📁RETURN TO FIRST IMPRESSIONS
📁RETURN TO CHA REVIEW OF BOOKS AND FILMS
Stuart Heisler (director), Tokyo Joe, 1949. 89 min.
Of all the gin joints in all the world, Humphrey Bogart had to walk into yet another one. Swap North Africa for Japan, and in some ways, Tokyo Joe feels like a decent B-movie sequel to the vastly superior Casablanca (1942), one of my favourite films.
Bogart takes on the titular role, returning to his bar after World War II to see what remains of it—astonishingly, the building is still standing. Teru Shimada portrays his loyal friend and former judo partner, Ito; Florence Marly plays Trina, the woman Joe left behind; and Alexander Knox plays Mark, Trina’s husband. They echo, but never quite capture, the magical chemistry of Dooley Wilson, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid in Casablanca. Beyond Bogart, only Sessue Hayakawa shines as the villain, Baron Kimura, who coerces Joe into what he strongly suspects is a smuggling operation.
As an interesting side note, Tokyo Joe marks a Hollywood comeback for Sessue Hayakawa, who would go on to excel eight years later in The Bridge on the River Kwai as the morally complex POW camp commandant, Colonel Saito. Hayakawa had been a matinee idol during the silent era, but rising anti-Japanese sentiment, even well before the war, forced him to seek work elsewhere. He ended up stranded in France during the war, earning a living as a watercolour artist. Notably, his involvement in the French Resistance, where he helped downed Allied pilots, likely aided him in securing a work permit for the film and passing a background check by the American Consulate.
In Tokyo Joe, Hayakawa plays a far more one-dimensional character than Colonel Saito, but he still manages to make the most of it. Kimura isn’t the only underdeveloped character; Trina is treated as little more than a piece of property, which is just one of the film’s many issues. Despite being the first US film partially shot in Japan after the war, it only includes second-unit footage, with the rest clearly filmed on a Hollywood backlot. The plot also has noticeable holes—if Ito had been writing to Joe, why didn’t he mention that his bar was still standing? Even so, the film does deliver some sharp dialogue and compelling scenes.
When Joe reunites with Ito at the bar after years apart, Bogey’s body language suggests he wants to greet Shimada with a brotherly hug. However, the Japanese man remains reserved, burdened by guilt over the war. Joe, in true Bogart fashion, brushes it off with his trademark humour: “So, you’re the guy that thought up the whole Pearl Harbor deal, huh?”
In the end, they spar at judo. Later, Joe asks about the hotel that once stood next to the bar. Ito explains that the B-29s “converted it into a parking lot.” Joe responds with a wry observation: “It’s lucky they stopped when they did; all of Tokyo would’ve been a parking lot. Next time, it’ll be the whole world with nothing left to park.”
That dark comment reflects the Cold War tensions of the time, with the Korean War just on the horizon and the United States eager to forge a quick alliance with Japan. It also subtly suggests that Americans exercised more restraint in bombing Tokyo than they actually did; in reality, most of the city was reduced to rubble, not to mention the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the subsequent occupation of Japan proved to be far more humane—something that surprises Ito. Bogey responds to his astonishment with characteristic bluntness: “What did you think we were going to do? Come here and roust you around?”
I have previously written reviews of Japanese films for this website, including Akira Kurosawa’s 1949 masterpiece, Stray Dog. However, this is the first time I have reviewed an American film set in Japan. Tokyo Joe, released the same year as Stray Dog, provides a glimpse into the US Occupation Era of Japan from an American perspective. At times, it veers into outright absurd propaganda.
That’s one way to view the film. Alternatively, it can be seen as the sort of movie you’d watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon, with clear callbacks to Casablanca. It’s not great—it’s B-movie Bogart. On the other hand, it’s far from the worst way to pass the time.
How to cite: Dutch, Jeremiah. “Play it again… Ito?: Stuart Heisler’s Tokyo Joe.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 21 Dec. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/12/21/tokyo-joe.
As an American who has called Japan home for over 25 years, Jeremiah Dutch’s writing crosses both cultures. He’s written about such diverse topics as horror films and climbing Mt. Fuji. While still an undergraduate, he wrote for The Haverhill (Massachusetts) Gazette and The Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Herald. In 1997, he graduated from the University of New Hampshire and moved to Japan to teach English the following year. In 2007 he earned a MS.Ed in Education from Temple University and for over seventeen years taught at the post-secondary level while continuing to write academic articles, fiction, and non-fiction. He currently teaches at Rikkyo University. In 2022, his short piece, Zen Failure in Kyoto won an Honourable Mention in the Seventh Annual Writers in Kyoto Competition. This was excerpted and adapted from his then novel-in-progress, Gaijin House. Another adapted excerpt was published this year under the name “Transported Souls in the Motel of Regret” in the anthology Mono no Aware: Stories on the Fleeting Nature of Beauty. These days he calls Yokohama home and lives there with his wife and two daughters. When not writing, teaching, or spending time with his family, he enjoys reading, exercising, and following baseball. Some more information about Jeremiah and his writing can be found on his website and Instagram. [All contributions by Jeremiah Dutch.]