母の曲 Haha no Kyoku

The film, 「母の曲」, while working from within the same framework as Stella Dallas, recontextualizes the narrative within a Japanese setting and in doing so provides valuable insights into the historical and cultural attitudes of the time.

Oine, far from being the overbearing, histrionic, and smothering influence of Stella in that parallel narrative, is presented as being overmeek-unable to follow her daughter into high society as a function of her propensity to falter at moments where she ought to assert herself as mannered and refined. While Stella relinquishes her hold over Laurel because she knows that she will overpower her attempts at social climbing with her own all-too-evident desperation, Oine's decision to leave her daughter in the hands of the others is based on perceived weakness instead of perceived excess strength.

This dichotomous mirroring of each mother's relationship to the discourses of "strength" is particularly significant in the historical context of both films. Oine's noble choice to allow her daughter to embrace a new life, swept into success on the wings of prestige borrowed from Western classical music (it is perhaps not insignificant that neither the piano and the composer Mendelssohn are Japanese in origin) may reflect the attitudes of the Japanese people as the country began in earnest its march towards nationalization and eventual war. Though Oine's gentleness and nurturing disposition are not necessarily condemned, it is explicitly clear that Keiko has outgrown her caretaker and is ready to step onto a greater stage without anyone to hold her hand.

This is perhaps exemplified in the final scene of the movie, wherein Oine, desolate and inconsolable after witnessing her daughter's wedding as an outsider, is run down by a car. There might be no more a potent metaphor for Westernization's relentless surge forward than the automobile; a vehicle by which the next generation (Keiko and her husband) will travel onward to their new lives together. It is metal and glass--unyielding and unfeeling as it careens into the unwitting Oine and pushes her into the mud. The kindly policeman who comes to her rescue is gentle with her--perhaps he is there as a final consolation to a woman so thoroughly left behind by the world.

However, for all their differences, both mothers in Haha no Kyoku and Stella Dallas, share the same smile at the very end--torn between emotional anguish and beatific joy for their daughters. In this sense, the theme of motherhood comes to the surface in both narratives. What each mother can do to ensure her daughter survives in the world to come may vary between across cultures and times, but the beating heart of both of these melodramas is the idea that this bond of motherhood is both the motivating factor behind these decisions and the very reason that that letting go is so painful.