Twenty-Four Eyes DVD Review

Hisako Oishi (Hideko Takamine) is misunderstood by the tiny village where she is sent to teach the first-graders in 1928. Unable to walk the long distance across the bay from the larger village where she lives with her mother (Shizue Natsukawa), Miss Oishi rides a bicycle and wears a pantsuit. Although the pantsuit is made out of convenience and both items are secondhand, she is seen as “modern”, which isn’t exactly a compliment in this simple town. The children are the first to fall in love with the teacher, quickly giving her the nickname Miss Pebble. The children love Miss Pebble so much that when she has an accident causing her temporary replacement, they decide to visit her. Thinking that the ten mile trip won’t take long for them to walk, the children sneak away from the village and try and walk to their beloved teacher.

The distance between the children and their teacher is a significant example of sacrifice each give for the other. Although it goes unappreciated, Miss Pebble rode her bicycle the lengthy trip as a sacrifice for the children’s education. Afterwards the children defy their parents, who often scorn Miss Oishi in private, by walking the long trip to see their missed teacher, and when a basket of gifts are sent to Oishi as a thank you for allowing their kids to visit, she takes the trip back to the village in order to hobble to each parent in order to thank them. Although they may be children or even crippled, no distance can prevent their kindness to each other, so the children become remarkably upset to hear that their teacher has been transferred to the larger school nearer to her mother’s home. Although Miss Oishi is no longer their teacher, the relationship continues over the years, as does their sacrifice to see each other. When news comes that their former teacher is to be wed, the students travel across the bay to greet the boat captain bridegroom as he arrives, and eventually they are old enough to attend the main school she teaches at.

The bond remains strong between Miss Pebble and her first students because of how much she truly cares for them. Seeing teaching as more than just a job, Miss Oishi is deeply affected by the suffering of her students, whether from the loss of a parent or the horrors of war, which slowly begins affecting their simple island. During the end of World War II Japan was drafting boys as young as fourteen into the army, and Miss Oishi’s reaction to the loss of her students drives a clear anti-war message into the heart of Twenty-Four Eyes. Kinoshita’s choices to show the simple and peaceful existence of the island prior to the war make the involvement seem even more unsettling, a brave choice for a Japanese director to make in 1954. Even as early as 1944 it seems obvious that Kinoshita had difficulty showing war battles as heroic instead of horrific. Eventually Miss Oishi even stops teaching because she is too vocal about her distaste for the war and how many of her male students it has taken.

The film has gone through extensive restoration in this high-definition transfer which has removed nearly all of the debris and scratches from the print. The subtitles have also been improved, providing a more accurate translation. The special features on the DVD include a new video interview with Japanese cinema historian, Tadao Sato, who discusses the film and its director. There are also a couple of theatrical trailers for the film and a booklet insert with a new essay by film scholar Audie Bock and a brief excerpt from a 1955 interview with Kinoshita.