SHALL WE DANCE

In SHALL WE DANCE, Shohei Sugiyama (Kujo Yakusho) is a good man, a hard-working accountant, a good provider, and a responsible husband and father. He married at 28-years-old, had a daughter two years later and now at 42-years-old has just bought a home. However, he lacks joy in his life. The daily grind of bicycling from his house to the train station, commuting by train to his work, spending almost all his day working, and finally going home to sleep is taking its toll . He feels burdened and weighed down with responsibilities.

One day, on the train home, he looks up at the windows of a dance studio and sees a beautiful girl staring sadly out the window. He is mesmerized by this vision.

After several days, he actually gets off the train and goes to the dance studio. He meets this sad girl, Mai (Tamiyo Kusakari), and enrolls in ballroom dance lessons. Mai is not his teacher, but it is enough for him to go to dance class every Wednesday, just to watch Mai and her graceful dancing as she teaches other students. When he tries to ask Mai to go out to dinner with him one evening after class, she turns him down and tells him bluntly to question his motives about attending the classes. She says she’d rather he make dancing his reason and not her.

Crushed, Sugiyama continues to take lessons and finds himself getting into the swing of dancing, gaining a sense of self-liberating joy. Sugiyama’s good looks make him very attractive to the other teachers of the class, especially to Toyoko (Eirko Watanabe) who is looking for a partner at a dance competition. Eventually, Sugiyama partners with Toyoko at the competition. Mai comes out of her self-imposed melancholy, as she tutors the duo.

Sugiyama’s wife notices the changes in his attitude. A private detective informs her that it is dancing and not another woman who has captured the heart of her husband. At the dancing competition, Sugiyama notices his wife and daughter, much to his horror, makes a blunder and decides to give up dancing. He goes back to his sterile life, until a letter arrives from Mai who tries to encourage him not to abandon dancing.

Director/writer Masayuki Suo’s has taken a difficult subject, traditional Japanese culture, and has pried it open with bold and questioning insights. It is a well-known fact that Japanese society frowns on any display of emotions. Japanese culture separates husband and wife functions until there is very little communication between them and imposes rigid work habits on the man until there is very little to uplift him. In SHALL WE DANCE?, Masayuki Suo defies that thinking with a tender exploration of how lives can change with more self-expression and a little more flexibility. He creates such a touching story that it is no wonder this film was a winner of all 13 Japanese Academy Awards and an audience favorite at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.

The beautiful Mai , played enchantingly by Tamijo Kusakari (one of Japan’s famed ballerinas) is teamed up perfectly with Koji Yakusho , as the joyless Sugiyama . Together, they give each other the understanding and motivation each needs to get on with their respective lives and goals. It is at its best, a coupling of souls, and their “relationship” such as it is, is so sensitively portrayed that it uplifts the morality of the story rather than taint it with lust and sex. They have a sense of heightened responsibility toward each other, to their own persons and to those around them. This is what makes this story so poignant. It has universal appeal.

There are segments of slapstick comedy and exaggerated characterization that detract from the refined sensitivity of the movie, but these do not overshadow the film’s larger essence. At the end, Sugiyama understands his and his wife’s own loneliness, and their new closeness imbues the movie with a sense of a strong morality.