24 Eyes

24 Eyes (二十四の瞳, Nijuu-shi no Hitomi), a 1954 film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita and based off a 1952 novel by Sakae Tsuboi, follows a schoolteacher Hisako Oishi as she arrives in a small village in Shodoshima to teach a group of twelve elementary school students, while also showing the effects of World War II on each of their lives as they grow older. 

Starting off with Miss Oishi's arrival in the small village, the twelve schoolchildren quickly develop a fondness for their new strangely modern yet playfully involved schoolteacher; her routine of riding her bicycle while wearing a suit to school every day, and using songs and games to help her students learn garners her both admiration from her students and suspicion from the simple parents within the town. When a prank by the children causes Miss Oishi to suffer a debilitating wound that prevents her from getting to the school, she is forced to quit teaching in the village, but this does not stop her students from visiting her, whether it be to bring or food or assess her new husband-to-be.

The tone quickly becomes more somber as World War II starts to affect the small village; young boys are drafted, with many of them never returning home from the war due to losing their lives in battle. Both the now-adolescent schoolchildren and Miss Oishi must deal with the sacrifices of war, whether it be being drafted into the war, becoming ill, or losing those close to them.

The melodramatic characteristics through its themes and characters are definitely a major contributor to 24 Eyes being one of Japan's most well-known films to this day. For example, Miss Oishi's character as almost a "tragic heroine" displays the use of an exaggeration not of her emotions, but of her experiences throughout her life: she originally suffers a serious injury that prevents her from biking to and from the village, but as World War II starts to affect all of Japan, more tragedy befalls her, such as the loss of her husband in the war, and the death of her daughter after she falls from a tree. Moreover, her students are also victims of this excess of tragedy, as many of them die in the war after being drafted as well, while one becomes blind, and another contracts tuberculosis. While the excessive emotion is not as prominent as other melodramas, the use of subtle somber musical choices and settings accompanied with the tragic experiences of both Miss Oishi and her students nonetheless emphasize the resulting feelings of helplessness and sadness similar to those of more obvious melodramas. 

In addition, it is this tragedy accompanied with the setting of the film, a small, poor village within Shodoshima untouched by war until World War II, that establishes a polarity between the initial blissful peace of the village pre-war time and the debilitating effects of war that Kinoshita emphasizes. These opposing forces can be particularly seen in the scene where Miss Oishi talks with her eldest son about the end of the war; while he continues to be saddened by Japan's loss in the war, Miss Oishi put particular emphasis on the less-obvious yet heavier loss of lives as a result of the war. The theme of the damaging effects of the war in spite of the patriotism some characters insist upon is prominent throughout the entire movie; it is made clear by Tsuboi and Kinoshita that the "evil" that the characters must face is the war itself, along with the fear-induced and blinded patriotism some characters use to defend it within the movie.

While more subdued in its use of exaggerated emotion and polar opposing forces of war versus peace, 24 Eyes uses these aspects in similar ways as other, more obvious melodramas to express its overarching theme of the importance of peace and understanding that make an essential part of Japanese cinema.