is a 2004 Japanese film directed by

Jun Ichikawa was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He was first a director of television commercials before adding filmmaking to his creative activities. His most famous film outside Japan was ''Tony Takitani'', an adaptation of a short story by Har ...

, based on the

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his ...

Inspiration

Haruki Murakami was intrigued by the name Tony Takitani when, at a garage sale on Maui, he found a yellow T-shirt that said, "Tony Takitani, House (D)." At the time, Takitani was running for office. Murakami decided to write the man's life story as this short story.

Plot summary

Takitani Shozaburo, a jazz trombonist from Japan, spends the Second World War in China. Shozaburo is imprisoned and many of his fellow inmates are executed. He expects he will be executed, and he is shown curled up on the floor of his cell. However, he survives and in 1946 returns to Japan where he marries a distant relative on his mother's side. A year later they have a child, Tony, but Tony's mother dies three days after giving birth to him. Shozaburo continues to travel and is away from home most of the time. Because of Tony's Americanised name, people often react oddly or sometimes with hostility to him. As such, he finds it natural to spend time alone. Tony develops an interest in drawing but prefers accuracy over emotion. As an adult he gets a job as a technical illustrator. Tony falls in love with a young client, Eiko, who is obsessed with shopping for clothes. On their fifth date he proposes to her, but she says she has been seeing someone else for some time, and that she will think it over. Eventually Eiko accepts, and they are married. Although Eiko and Tony are very happy together, they recognise that her shopping is becoming a problem: Eiko accumulates so many clothes and shoes that an entire room in the house is dedicated to them. Several days after acknowledging the issue, she decides to drive to her favourite boutique to return a coat and dress. After having returned the clothes, Eiko initially feels a sense of release, but whilst waiting at a traffic light, she begins to think about their colour, style, and texture. The light changes, and there is a crash in which Eiko is killed. Tony is completely distraught and sets about hiring an assistant, Hisako, with the one condition that she should wear his wife's clothes to work. When Hisako sees Eiko's clothes, she begins to cry. Later that day Tony decides not to hire an assistant and sells the clothes instead. Two years after his wife's death, Tony's father dies, leaving behind his trombone and his collection of jazz records. Tony keeps the trombone and the records in the room where Eiko used to keep her clothes. After a year Tony sells the records and the trombone. He also burns many of his paper belongings. One evening at a gala event, a young man approaches Tony and introduces himself as the other man Eiko was seeing before she married Tony. He speaks disparagingly of Eiko. Tony rebukes him and leaves. Tony lies on the floor of the now-empty room, mirroring the position of his father in the prison cell in China. He thinks about Hisako. Finally Tony calls Hisako but puts the phone down before she can answer.

Cast

Issey Ogata is a Japanese actor and comedian. He was interested in plays since childhood. After he graduated from Toyotama High School in Japan, he joined a theatrical company and appeared on the stage. Later, he jumped at the opportunity to be an entertai ...

– Tony Takitani, Shozaburo Takitani *

Rie Miyazawa is a Japanese actress and former teen idol. She is regarded as one of Japan's top actresses, and her accolades include six Japan Academy Film Prizes and three Kinema Junpo Awards Miyazawa began her career as a child model, seeing wide exposur ...

– Konuma Eiko, Hisako *Takahumi Shinohara – Young Tony Takitani * Hidetoshi Nishijima – Narrator (voice)

Soundtrack

The soundtrack for the film was entirely composed by

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto i ...

. Track listing # "DNA - Intro" 11:37 # "Solitude" 4:55 # "DNA" 6:28 # "Bottom" 0:40 # "Fotografia #1" 3:33 # "Fotografia #2" 3:42 # "Solitude #2" 2:34 # "Harmonics #1" 0:51 # "Solitude - One Note" 3:25 # "Harmonics #2" 1:02 # "Solitude - Theme" 4:00

Reception

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, it has a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 based on 22 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

calls it "A delicate wisp of a film with a surprisingly sharp sting".

References

External links

Official site (archived)
*

at JMDb (in Japanese) *Special editio

of the short story, Tony Takitani by Haruki Murakami
Region 2 DVD review
*Web edition of the short story
Tony Takitani
by Haruki Murakami {{Haruki Murakami 2004 films 2004 drama films Japanese drama films Films based on short fiction Films based on works by Haruki Murakami Films directed by Jun Ichikawa Films scored by Ryuichi Sakamoto