Song of Home

Overview

Mizoguchi’s 30th film is the earliest surviving example of his work, and his only film of the 1920s to survive complete. Song of Home finds the director already concerning himself with the collision of traditional and modern values. The film is structured around the contrast of two country-bred boys: a coach driver who has never left his home, and a student who returns from Tokyo with city-slicker affectations and Western jazz records. Produced by the Ministry of Education, the film has a simplistic lesson-plan at its heart, but what lingers in the mind after viewing are its more ineffable qualities: The dulcet, lyric, evocation of a disappeared rural past.

Cast

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Shigeru Kido

Naotaro Takeda

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Masujirô Takagi

Naotaro's father

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Sueko Ito

Naotaro's mother

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Mineko Tsuji

Okinu

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Kentaro Kawamata

Junichi Okamoto

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Shiro Kato

Junichi's father

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Shizue Matsumoto

Junichi's mother

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Michiko Tachibana

Taro Maesaka

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Hiromichi Kawata

Elementary school principal

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Ichirō Shibayama

School inspector

Yutaka Mimasu

American scholar

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Fusako Hoshi