Tokyo Story

Children who do not have time for their visiting parents, who in turn are disappointed in their children – it is a recurring theme in film. Rarely has it been portrayed more powerfully and beautifully, though, than in Yasujirō Ozu's masterpiece Tokyo Story – according to many critics the best Japanese film ever made.

An elderly couple, Shūkichi and Tomi Hirayama, travel from southwest Japan to Tokyo to visit their children. However, upon their arrival they discover that neither their eldest son Kōichi, who is a physician, nor their daughter Shige, who runs a beauty salon, has time for them. They will just have to amuse themselves. Very gradually and very subtly Ozu shows how their family relationships have become so damaged.