Twenty-Four Eyes

About the Production of the Movie:
Twenty-four eyes (二十四の瞳, Nijushi no Hitomi) is a 1954 black-and-white film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita. It is based on the 1952 novel of the same name written by Sakae Tsuboi.


Plot:
Oishi-sensei is a teacher who takes over another teacher's place after she gets married. She becomes the teacher of a class of twelve 1st graders, and ultimately plays the role of a second mother figure. This movie follows the life of all the characters, showing what happens to each of them as they grow older in a period of time where war was imminent. 


Themes/Important Details:


War
"Don't see, hear, or talk. We teachers have a duty, we prepare our students to serve the nation." (Principal to Oishi-sensei)

During the warring state of time, teachers in Japan were supposed to encourage students, especially males, to support the war and to do their share in helping their country win. For females, this meant giving encouragement to the males. For males, this meant getting ready to sacrifice their lives to fight. While most teachers did their jobs, Oishi-sensei was the only character in this movie who did not support the notion of war. She was against it, but could not speak much about being against it as it would make her look like a communist. Most of the male students grew up to become soldiers, but many of them ended up dying as a result. Takeichi and Nita were some of the students who had died in war. Sonki had survived the war, but was blind as a result. Kic-chan was the only one who had led a "normal happy" life as a fisherman. As Oishi-sensei had mentioned, war was a reason why so many good people had died.

*Oishi-sensei's first son was named Daikichi. His name could mean "great luck". Oishi-sensei had mentioned Takeichi to Daikichi, and how Takeichi had decided to go off to war but unfortunately died. Perhaps Oishi-sensei named her son "great luck" so that he would be lucky not to be drafted into war.

Communism
Anyone who looked suspicious and might have been a communist was arrested and interrogated. It was seen as being against the country, or being unpatriotic. In this movie, one teacher (Kataoka-sensei) was arrested simply due to suspicion of being a communist. He was let go after there was a lack of evidence. Oishi-sensei had received a book that was anti-war and supported communism, and she had shared some of the written essays with her class. It was noted that the principal quickly burned the book and reprimanded Oishi-sensei on doing so. He later on also scolds her for asking her class about communists and capitalists. Such talk was considered taboo.

Gender
It was noted that most of the personal problems that appeared in this movie belonged to the girls. Matsue lost her mother and her baby sister and was separated from her father when she was adopted by someone else, forcing her to quit school. She became a waitress in a restaurant. Fujiko was a poor girl who had to leave school due to money problems and moved away. Masuno gave up her love for music and left school, and ended up working in her family's restaurant. Another girl had promised her mother that she would give up school so that she would be able to go on the class field trip. Kotoe went to Osaka to become a maid for her mother's sake, but ended up contracting tuberculosis and was forced to come back home. She was shunned by her family and ended up dying due to the disease. 

While the children were writing about their future, it was noted how dark the future was for the females. The males all wanted to become soldiers, but the females had a variety of thoughts. Fujiko was not able to write anything and considered herself to not even have a future, as she was very poor. One girl had mentioned that she wished she was born a boy instead of a girl. Another mentioned that if women were jobless, they would have no future and would not be able to survive. It was almost as if it was bad luck to be born a girl. Out of the three children Oishi-sensei ended up having, she lost her only girl child, Yatsue, who fell out of a tree. 

Compared to the girls, it seemed as most of the boys were able to continue their schooling. One boy had ended up leaving school to become a pawnbroker's assistant in Osaka, but was able to go to night-school while learning. Misako was one girl who had managed to continue schooling, and had a beautiful wedding at the end. Sanae also managed to become a school teacher after graduating from college.

Music:
The song about the crows was often sung by Oishi-sensei and her students. At the end of the movie, there are only seven students left out of the original twelve. One part of the lyrics, "Mother crow why do you sing so sadly? Because she left a child of seven in the mountain," seems to be symbolic. Oishi-sensei spent one year as their teacher, and if you add up each remaining student's year, then it comes to be the total of seven years as mentioned in the song.

Towards the end, the children were singing a song about a "glow of the fire in the village", which meant that villages were on fire. Many of the children songs sung contained dark themes.

Questions:

1. Why do you think it was mostly the girls who had so many problems with staying in school?
2. Do you think there was a correlation between staying in school and happiness?
3. Before Matsue had left school, she had mentioned wanting a lily-designed lunch box, and there was a closeup of the lunch box after Oishi-sensei bought one for her. What do you think was the purpose of the lily? (The white lily symbolizes purity/chastity)
4. When the boys were sailing off to war, what do you think was the meaning of the ribbons that were held by the soldiers and their loved ones?
5. Why do you think almost all the boys wanted to become soldiers?
6. What was the purpose of the bike?