Tony Takitani Analysis

In Tony Takitani, loneliness is a reoccurring theme. The characters experience their own versions of emptiness, and they cope with it differently. Lack of companionship doesn’t bother Tony Takitani for most of his life, until he meets Konuma Eiko and falls in love with her. After the two are married Tony is no longer lonely, but is overcome by the fear of becoming lonely again. This fear eventually subsides, and he learns that Eiko has a lonely side as well. Eiko has an empty space that she fills with designer clothing. The addiction to buying new clothes becomes worse, and she dies because of it. After her death, Tony’s loneliness returns and drives him to hire a replacement Eiko to assist him while wearing his wife’s clothing in order for him to deal with the fact that she’s gone. Everyone in the film is lonely at some point, and they deal with the feeling dissimilarly as best they can. In the epilogue portion of the film, Takitani Shozaburo gives his son an American name. This goes against the culture that both he and Tony grow up with. It affects Tony as a child when he introduces himself and others become confused or offended. This is one reason why Tony does not have many friends as a young boy. He distances himself from the world outside him, because that’s what the world does to him in his eyes. His father is often out of town on business, which is a universal situation that people can relate to. There are more cultures represented in Tony Takitani than Japanese. When Eiko and Tony visit Europe, she shops, which is a part of European culture, as well as a personal addiction of hers. When Takitani Shozaburo is in prison, he expects to be executed at any moment. In other countries, prisoners know whether they will be executed or not. The appearance of the film Tony Takitani is simple and clean with a dark, low-contrast color palette. Jun Ichikawa uses few colors to convey what the characters see and feel. The whole film has a light tint with soft focus