Tokyo-ga

Yasuyiro Ozu is a Japanese filmmaker who, from the twenties up until his death in 1963, has put on film the city of Tokyo in many aspects. His films are pervaded with nostalgia for lost values. They are not bitter or aggressive films, but melancholic documents of things gone by. Wim Wenders was fascinated by this man and his specific style of filming. Wenders arrived in Japan and made tokyo ga, which means something like 'my version of Tokyo'. Wenders's aim was to rediscover Ozu's Japan. This proved to be impossible. Japan had changed into a copy of the West, at breakneck speed.
The tender family atmosphere, so strikingly portrayed by Ozu, had been replaced by the tough professionalism that characterized Tokyo in 1986. Wenders considers his trip a failure. Nothing reminded him of the images of the Japanese master, even the old men who had cooperated with Ozu could not compensate. No more melancholic pictures of cherry blossoms, but gambling houses full of Japanese, a golf stadium without holes where Japanese hit golf balls, standing in a row, and a workshop for plastic food for shop-windows. All fake copies of food, sport, and entertainment. Japan seems to be a flopped cast of the West. The society Wenders had hoped to find only exists in old movies.
Two small children are the only ones who bring Ozu's spirit back to life for Wenders: a stubborn boy who refuses to make another step and lets himself be pulled along by his mother, and a seemingly well-behaved girl on her mother back who unexpectedly and cheekily sticks out her tongue.
Impudent and rebellious children often played a part in Ozu's films, because they are still in full possession of their own will. The two children in tokyo ga embody a last glimpse of what Ozu offered in his films.