SUMMER WARS: A 21ST CENTURY ‘TOKYO STORY’

RAHM JETHANI - Editor-in-Chief, 2nd Year, English & Japanese

A painful inversion of Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpiece…

The 1953 Japanese film ‘Tokyo Story’ is widely considered to be a cinematic landmark, and its legacy has not only affected the Japanese movie industry, but also the medium of film itself since the time of the film’s initial release. Several notable elements, such as its precise direction, thematic exploration of family dynamics, and deliberate pacing, have consistently upheld its position in the upper echelons of Japanese cinematography. In particular, the setting of post-WWII Japan had not been portrayed quite as masterfully at the time of the film’s release, and its depiction of the broken and Westernized “traditional Japanese family” still continues to be deeply moving today. Furthermore, within the context of this time period, ‘Tokyo Story’ also told a story about the painful inevitability of children growing apart from their parents and family, which definitely helped the movie gain a wider audience.

I bring all of these points up, as well as ‘Tokyo Story’ itself, because I couldn’t help noticing nearly all of these components, at least in some shape or form, appear in the 2009 anime film ‘Summer Wars’. While this comparison has been made before, it is worth noting that only certain shared aspects of the films have been talked about, such as how both movies focus on social problems within a Japanese family, and how both movies use what could be deemed as an “arthouse” aesthetic. While these connections are undeniably true, the current state of the discussions surrounding the films’ similarities lacks a lot of the in-depth substance necessary to constitute drawing the comparisons in the first place, at least in my own opinion. However, I still believe that it is worth going into the parallels between ‘Summer Wars’ and ‘Tokyo Story’, because the differences in their cinematic approaches suggest that a drastically different viewpoint on Japan’s “broken and Westernized” familial state has developed in recent years from inside of Japan.

Like ‘Tokyo Story’, ‘Summer Wars’ has notable elements worth paying attention to, namely aesthetic direction and thematic storytelling through family dynamics. Starting with aesthetic direction, it’s clear that the filmmakers prioritized creating a visual style that clearly separated a classic Japanese countryside aesthetic from a newer digital cyberspace aesthetic. While both settings are beautiful in their own right, it is curious how the film portrays the real-world setting generally attracting more negativity than the digital setting. Apart from the main conflict in ‘Summer Wars’, the digital space is largely depicted as full of opportunity, beauty, and freedom as opposed to the real-world’s problems of familial pressure, ennui, and isolation. In ‘Tokyo Story’, it is clear that social shifts arose and divided age generations, but the movie treated these shifts complexly, and the film is pervaded by the deep sadness of the loss of traditional ideals. ‘Summer Wars’ largely emphasizes the digital setting’s freedom,  which seems to metaphorically communicate an infatuation with a more Western sense of individualism rather than the traditionally Eastern sense of collectivism seen in films like ‘Tokyo Story’. The one exception to this individualistic mindset is the thematic storytelling through family dynamics.

While ‘Summer Wars’ does depict familial conflict in a negative light, full of useless melodrama and eccentric characters limiting each others’ relationships, it also shows hints of the beauty that both traditional and modern Japanese family dynamics can evoke. Much like in ‘Tokyo Story’, many of the characters in ‘Summer Wars’ are too proud, busy, and selfish to create a perfect living environment for their family. However, their small gestures of kindness go a long way in establishing strong familial bonds, as shown with Sakae Jinnouchi’s powerful connection to everyone in her family despite her rudeness and eccentrism. While this is the case, much of the family conflict in this movie is played off for humor, which while typical of the anime medium, perhaps also communicates a slight rejection of “familial significance” over “character significance”.

‘Summer Wars’ does take heavy influence from ‘Tokyo Story’, but their differences communicate a modern idea in Japan of a de-emphasized family structure, and a desire for freedom in opposition to the traditional Japanese collectivist school of thought. While glimpses of traditional familial bonds show through its cracks, ‘Summer Wars’ shows that the “broken and Westernized” Japanese family has already become a reality in contemporary Japanese society.