'Kyoto My Mother's Place' is a documentary by the director of 'Realm of the Senses' and 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence' Oshima Nagisa. It is a personal film and starts with Oshima's favourite photograph of his mother. She died at the age of eighty.
Kyoto is surrounded by mountains. It is hot in summer and cold in winter. Every year friends gather for hanami, She never enjoyed hanami with friends. The relationship between a husband and wife is very struct in Kyoto
Classmates of his mother still live in the style of house known as machya, or city house. At the front of the house is a reception room for customers and the living quarters are at the back. The houses are very narrow and long. This style of building is called the 'bedroom of eels'. The building pretends to be poor by being narrow. Traditionally this put off any marauding samurai and saved money on taxes which were determined by the width of the house.
The interior of the machiya is dark with a small garden at the back. The garden is a miniature cosmos with stones representing water and mountains. It lets in light. The husband is called shujin (master) and he spends his time upstairs on his hobbies and his interests in lighter, airier and bigger rooms. The wife spent her time in the kitchen which is terribly cold in winter. The cold came up through the soil. The women had to clean every day. His mother's hands were swollen by frost bite in winter. She also had to watch the fire. There were warning about fire all throughout the houses. Fire and flight was the common practice in Edo. In Edo people lived off their skills but in Kyoto they lived off their wealth. Fires could destroy lives. People needed to control fire. If they didn't the punishment was severe.
There are many festivals in Kyoto such as the festival at the Imamiya shrine. The faithful want to be under the big red umbrella and escape disease. Families give money to the passing parade. Disease and disaster caused fear in Kyoto. The design of the houses made disease and fire a big problem.
His mother was hard working at school but there was no alternative to marriage. At that time 20% of girls went to high school. They then did a two year course and maybe got a teachers licence before getting married. Women were taught to obey parents, then their husband and finally their children.
Marriages were often arranged and the process started with a photo. Nagisa'a mother married and went to live in Seto Naikai 1932, Nagisa was born. His name means beach. He was happy living there like a prince. They often moved for his fathers work. His fate changed however when his father suddenly died. Nagisa had just finished grade one. He went back to Kyoto to live with his mother and his baby sister. His mother was thirty three years old, a bad year traditionally for Japanese women.
They returned to her father's machiya. Nagisa hated the darkness of the machiya and the fish smelt bad. After a year his grandfather died and his mother put the six year old Nagisa's name on the name plate at the front of the house. Nagisa was now the man of the house and he cursed his fate.
Kyoto is dominated by the Emperor's palace. The town is designed like a castle with roads running north to south and east to west. The palace is in the north surrounded by markets and temples. Nagisa observes that Kyoto is obsessed by the sense of going up and down. Central power was established in Kyoto and court culture blossomed. This is the world of the 'Tale of Genji'.
There were two main temples in Heian kyo, Toji in the east and Saiji in the west. The temple at Saiji has been rebuilt and still has a market once a month. It was forbidden to build other temples in the city. The Emperor wanted to reduce the influence of the priests which had dominated the capital of Nara. If the people wanted temples they were built outside the city. The shrine of Inari Jinja was a major shrine built for the god of rice crops and later commerce.
Nagisa's primary school was in the south on 7th street. The war against China had started. Boys with physical strength were dominant. Nagisa wore glasses and was at a disadvantage. The war against America started the next year. At this time Nagisa loved history, especially samurai history as the Oshima family were originally a samurai family.
The Heian period lasted for 400 years then the samurai took power from the nobles. This was after the Heike Genji wars.. Victory went to the Genji. This was when started the shogun moved the government to Kamakura. The emperor remained in Kyoto.
Kyotro started to change from being the centre of power to being a city built on commerce. It took a long time to change. Kyoto was reconstructed during this time. Nagisa's high school faced the Toji temple. The US air force was destroying Japanese cities one by one. Kyoto however was spared. When defeat came it shocked the people. They had no energy but after Nagisa listened to the Emperor's voice on the radio be dug up his books that he had buried in the the garden. Unfortunately they were all water damaged. He and his mother ate the leaves of sweet potatoes that grew in the tiny garden. Because they had no food his mother sold her kimonos to the farmers for rice. The kimonos from her marriage were meant to last for her whole life.
The Tokugawa government to Tokyo. This period lasted for 300 years. The Emperor was still in Kyoto. Kyoto prospered and the culture developed with prosperity. There was lots of theatre that was designed to teach wisdom and morality to the townspeople. It was often laced with satire. The theatre taught practical life lessons about how to deal with theft and drunkenness. The plays were performed in silence with masks. Kinri (patience) was a key philosophy of the heart; values like looking after one's neighbours, respecting authority, not causing friction and being careful with fire were stressed in the formation of a 'beautiful Kyoto'.
Nagisa, however, couldn't be patient. He wanted Kyoto to be burned down. The samurai warrior Oda Nobunaga burned down temples but was murdered before he could have burn down Kyoto. Kyoto is a symbol of the old Japan. Nagisa's mother started working in an office after the war. He didn't want her to work outside the home. Why must she work? He spent four years at Kyoto university. He got involved in the student movement and the student theatre. He was not a good actor and only had one chance to direct. At that time the communists dominated the student movement and no-one listened to him. He got a job as an assistant director and moved to Tokyo. He never though about what his mother thought
After his father died his mother become a nun. She never remarried. She even had a posthumous name. Her buddhism was that of her husband's sect. His mother became a hard woman. But she was not a born Kyoto woman. She was a stranger in at first in Kyoto. She was different to her friends. Her brother doesn't like Kyoto. He thinks people there act like 'big shots'. His sister had to be perfect to be respected in Kyoto.
Nagisa became a director and got married..He asked his mother to come and live with him. She came and said nothing. She devoted the rest of her life to bringing up his two sons while his wife worked as an actress. Towards the end of her life she became bad tempered and left home a couple of times but came back at the end of the day each time. Nagisa'a wife apologised to his mother on her death bed but she said she did as she wanted. She didn't live freely and she didn't live for herself. Nagisa wants to know why did wanted to be a perfect Kyoto woman when she wasn't born in Kyoto?
Nagisa believes that Kyoto has shaped him. He joins a festival crowd at the end of the film at the Matsuo Taisha shrine. This shrine is devoted to the God of sake making. There are six mikoshi for each of the six districts. A lot of technique and strength is required to carry the mikoshi. Nagisa has never carried one. The mikoshi is taken by boat across the river where lunch is prepared for the men on the riverbank. Then the mikoshi is left in one of the districts for twenty-one days. Nagisa is encouraged to help carry the mikoshi along the way by his friends. It is finally taken back to Matsuo Taisha until next year. Everyone celebrates and drinks alcohol. Nagisa's final comment is that his mother never drank alcohol...
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