Song of Home
1925Mizoguchi’s 30th film is the earliest surviving example of his work, and his only film of the 1920s to survive complete. Song of Home finds the director already concerning himself with the collision of traditional and modern values. The film is structured around the contrast of two country-bred boys: a coach driver who has never left his home, and a student who returns from Tokyo with city-slicker affectations and Western jazz records. Produced by the Ministry of Education, the film has a simplistic lesson-plan at its heart, but what lingers in the mind after viewing are its more ineffable qualities: The dulcet, lyric, evocation of a disappeared rural past.
Acted in
Shigeru Kido
as Naotaro Takeda
Masujirô Takagi
as Naotaro's father
Sueko Ito
as Naotaro's mother
Mineko Tsuji
as Okinu
Kentaro Kawamata
as Junichi Okamoto
Shirô Kato
as Junichi's father
Shizue Matsumoto
as Junichi's mother
Michiko Tachibana
as Taro Maesaka
Hiromichi Kawata
as Elementary school principal
Ichirō Shibayama
as School inspector
Yutaka Mimasu
as American scholar
Fusako Hoshi
