A young woman’s simple desire to be with her daughter sparks a quiet revolution in Taichi Kimura’s autobiographically inspired drama, Fujiko. Though set in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not that much has really changed in terms of the difficulties faced by those raising children alone even if they’re less likely to be told that it just isn’t possible or that they’ve brought their struggles on themselves by choosing divorce.
Fujiko doesn’t so much choose divorce as have it thrust upon her by her own feisty mother. The family she married into don’t see her as much more than a labourer and are then put out when she has a child because it means she has less time for them. The mother-in-law eventually coopts Fujiko’s infant daughter, while Fujiko’s husband Jiro does nothing, unable to stand up to his mother. Having lost Mari, Fuji goes into a kind of depression before being dragged to a women’s liberation rally by her boss reawakens her desire to fight.
Though Fujiko’s decision making may not be consciously feminist, it’s here that she realises that nothing changes if you just keep quiet. You have to fight for what you really want. But the battle doesn’t end once she’s retrieved her daughter. Life as a single mother is, as many tell her, all but impossible. Securing a place to stay thanks to her boss, Fujiko struggles to find anyone to watch her daughter so she can return to work. It’s only with the intervention of a friend that’s she’s able to overcome these issues and earn her own living.
The other employers’ refusal seems to be down in part as a reflection of social prejudice but also a fear that she’s breaking the rules that govern an employee/employer relationship in having something that will always take priority. Time and gain, it’s the kindness of strangers that saves her as she goes on to forge a more independent way of life. In need of money, she can’t be too picky about what the joy actually is and ends up accepting a position as a cook for an illegal yakuza gambling den only to see the money she’s saved go up in smoke when her placed is turned over. It may seem like the world is against her, but with every setback Fujiko only seems more determined to make it through.
Fujiko finds a more positive example of supportive family by bonding with an old friend of her father’s who takes her in and helps her get back on her feet while helping her to see what she really wants out of life. Harbouring some resentment towards her mother for favouring her brother as the only boy, making her give up on art college so that he could go to Tokyo University, but equally disapproving of her marriage, Fujiko too struggles with the idea of conventionality that is projected onto her and the suggestion that she’s doing something wrong when the best option is simply remarriage. Given the option of marrying again and gaining a steadier home as a house, she once again has to decide if she’s going to fight for what she wants or be railroaded into settling for a more conventional success.
Rediscovering her father’s music helps Fujiko to get back in touch with herself and encourages her to follow her heart. Using psychedelic animation and propulsive rock music, Kimura lends Fujiko’s story a true punk rock spirit while staging much of the film as a flashback as Fujiko lays out her “sob story” for a prospective client having become an insurance saleswoman. Despite the difficulties she’s facing, the film remains upbeat and positive, seeing it all with a sense of humour as Fujiko does her best to escape the patriarchal net, refusing to be bound either by her first husband’s ineffectuality nor by what her mother insists her life should be. Instead she aims for an uncompromising independence, claiming her position as her daughter’s mother and doing her best to provide for her but also fulfilling herself in the midst of a patriarchal society which tells her that marriage and motherhood are the only rightful goals for a woman.
Fujiko as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.
Trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 