Adrift in Tokyo (2007)

The road movie is not unknown in Japan, nor is the buddy movie, but it is still rare to see an example of a genre that has now become a cliché in American movies. Though Adrift in Tokyo is the story of two mis-matched people who become friends as they find their true self in the course of their journey, there are no big adventures, no chases, no gangs, and no cars. For a society that has always given great attention to the little things, it is entirely appropriate that the two men go for a walk rather than a drive. They take a long rambling walk through a Tokyo outside the world of skyscraper offices and take the viewer along on one of the most quietly delightful film journeys of the decade.

Fumiya is already adrift in the first scene. He’s now in in his eighth (!!) year of university, faced with an enormous debt to a loan shark with no way to pay off the loan, and wondering in the best modern consumerist way if the new tube of Aquafresh striped toothpaste can change his life. The debt collector Fukuhara has taken his ID and given him three days or else, so he is now contemplating robbing schoolgirls collecting for Afghan aid when Fukuhara turns up again and offers him a way out. All Fumiya has to do is accompany the gangster on a walk. Fukuhara is also adrift, because he has accidentally killed his wife, and the walk is to the main police station in downtown Tokyo (only the best will do for him).

In the course of the walk, we naturally learn a lot about the two men. Fukuhara’s comments while they ramble provide a meditation on the nature of married love, while the memories he provokes for Fumiya are about the significance and value of family. These memories are given to us lightly, without any reconstruction of the argument that led to the killing, for example, and they are surrounded by a world of eccentricity that we would hardly suspect could be found in such a conformist society. Before we are done we meet a cosplay party where an old man robs lockers in a super hero costume, office workers who all stand alike at a crosswalk, a block-long line of people waiting at night to seek the advice of Shinjuku Mama who can tell them the location of lost items or family members, a watchmaker who is a master at karate, odd basketball players, and a rambling guitarist with his amp on his back to mention only a few. They are joined by workers from the supermarket who set off to find out why Fukuhara’s wife hasn’t shown up for work but who constantly get distracted from their search by the smell of another worker’s hair, a ramen shop whose quality doesn’t deserve the line outside, or a chance to be extras in a movie.

Eventually, they end up at the home of Fukuhara’s other wife. She is not his mistress but the woman who pretended to be his wife at weddings for which they were hired as fake family members so as not to cause the bride or groom to lose face because no family showed up. She tells her niece that he is a ship captain, to explain his long absence, and that Fumiya is their son, and Fumiya begins to feel comfortable at last in this artificial family.

Adrift in Tokyo was released at about the same time as A Gentle Breeze in the Village and has much the same gentle feel, despite its utterly different setting and characters. It follows the brush, going hither and yon, reversing direction according to Fukuhara’s whim, and generally avoiding any of the famous sights – they watch a small private plane landing at a suburban airfield rather than the jets at Haneda, for example, and ride a roller coaster at a small amusement park rather than making a visit to Disneyland Tokyo. The one recognizable sight is the actor Ittoku Kishibe, who is well-known but hardly famous. It is rumored that anyone who sees him will have good luck that day, and Fumiya sees him at a vending machine on the first day of the walk. (The three office workers will also see him studying his lines, which leads to their day with him on a van to the movie location and gives Fukuhara and Fumiya another day of luck, since it distracts the trio from a visit to Mrs. Furuhara’s apartment that would have discovered the body.)

Tomokazu Miura (Fukuhara) began his career as a teen heart-throb who married Momoe Yamaguchi after often being paired with her on screen but over later years had been a dependable character actor who was rarely noticed. Now sporting a mullet that could have been left over from the eighties, he is a charming companion, utterly relaxed, and after the first scene, the least threatening yakuza we’ve met. Joe Odagiri is convincingly confused and lost as he tags along, not sure whether to like the guy or be afraid of him. The one moment he is terrified comes when Miura talks about his wife’s habit of picking up younger men in Shinjuku, and he remembers the night he picked up an older woman whose husband was “in finance.” He’s also careful to always smoke beside an open window when the two are together.

No matter how far afield the movie wanders and what eccentrics the men meet, eventually it all comes back to one of the primary topics of Japanese film – the search for family. Fukuhara has lost his family by his own actions and now must pay the price. Fumiya was left alone and raised by relatives, and faces the prospect of losing the new “father” he has stumbled upon. It is in this way a typical ronin story, but with two ronin temporarily traveling together, one the samurai cast out for a crime against the clan, the other the samurai who simply wanders in search of a home. As charming and comic as the movie may be along the way, there is no real happy ending.