Twenty Four Eyes

For me Japanese films can be a bit obscure due to the culture difference. They also have a wacky sense of comedy and their horror seems often based on reality that is it more than terrifying.

The sweet and accessible Twenty Four Eyes is a very sentimental yet deeply emotional Japanese take on a Mr. Chips type story. During WW2, a young teacher bonds with her class of children, the "twenty four eyes" whose lives she follows through a couple decades, with many personally tragic stories.


Ms. Oishi is looked on as progressive, with her western style clothes and bicycle. She begins with a new class of children, five boys and seven girls. This is a remote island town where people make a living off fishing or maybe not much of a living at all, as many families are poor and as the film continues you see in many ways how truly poor they are. There are I think three sets of actors playing the children as they grow from about five or six years old to mid-twenties.

Ms. Oishi bonds emotionally with the children through lessons and field trips, but suffers a broken leg after a prank by one of the boys. Since she is unable to travel so far to their school anymore, she is instead sent to teach at the main school. The children are sad but she reminds them that once they are older she will see them at the main school. The kids decide to go visit her on their own without telling anyone and are temporarily lost with parents worried.

Later when they are in their early teens, troubles surface more and more and you can see how family poverty has affected them. Some kids cannot attend the class trip due to financial problems. One girl's mother dies and her destitute father has to send her away, and Ms. Oishi sees the poor girl working at a café. The girl is humiliated by her situation although Ms. Oishi is still kind. They both understand how bad the situation is.

The war touches the town when there are some Red scares and the boys join the army. Throughout the story Ms. Oishi tries to keep tabs on the children, helping them in little ways or with guidance or emotional support, many times when the children's parents are unable to do so due to financial problems or social standards.

There is a lot of sentimentality and weeping in the film, as they come together, discuss who died, how bad one or another's situation is, and there are several scenes where women unabashedly cry in each other's presence. Ms. Oishi, played by Hideko Takamine, is a very compassionate character (although they aged her personality quite a bit at the end even though she would only have been in her 40s or 50s). Although not many of the children have happy lives or situations, they always were happy to reunite and had great respect for their teacher, evident in the reunion gift they present to her.

This film is one hard not to cry along with, not only for the tragic circumstances befalling some of the characters, but also for the true and deep bonds formed with Ms. Oishi.