Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

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Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

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Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

The continent forms a pretty backdrop for an on-off affair between Makoto, a visiting Japanese scholar (Tadashi Yokouchi) and Naoko, an expatriate Japanese purchaser for an import-export firm (Mariko Okada, aka Mrs. Yoshida). Naoko is in Europe but not of it, married not to a European but to another expatriate, an American who, in one of the film's few humorous touches, harangues Makoto on existentialism and the culture of the copy. Naoko says it's an honor for her husband to address Makoto thus.

Naoko has lived in Europe for the best part of a decade, having left Japan to escape the trauma of a lost mother and brother in the atom bomb dropped not on Hiroshima, but on Nagasaki. Makato Kawamura is a professor who is making a tour of Europe over the summer prior to taking up a research post in Paris. His goal is to seek out a church which, he believes, was the inspiration for one built by the Portuguese when they ‘discovered’ Japan in 1453. He naturally begins his search in Lisbon, but comes to believe that, as most of the great architects of the time were from Turin or Florence, that the church would, if anywhere, be in Italy. The obvious problem is he doesn’t even know whether it exists at all.

Take these two people, the former married to an American intellectual but stifled and wanting an escape. The cities serve as the backdrop to the drama, or it could be argued that the drama serves as foreground to the cities. No art director is credited and nor was one needed, the cities, the collective cities of Europe, are like an additional character, with moods, hopes, all partly influenced by the surroundings. The placement of his leads in his shots bears scrutiny not only for their nods to Resnais and, especially, Antonioni (or even in how it looks forward in tone to Wong Kar-Wai and dreams of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung), but because of how it sets up a paradox. On one hand, their lives seem insignificant compared to the timeless state of the monuments that surround them, yet on another, almost apocalyptically, they are often the only characters to be seen, the streets and landscapes often deserted but for them, as if the world itself was, quite literally, revolving around their existence. Naoko could be Kawamura’s cathedral made flesh, or he could be her lost dream of pre-war Nagasaki.

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Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

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Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

Close

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Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

Close

×

Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

Close

×

Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

Close

×

Farewell to the Summer Light / Saraba natsu no hikari - by Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida (1968)

Close