Good Morning
1959, directed by Yasujiro Ozu
It’s characteristic of Ozu that his MacGuffin in Good Morning, the object of secondary yet symbolic importance that drives the plot, is never visible on screen. The television set whose lack prompts Minoru and Isamu to stop speaking is only shown in a cardboard box. Even the morning after it arrives, it’s still boxed up, and the boys ask their parents to “have the TV ready when we come home.” It’s a hallmark of an Ozu film to hide major events (weddings, deaths, journeys), or even important characters like the fiancé in Late Spring. The unseen television may be the central prop in Good Morning, but there’s another object that’s systematically concealed from view, and it’s equally important.
Good Morning traces a chain of fairly ordinary and somewhat amusing events among six households in a working-class neighborhood in southwest Tokyo near the Hatcho-Nawate train station. Trains are audible from the characters’ homes, and the power lines surrounding them suggest the presence of train tracks, but no train is ever shown directly. The station only appears at the end, but the train that Heiichiro and Setsuko are waiting for doesn’t come into view. A train passes by in the establishing shot for the local bar, but it’s barely identifiable, only a silhouette seen through a translucent window.
A train is Yasujiro Ozu’s standard shorthand for commenting on the flow of time. A train generally moves in a consistent direction on a rigid schedule, making it convenient both as a metaphor and as a literal reminder of advancing time. Its absence from Good Morning is significant, yet it’s never too far away, and there are plenty of other markers of time, in the senses of both measured intervals and large cyclical changes. The homes are full of clocks and calendars, and from the opening shot of electric power pylons to the desperately desired television, signs of modernization are all over the place. Even more than most Ozu films, the focus is on children, whose upcoming generation is typically a sign of renewal – again the forward motion of time.
Despite the omnipresence of modernity, Good Morning is not quite in the mold of Jacques Tati films like Mon oncle or Playtime. Its world is not ultra-modern, but thoroughly quotidian. The characters aren’t desperately poor, but they appear to live below the economic average. Heiichiro and Mr. Tomizawa are both out of a job, and small amounts of money matter a great deal to everyone. A pair of traveling peddlers passes through separately then convenes at the bar, apparently working in tandem – one acting obnoxious, the other selling anti-salesman alarms in his wake.
Good Morning is usually classified as a comedy, which in this case is another way of saying that it endeavors to put the problems of life in comic perspective. The missing trains, and the characters’ hardships in keeping up with the standards of modern life, suggest that the underlying difficulty is in keeping step with the flow of time. The boys want a television not because it’s necessary for life, but because they’ve been exposed to one at a neighbor’s house. They’re studying English, and Heiichiro, who tutors them, makes money translating English, the new global language representing a ticket to modernity. Heiichiro’s sister Kayoko sells cars. At the bar Mr. Tomizawa complains of being left behind by his company after “thirty years, rain or shine, riding a crowded train,” and his solution will be to sell appliances for the Kowa Electric Company. The power line pylon in the opening shot is cut off halfway up, as if modernity always comes incomplete.
Like the train always just beyond view, the power lines high overhead, or the clocks mounted high on the walls, modernity, prosperity, and time itself are always somehow just out of reach. Kayoko is apparently the most prosperous character, hosting her unemployed brother in a modern housing block that stands over the settlement’s shack-like homes. Even she, though, when the two boys remain missing past 8 p.m., looks up at a clock above the frame line. As her brother sets out to find the boys, the scene cuts from her modern clock to Mr. and Mrs. Hayashi’s wooden pendulum clock. The difference does not literalize the economic disparity between the households, but the Hayashis live more in the past than Kayoko does, in the sense that it’s harder for them to keep up with modern life.
The neighborhood’s housewives are out of step with time like their husbands and children, but in a different sense. Their problems are mainly misunderstandings that would clear up if only they waited a bit longer before rushing to judgment. At first Mrs. Tomizawa confides to Mrs. Okubo that their association dues haven’t been paid, and they suspect their chairwoman Mrs. Haraguchi, who’s just bought a new washing machine. It turns out to be an honest mistake; Mrs. Haraguchi’s elderly mother forgot to hand over the envelope. The next round of blame falls on Mrs. Hayashi, their treasurer, whose boys (during their silence strike) don’t return Mrs. Haraguchi’s greetings, causing widespread suspicions of a grudge. At the end the blame turns toward Mrs. Tomizawa, whom Mrs. Okubo calls “calculating” for defending Mrs. Hayashi after the latter purportedly bought a hot plate from her husband. As we know, it was actually a television, making her show of loyalty more understandable.
Good Morning is a very loose remake of Ozu’s 1932 film I Was Born, But… Both films follow two brothers in a fringe neighborhood of Tokyo through a series of comical everyday problems. In the earlier film the boys protest against their father by refusing to eat, and each problem is caused by something circular, the circle being a metaphor for the cyclical aspect of life. Here the idea of time has more to do with modernization, which in Ozu’s view is also cyclical, as every generation participates in it – but there’s still a strong sense of the cycle of generations. Mrs. Hayashi says her boys are “so much like their father” in their stubbornness. When they finally celebrate their new television, Isamu spontaneously jiggles a hula hoop, the large circle being an homage to the 1932 film where circles not only caused problems but also brought them to an end.
In Ozu’s Late Spring and especially in Early Summer, the children’s favored toy is a model train set, indicating that children tend to seek a greater sense of control over time. Good Morning defines the children’s predicament differently. Minoru and Isamu recognize that their parents aren’t keeping up with progress, and they want to catch up with the times. Instead of feeling left out of some adult world, they feel their whole family has been left out of some greater flow of time. Consequently, instead of trying to imitate the authoritative language of their parents, they reject the seemingly useless language of their elders, replacing the usual phrases of social lubrication with the equally phatic sounds of flatulence. This rebellion predates their more forceful protest when Mr. Hayashi refuses to buy a television, and they abandon speech altogether, although, as Minoru says, “Farting is okay.”
The wisdom in Good Morning is embodied not so much by the older generation, but by the in-between generation. Heiichiro and Setsuko are both much younger siblings of two former classmates from the parental generation, Kayako and Mrs. Hayashi respectively. These two younger adults are sympathetic to parents and children equally, but they also recognize the utility of the polite phrases that the kids reject. What they don’t say explicitly is that the utterances the kids complain about – like “Good morning. Good evening. Good day. A fine day.” – are mainly expressions of time. In their haste to catch up with the rush of modernity, the children neglect to root themselves in the present tense, thus perpetuating the problem that governs the whole film. They remain out of step with time.
Unlike I Was Born, But… and unlike a classically structured comedy, most of the problems remain unsolved at the end of Good Morning. The housewives seem to find a new scapegoat, and the children fail to learn their lesson. They replace pumice stone with burdock to produce intestinal gas, thus continuing their rebellion against adult language. The final shot of laundry drying is a reminder that Mrs. Haraguchi’s boy Kozo continues to soil his pants. Instead of seeking closure, the film acknowledges the ongoing imperfection of life while regarding that imperfection with a comic distance. People will always and inevitably be out of step with time.
Good Morning may not leave us with much tangible sign of progress, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t open to a cyclical kind of progress. We never see a train, but we know that trains exist in the characters’ world. All along there are hints of romance between Heiichiro and Setsuko, but in their last scene, on the train platform, they continue to speak in the “ meaningless” phrases that the film’s title stands for. “A nice day.” “Yes, a really fine day.” We can simultaneously believe in the value of those phrases, yet also believe Heiichiro’s sister that he ought to “get around to important things” sometime. We know, however, that Ozu does not depict “important things” on the screen – and we also know that such things, i.e. things that advance change, would likely take place on a train.
CONNECTIONS:
I Was Born, But… – Two brothers go on strike against their parents; portrait of life in a fringe Tokyo neighborhood
Late Spring – Electricity as a recurring symbol of modernity
Matchstick Men – Symbolic acknowledgment of life’s imperfection at the end