Families, Fathers, Film: Changing Images from Japanese Cinema

Two films from roughly 20 years apart, Kazoku gemu (The Family Game, Morita Yoshimitsu, 1983), and Bijitā Q (Visitor Q, Miike Takashi, 2001), present images of the Japanese family and father that work together to create a portrait of the family in crisis. These films, coming at opposite ends of the so-called Bubble Economy, suggest that at root of this crisis is the abdication by the Japanese father of his responsibilities both within the home and within the wider social arena. In short, these films condemn the contemporary “salaryman” as an ineffectual, uncommunicative, and “weak” force within the home, incapable of providing a coherent, inspirational model for his family. This paper will first provide a context in which to read these two films, by analysing the presentation of the family and father in classic post-war films by Ozu, Kurosawa, and Mizoguchi. Against these classic works, this paper will then explore the ways in which the two more recent films cooperate with each other, using satire to criticise the contemporary Japanese family and the apparent “crisis” which faces it, and to show how the perception of this crisis is intensifying.