Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)

 Keisuke Kinoshita's "Twenty-Four Eyes"

During the largescale creative output of Japanese cinema in the late 1940s and 1950s, the filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita varied wildly from his contemporaries. Rather than making subtle films that depicted cultural changes or criticism of the war, Kinoshita's films were not subtle at all. His films were very direct in criticisms of the Japanese government and the resulting fallouts. With his 1954 film "Twenty-Four Eyes," his criticisms are just as pointed. However, his soft touch of humanist story remains.

"Twenty-Four Eyes" takes place over the course of two decades, from 1928 to 1946. Its protagonist, a teacher named Hisako, arrives on the island of Shodoshima to teach a class of twelve first-grade students. She becomes attached to them and them to her. Over the years, she watches as the children's futures are squandered by economic depression and the rise of Japanese nationalism. Many of her male students go off and die in the unnecessary war, while many of her female students are forced to give up their aspirations to take care of their families. Hisako remains stanchly anti-war, as it tears apart the lives of her pupils. 

The film clocks in at 2 and a half hours, and every second is necessary to really feel the decades pass. It makes it all the more depressing to have to slowly watch as the lives of children are dismantled and disfigured. During this time, Kinoshita never places any blame on the teacher or her students. The blame is not even placed on the people as a whole. Rather, it is fully placed on the government. 

If his film from the year prior, "A Japanese Tragedy" demonstrate the post-war fallout on culture, "Twenty-Four Eyes" demonstrates the fallout of the war before it takes place - and during. Hisako is instructed not to read certain literature in her classroom, not to be 'mistaken' for a Red, and her male student's aspirations quickly redirect to becoming a soldier. It is like watching a slow death of a society being pulled into destruction.

I very much enjoyed "Twenty-Four Eyes" and feel as though it is one of Kinoshita's best works. Many film scholars often consider it the best of his filmography. I would argue against that, as I have a affinity for his 1946 film "Morning for the Osone Family," which takes the same directed criticisms of pro-war sentiment and sets it during the actual wartime itself. That being said, "Twenty-Four Eyes" really takes its time with the viewer, guiding them towards inevitable conclusions about the slow decay of a society brought on by nationalist sentiments.