Tokyo Godfathers: An Invitation to Understand the City in a Different Way

Tokyo Godfathers, directed by Satoshi Kon, focuses on a trio of homeless individuals in Tokyo who, on Christmas day, find an abandoned infant in a trash heap and attempt to return it to its parents. I won’t say too much more since the point of this piece is to encourage readers to watch the movie, but I will say that this premise leads to several unexpected places. It is both extremely dark and comedic, as well as a realist film that indulges intentionally in fantastic events. Conventionally thinking of Tokyo as a gleaming techno-utopia, having encountered it mostly in sci-fi films and shows, or imagining it as a deeply traditional place steeped in history, non-Japanese viewers might be surprised at the film's gritty and realistic portrayal of a Tokyo with an entrenched homeless problem littered with the realities of crippling poverty. It touches on a number of things: the problems of a deeply capitalist society, social deviance, non-traditional families, transgenderism and gender roles, immigration, and other topics we are used to talking about and watching films about but that are not often associated with Tokyo and Japan. 

Readers will likely be somewhat familiar with other works by Satoshi Kon. He directed the film that inspired Black Swan - Perfect Blue, as well as Paprika, Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent, and episodes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures. Tokyo Godfathers, though, is one of his lesser-known works and certainly one of his more unique ones. But, I think it offers one of the most important looks into Japanese film culture and cinema that a singular movie could contain. Watching this film gives one the chance to think about and explore a much more authentic understanding of Japan and the nature of modernity than a lot of the most popular depictions of Tokyo provide. Tokyo, the largest metropolis in the world, can uniquely reflect themes of the modern world and our shared urban future. Films like Blade Runner (as well as its sequel Blade Runner 2049) and Akira exploit perceptions of Japan’s dense, tech-centric, mega-corporation-dominated urban environment, taking advantage of its dystopian nature to comment on what the future might look like. However, this is only one understanding of Tokyo and a narrow one at that. Yet, it is also the one that dominates Western cultural production and dystopian imagination. 

Tokyo Godfathers presents an alternative view of Tokyo and of dystopia, one which is far more immediate. Homelessness and poverty are real issues in the kinds of megacities we have produced. Social alienation, mental sickness, unclear gender roles, and the shifting nature of the family are things modern society grapples with today; they are not topics relegated to our far-off future or an imagined Japan. Tokyo Godfathers is one of the rarer films that touches on this fact, but that only makes it all the more important to watch.