Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

An analysis of Shimizu Hiroshi's gentle yet politically trenchant picaresque film Arigatō-san (Mr Thank-you, 1936), exploring its commentary on poverty and inequality, colonialism, technological development, and the gulf between metropolitan and rural Japan.

Paper long abstract

Although it lacks the focus on childhood experience which is the central concern of many of Shimizu Hiroshi’s films, Arigatō-san (Mr Thank-you, 1936) is in other respects exemplary of his work: in its loose, freewheeling style and episodic structure, its use of location shooting on the Izu Peninsula south of Tokyo, its focus on mobile or peripatetic characters, and its subtly expressed exploration of relevant sociopolitical issues. This presentation explores the way in which Shimizu’s gentle picaresque drama discreetly highlights the wider tumult of Japanese society at a time of economic and political anxiety.

Its breezy tone notwithstanding, Arigatō-san, which tells the stories of a bus driver (Uehara Ken) and his passengers as they travel through the mountainous hinterland of Izu, keeps the troubles of the time to the fore. The Depression, with its attendant woes of unemployment and poverty, is a frequent subject of conversation; and in a particularly trenchant illustration of the impact of rural hardship, one of the female characters is travelling to Tokyo to be sold into prostitution. Most surprisingly, for a film produced in the era of Japanese colonial expansion in Asia, Arigatō-san also offers a sympathetic portrait of the experiences of Korean migrant labourers.

Alongside these concerns, Shimizu also reflects on the impact of technological development in a rapidly but unevenly developing country. The film, as one of Shimizu’s earlier talkies (he had directed silent and saundo-ban films into the mid-1930s) self-consciously interrogates its status as a sound film. The title itself highlights the spoken word, and a playful dialogue exchange identifying the talkie as an exciting Tokyo novelty draws attention to the technological gap, and by extension the broader gulf in terms of wealth and opportunity, between the capital and the provinces. The most prominent symbol of these concerns is the bus itself and the road on which it travels. With the former facilitating the young woman’s journey towards her unhappy destiny in the capital, and with Korean colonial labour being exploited in building the latter, bus and road themselves underline the economic and political problems which the film quietly but incisively analyses.