Eien no hito

永遠の人

B&W / 1961 / 143 min

in Japanese with English subtitles

Synopsis:

The film opens with a young couple embracing on a train that is speeding away from Mount Aso, a smoking caldera in the center of Kyushu.  An older woman has seen them off at the station.

In 1932, Heibei returns wounded from the front.  He tells Sadako that her love, Takashi, has been injured and will probably die at the hospital in Shanghai where he is being treated.  He himself lusts after Sadako, and as the heir to the Koshimizu estate, he is used to getting what he wants.  One night, he rapes Sadako and convinces her father to give her to him in marriage.  At one point, Sadako tries to drown herself in the river, but Takashi’s brother Rikizo prevents her from doing so.  Takashi returns from the war completely uninjured but too late to prevent the marriage—Heibei had lied about his injury.  Finally, Takashi convinces Sadako to run away with him.  At the rendezvous spot, however, she only finds a letter from Takashi, telling her that with him, there can only be hardship.

In 1944, as the war is on in earnest, Sadako discovers that Takashi’s wife and child are staying at Rikizo’s, while Takashi himself is serving with the military in Osaka.  Sadako is cold to her own son Eiichi, who was conceived when Heibei had raped her.  She invites Takashi’s wife Tomoko to work as their maid.  However, hearing the stories of Takashi and Sadako’s love from Heibei, Tomoko turns against Sadako.  Heibei tries to seduce Tomoko—to take away Takashi’s wife’s love the way Takashi took his own wife’s, as he believes—but Sadako catches him in the act.  Tomoko runs away, though not before Sadako tells her that what she obsesses about is not her love for Takashi but rather her hatred for Heibei.

In 1949, the war is over, but Takashi remains in a hospital in Hiroshima with a lung condition.  Meanwhile, Eiichi has become a wayward child who constantly gets into trouble at school—Sadako is as harsh with him as Heibei is indulgent.  Eiichi gives his watch to his younger brother Morito and disappears. Soon afterward, Sadako and Heibei find a suicide note amidst his belongings.  As they alert the people in the fields to begin a search, Sadako runs into Takashi for the first time in years.  Takashi runs down into the caldera of Aso-san to look for the boy.

The scene returns to the couple in the train who were shown in the opening shot.  It is 1960, and we realize that Sadako and Heibei’s daughter, Naoko, has run off with Takashi’s son Yutaka…with Sadako’s blessing.  Heibei, however, is outraged.  Tomoko reappears after all this time to ask for Takashi’s forgiveness; however, Takashi spurns her, and the stress of the encounter puts him on his deathbed.  Meanwhile, it is evident that life has been unkind to Heibei’s household—land reforms have forced his family give up most of their land, and their son Morito is on the run from the police after participating in student demonstrations.  When Sadako brings Morito money, he tells her that he is working to pay the debt to society accrued by the previous generations of his cruel family.  In addition, he wants her to forgive his father.

The following year, in 1961, Yutaka and Naoko return to show the dying Takashi his baby grandson.  Sadako goes to see him as well, and he tells her that his dying wish is for Heibei to bless the children’s marriage.  Sadako runs home to ask Heibei’s forgiveness for her coldness toward him throughout their marriage.  He decides that if Sadako can forgive him despite the imperfections in their marriage, then he can certainly go and bless the marriage.

Sponsored by the Japan Foundation, the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Film & Media Studies.