Tokyo Story

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4:15

Tokyo Story

1953

2h 14m

Drama

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

100%

Tomatometer

52 Reviews

93%

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10,000+ Ratings

The elderly Shukishi (Chishu Ryu) and his wife, Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama), take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi (Sô Yamamura), a doctor, and their daughter, Shige (Haruko Sugimura), a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

Critics Consensus

Tokyo Story is a Yasujiro Ozu masterpiece whose rewarding complexity has lost none of its power more than half a century on.

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Penelope Gilliatt

The New Yorker

01/22/2024

Ozu is obsessed with film's possibility of reporting the poetic truth of the actual. He is reality's artisan, and its connoisseur.

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Christian Blauvelt

Slant Magazine

11/24/2010

4/4

In this exquisite merging of specific and universal, infinite and infinitesimal, Tokyo Story perhaps most clearly illuminates that Ozu is not the most Japanese of filmmakers, but the most human.

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Eric Hynes

Village Voice

11/23/2010

Ozu's long shots, knee-high camera placement, and collapsed perspective -- as gorgeous and unsettling as a Cézanne -- gather power over the duration, but time itself is the master's most potent weapon.

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Grant Watson

Fiction Machine

02/21/2025

10/10

It is a gentle work, filled with warmth and nicely observed human behaviours.

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Josh Larsen

LarsenOnFilm

02/20/2024

3.5/4

...a work of considerable restraint.

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Sean Axmaker

Stream on Demand

12/17/2022

... a resolutely modern portrait of post-war Japan, where western fashion defines the business culture and traditional dress is reserved for home, and careers and success increasingly dominate the lives of the rising generation.

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Jay W

@RT52162311 1d

In this film, an elderly couple go to visit their children. But when they arrive, the children have their own stuff going on and don't do much to spend time with their elderly parents. If this was done today, that would be shown to the audience by having the kids constantly on their phones. In this film, the children are polite and adequately attentive to their visitors. It is not like they tell them to leave or argue with them. But it's a longer series of far more subtle things. The movie is so down to Earth in its portrayal of the characters, it feels like they just recorded people on an average day without them knowing. Although this subtle approach does build empathy for the characters, it does come at a cost. The movie moves at a very slow pace and not much happens in it. Because it was so subtle, the movie had to take a longer time to get their point across.

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Lance L.

@RT17837880 May 14

Slow but deeply rewarding

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V B

@vettyboy Jan 31

Worst movie I've ever seen. Pretentious

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Jonathan J

@jonjondotcom1312 Jan 20

TIMELESS & BEAUTIFUL. The dialogue and story was so classic that my skeptical family instantly melted into the story - despite the film being black/white and from the '50s! The child-parent divide and the inevitable upending of the power dynamic is such a classic and timeless human dialogue. Visually, I LOVED the return to unmoving frames/blocking where you get to see the home's foyer from the same POV time and time again to see how the story and movement impacts the visual tone & style.

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Steve L.

@Stevio Nov 26

A favorite by a favorite director. No flash, no effects—just beautiful, poignant storytelling.

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Ken H

@RT66732766 Jul 25

A classic masterpiece of Japanese cinema. Two lines of dialog at the end of the film summed it up nicely for me: "Life is disappointing, isn't it?" "Yes, it is". Poignant realism.

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Yasujirô Ozu

Director

Chishu Ryu

Shukishi Hirayama

Chieko Higashiyama

Tomi Hirayama

Setsuko Hara

Noriko Hirayama

Haruko Sugimura

Shige Kaneko

Sô Yamamura

Koichi Hirayama

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Tokyo Story: Trailer 1

4:15

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Synopsis

The elderly Shukishi (Chishu Ryu) and his wife, Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama), take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi (Sô Yamamura), a doctor, and their daughter, Shige (Haruko Sugimura), a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Producer: Takeshi Yamamoto
Screenwriter: Kôgo Noda, Yasujirô Ozu
Distributor: New Yorker Films, DeA Planeta S.L., Criterion Collection, Shochiku Films Ltd.
Production Co: Shochiku Films
Genre: Drama
Original Language: Japanese
Release Date (Theaters): Nov 3, 1953, Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 23, 2012
Runtime: 2h 14m
Sound Mix: Mono