3 - Once More and Gosho's Romanticism in the Early Occupation Period

Summary

A demobilized soldier in his early thirties stands on a street corner outside a Tokyo museum, waiting for someone. At his feet is a suitcase with the name Nogami Tetsuya on it. His face is tense, anxious. Suddenly, he sees a woman walking across the street, but she neither stops nor looks his way. Moments later he sees another woman, but she too passes by. Deep in thought, he paces back and forth for awhile. Then, from his breast pocket, he takes out a woman's wristwatch. Holding it tenderly, he thinks to himself, “I came back to the designated place. … I wanted to see her once again … but in vain.” As his thoughts continue, the scene dissolves into another. Once again he waits at the same place. However, he is no longer in uniform, and the day, which before was sunny, is now rainy and dreary. “Did she forget her promise?” he wonders. “She said if she were alive, we'd meet again. Is she alive? Couldn't she survive the war?” Her words then come back to him: “Let's meet again,” she says, almost pleadingly. “Remember, every Sunday at 10:00 in the morning.”

Thus begins Ima hitotabino (Once More, 1947), the first film Gosho Heinosuke made after the war, and the first of two films he directed for the Toho Studio. Based on the novel by Takami Jun and told in flashback, Once More is a sweet, unabashedly sentimental love story with political overtones.