Tokyo Godfathers: a heart-warming if fussy Christmas movie on the importance of family in assuring survival and resilience

Satoshi Kon, “Tokyo Godfathers” (2003)

No, this ain’t no cult yakuza film – though yakuza types do appear for a short while – but instead this is a heart-warming Christmas anime flick about the importance of family, however unconventionally it’s constituted, in assuring survival and helping to bond people and maintaining hope in that bonding no matter what misfortune life throws at us. Three homeless people – middle-aged alcoholic Gin (Toru Emori), former drag queen performer Hana (Yoshiaki Umegaki) and young teenage runaway Miyuki (Aya Okamoto) are rummaging through garbage bins on Christmas Eve in Tokyo when they spot an abandoned newborn girl. They determine to return the baby, whom they call Kiyoko, to her parents after finding a photograph of her parents and crumpled papers with addresses attached to the little one’s blankets. This idea drives the trio through the streets, often late in the evening when the snow is falling heavily, and into the Tokyo metropolitan subway system. They will nearly come a-cropper at a wedding reception attended by gangsters, Gin will almost lose his life after being beaten by teenage thugs, Hana will briefly be reunited with the transvestites at the club where she used to sing and perform, and Miyuki will reconsider the argument with her father that led to her leaving home; whatever trials the threesome experience individually and collectively in trying to return the baby to her family will strengthen their bonds with one another and, paradoxically, lead them back to their own families. Gin is reunited with own his long-lost daughter and Miyuki unexpectedly meets her police inspector father again after two years while visiting Gin and Hana in hospital at the end of the film. Each of the three characters confronts his or her past demons and by doing so gains new purpose in life and has new respect for his or her travelling companions.

The background animation is beautifully rendered; the snowy cityscapes suggest isolation and alienation yet can be surprisingly calming and not at all threatening. Tokyo is at once a gritty, cold city in which the most surprising things can happen, most of all, a tiny baby who appears in a garbage bin on Christmas Eve and through whom three individuals learn to face their fears and gain redemption. While the city has its narrow lanes, noisty traffic and slums filled with immigrants and homeless who try to survive the best they can, Tokyo is also possessed of a quiet serenity.

The film can be viewed as a character study of three people who through their trials come to appreciate one another deeply and form a real family of people who look out for one another. Gin’s stoic, gruff nature hides a guilt-ridden conscience at having abandoned a wife and small baby girl. Hana deeply yearns to be a mum and to hold his own baby, though he’s somewhat at a loss when his turn to change Kiyoko’s nappy comes all too quickly. Miyuki is haunted by the argument with her father, during which she seized a knife and inflicted damage with it.

For the first half-hour, the film cruises along briskly but as coincidence starts to build upon coincidence, the plot becomes much less plausible than it already is. It becomes very strained and contrived, and plot twist upon plot twist strings out the film for longer than it should. A couple who have lost their own baby girl and whose lives as a result go askew become involved with the baby Kiyoko in a sinister way, yet the resolution of their troubles – depression, suicidal tendencies – is treated superficially. We never learn if the woman in the couple receives proper counselling and treatment.

For a film that pleads compassion for the marginalised in modern society and in which the main characters find real family with one another, and discover their resilience and compassion, the ending in which two characters are reunited with their original families seems unsatisfactory: it suggests that the only “real” families are the traditional nuclear families consisting of a father, mother and children, as dictated by a society that for one reason or another spurns its homeless and others who do not conform to its dictates.