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“Yuri” the Cat

“Combining elements of French and English garden styles with traditional Japanese, Shinjuku Gyoen was a novelty of Meiji Japan. It opened in 1906 as an imperial garden and was largely destroyed during the war, reopening in 1949 as a national garden open to the public. Shingo and Kikuko walk along tree-lined paths, pausing on a bench with a view of a meadow modeled on an English landscape, designed around a perspectival view. After Kikuko’s comment on the vista, Naruse does not follow with her point-of-view shot as might be anticipated, but rests on Hara’s close-up as she dabs the tears from her eyes with a faint smile. Shingo looks back at her and then turns to walk away from the camera. She walks into the shot to join him, and the film ends with the two figures walking into the distance framed by a large tree in the foreground.“

....

“Naruse and Mizuki have altered Kawabata’s original story by taking the lines about the vista away from Shingo and giving them to Kikuko. Significantly, it is the first time that she says something that is not a response to someone else, or the expression of an emotion. To this extent it suggests that she has finally emerged from her suffocating role as daughter-in-law, and the complex feelings she holds for her father-in-law will be resolved into a new perspective on life. Furthermore, this is not the last scene in the novel, but occurs about three-quarters of the way through the book, at the end of which the family has been reunited, Shuichi has left his mistress, and they all plan an outing together to the old family home. In Naruse’s version, with the Shinjuku Garden scene closing the film, it is far more likely that Kikuko will make a clean break with the family she has married into. As the narrative conclusion, the scene becomes emblematic and suggestive with its implicit reference to cinematic space.”

....

“Shingo notes that it is amazing that ‘such a park could exist in the middle of Tokyo.’ Given the love of nature that has been one of the primary bonds between him and his daughter-in-law, the garden envelops them in a utopian discourse of the possible. In the novel, Shingo wonders, “Did the scene tell one that the youth of the land had been liberated?” and while Naruse’s script omits these words, I would argue that the sense of possibility is nevertheless registered in the location itself, and in Hara’s final smile.

-- Catherine Russell, The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity