that Ozu does so well.

Meanwhile Noriko and Aya have their last scene together. It starts by echoing and completing the action at the end of their previous scene: then they raised their glasses together to drink, now they lower their glasses in a simultaneous gesture. Aya tells Noriko that she can’t believe Noriko would ever end up like this: she thought Noriko would be a modern woman living “Western-style, with a flower garden, listening to Chopin,” “wearing a white sweater, with a terrier in tow,” and greeting Aya in English — “Hello, how are you?”

Instead Aya now imagines Noriko wearing farmers clothes in rural Japan, speaking the local dialect. She playfully imitates country speech, and Noriko responds in kind: “Ya don’t look it, but ya talk like the locals.” “I figure to live in Akita when me and my man get hitched.” The subtext here I read as follows: Noriko knows how to pretend to be something she is not — a conventional heterosexual woman in a conventional heterosexual marriage — and she will accept doing so in her self-imposed exile from Tokyo, the price she must pay for avoiding what she considered to be a worse fate.

The tone then turns serious. Aya recalls meeting Kenkichi when they were in school, on a hiking trip with Noriko and her brother Shoji, and presses Noriko about her choice: “Did you already love him then?” “No, I had no particular feeling for him. ... I never imagined myself marrying him.” Noriko evades Aya’s questions about how she came to love Kenkichi, refusing time after time to acknowledge her feelings for him as those of love. Instead she insists, “No, I just feel I could trust him with all my heart and be happy.”

But trust Kenkichi for what? we want to ask Noriko. To respect her for who and what she is? To not want a conventional relationship with her? To not press her for sex or for children (after all, he already has one)? To keep her secrets, as she might keep any secret of his?

After this last meeting with Aya, Noriko comes back to a cold house and a dinner alone. Her parents and Kōichi leave the room to avoid greeting her, and only Fumiko is there to welcome her.

In the next scene she and Fumiko walk to the beach for one last look at the ocean, Ozu showing them walking up a sand dune in a gorgeous crane shot — supposedly the only one he ever used. In the earliest scenes in the film Noriko was dressed in stylish Western clothes, contrasted with Fumiko’s traditional Japanese attire. Now, instead of mirroring Aya, she is a mirror of Fumiko in her plain housewife’s outfit — but still freer and looser in her appearance.

Noriko tries to reassure Fumiko that she’ll be OK: “Are you worried that I’m marrying a man with a child? ... I love children” (as we’ve seen earlier in the film with both her nephews and Kenkichi’s daughter). “Frankly, I felt I couldn’t trust a man who was still unattached and drifting around at 40. I think a man with a child is more trustworthy.” (Note again Noriko’s emphasis on trust and not love.) After discussing how they’ll be competing to scrimp and save in managing their families’ finances, they take a last walk down the beach by the ocean.

Just as she saw Aya for the last time (at least until/unless Kenkichi can return to Tokyo), Noriko now takes formal leave of her boss. He idly wonders if he himself could have been the right man for her. She does not encourage him in this line of thought.

The family then gathers for one last commemorative photo. Without Noriko's salary they can no longer afford the house in Kamakura, so they break up: the parents to live with the great-uncle; Noriko to Akita with Kenkichi, his mother, and his daughter; and Kōichi, Fumiko, and their sons to some other less-expensive dwelling (perhaps an apartment in the Tokyo suburbs).

The parents recall when they moved into the house: “It was spring and Noriko had just turned 12.” Kōichi remembers that time as well: "She used to wear a ribbon in her hair, and she was always singing." But “children grow up so quickly,” her parents remark, and living together forever, "that's impossible."

Her usual smile nowhere in evidence, Noriko takes it all upon herself: “I’m sorry, I’ve broken up the family.” Despite reassurances from her father (“It’s not your fault. It was inevitable.”) she flees from the room, goes upstairs to her own room, and cries her heart out, distraught about the turn that her and their lives have taken.

The final scene shows Noriko’s parents at the great-uncle’s house, far from the sea. They glance at a wedding procession walking through the fields (“Look there. A bride is passing by. I wonder what sort of family she’s marrying into?”), think of Noriko, and resign themselves to the family's fate: “We shouldn’t ask for too much.” “We've been really happy.” The film closes with a tracking shot of a field of grain — perhaps the barley of the Japanese title?

In my next post I offer my final thoughts on Early Summer.


You must log in to comment.