Kabei: Our Mother

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

Protesting government policies in 1940 Japan is something you don’t see covered all that often in film. Given Japan’s history as a people both sheep-like (to be fair, most citizenry is) but also ruled by a keen sense of shame, I suspect that this kind of protest did not occur all that frequently. Pressure on the Japanese people to follow the prescribed path is always enormous. In Kabei: Our Mother, the wonderful director Yôji Yamada (The Hidden Blade, The Twilight Samurai) tackles a very different kind of film: a quiet family saga full of love, pain, hope and sadness. Time has lent enough distance and perspective that we can now watch a film about a WWII Japanese family and experience it from their viewpoint and shared humanity.

"Kabei" is the nickname that the father of the household has given the mother and it sticks to her throughout the movie, even after her husband is arrested for "thought" crimes and tossed into prison. For an American of a certain age to see a movie set in the Japan of 1940 is to come face-to-face with memories of WWII and Pearl Harbor, and writer/director Yamada doesn't stint on delivering sharp and no doubt realistic sentiments from the hoi polloi: As one gung-ho fellow explains, "Once Japan has finished off America, and Germany has taken over Europe, the final war will take place between Japan and Germany -- and then we will rule the world!" How silly this sounds now, but how possible it might have been some 70 years ago.

Yamada adapted (with Emiko Hiramatsu) the script from Teruyo Nogami's biography about her family, and it is filled with one fascinating, surprising scene or event after another: the visit of mom and younger daughter to the police station to see dad; the surly black-sheep uncle who comes for a stay and turns out, as the mother explains, to be quite useful in one regard; the father’s student, played by the fine actor Tadanobu Asano (Bright Future, Last Life in the Universe, Mongol), who helps the family through its darkest time.

The director films in a simple, quiet manner, using no fractured time frame or quick cuts. Kabei is old-fashioned in that regard, but this style only helps us relate more easily to the time and place. (And can you call a movie old-fashioned when it brings something like letter-writing to brilliant life in a whole new way?)

I would call Kabei sentimental, I suppose, if it did not at the same time seem so utterly real. This is due as much to the fine performances all around, as to the well-chosen and well-written scenes and expert direction. In any case, have several tissues handy. As sad as much of the movie is, its ending, delivered by Kabei herself, must have felt like a kick in the stomach for many Japanese.

And don't shut off your DVD player when the end credits begin to roll, because the visuals and the spoken words that accompany these seal the movie with immense compassion. Kabei: Our Mother joins a small circle of truly great films about family.