East West - The Asian American Lifestyle Magazine

By Katrina Kernodle-Walsh

Winning eight awards since its release last May in Japan, Ashita no Kioku, or, as it is titled in English, Memories of Tomorrow, is just hitting the West with releases scheduled throughout the summer months in major U.S. cities.*  Based on a novel, this compelling account of Alzheimer’s disease is a tear-jerking love story, a marked departure from leading man Ken Watanabe’s previous roles as an imposing samurai and military protagonist.

Before a packed audience, at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art at the film’s D.C. debut on May 14, Watanabe, who also executive produced the film, said he was so moved when he finished reading Hiroshi Ogiwara’s book detailing one man’s range of experiences with Alzheimer’s that he wrote a letter to Ogiwara in the middle of the night expressing his strong desire to make the story into a film.

The entire movie is a flashback from the first scene, which notes the year as 2010 and opens with a pen on a blank notebook. The camera pans to an equally blank-faced Masayuki Saeki (Watanabe) in a wheelchair. As the sun falls low in the sky, in walks Emiko Saeki (Kanako Higuchi) with a teacup bearing the inscription E-MI-KO (in simple hiragana) and a corkboard full of photographs. While the “dying of the light” nature of the sunset may be overly obvious symbolism for some viewers, the rest of the movie is anything but your typical love story and manages to steer clear of some of the saccharin qualities of the widely popular The Notebook by portraying a more realistic version of love, marriage and the devastating impacts of this illness.

Return to 2004, in a country that has a word for “death from overwork” (karoshi), the Masayuki Saeki that now appears on screen fits the stereotypical image of a work-obsessed, gung ho Japanese businessman. At the peak of his career, 49-year-old Saeki’s hard-driving habits have landed a major account for his ad firm. While downing sake that evening, his lapse in memory trying to recollect the movie about a “sinking ship” and actor “Dick Caprio” is met with jibes from colleagues about being old and out of touch.

Repeated gaps and gaffes at work and at home, forgetting a scheduled meeting and odd shopping expeditions, persuade the Saekis to visit a doctor whose questions such as “name as many vegetables as you can” stump and humiliate Saeki. Upon diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s, Saeki ridicules the doctor’s credentials and youth racing out of the office and up to the edge of the hospital rooftop. Watanabe’s moving portrayal of the despair and hopelessness accompanying an Alzheimer’s diagnosis may well have been culled from his personal experiences in battling recurrent cancer, acknowledged in the post-film Q&A; however, he noted that details used in creating Saeki’s character came from extensive interviews with doctors, nurses, Alzheimer’s patients and family members of those suffering from the disease.

Watanabe says that “before making this film we were concerned about how much of Alzheimer’s we could show,” adding that it was important to make the film “believable” for those who had experience with the disease while not adding to the stigma or heightening fears of those who have no experience.

The film’s depiction of early onset Alzheimer’s, which causes individuals to deteriorate more rapidly than its later version, is true to form—rapidly impacting Saeki, his job and his family. As his job slips away from him, Higuchi’s portrayal of Emiko’s struggle to balance work, after years of being a Japanese housewife, with her husband’s increasingly challenging condition is nothing short of masterful and absolutely maudlin-free.  The film ends where it began only now the stories and significance of the blank notebook, the teacup and the corkboard are understood.

With music that ranges from grating, high-pitched squeals to melodic scores and utter silence, engaging camera work that offers glimpses into Saeki’s psychological distortion, flashbacks, delusions, stellar acting and a meaningful storyline, Memories of Tomorrow  is as clever as it is touching. While you may not offer up a two-minute standing ovation like the crowd at the Freer did, it’s undeniable that this film lives up to its award-winning status.  Running time: 122 minutes.  Not-rated.

*The film debuts in Los Angeles on June 8 and in San Francisco on July 13.  For more information and other showings, visit www.memoriesoftomorrowmovie.com. 

Learn more about Alzheimer’s.

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