Tokyo-Ga: A First Person Journey (A Filmed Diary about Absence).

Abstract

This article presents the conception and development of the film Tokyo-Ga (Wim Wenders, 1985), and reflects on the film as a twofold journey (physical and emotional) and a diary of the film's author. It is a journey on which Wenders discovers the environment of one of his greatest points of reference: the filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. Although the author may deny it, this discovery also becomes a kind of pilgrimage.  It is the story of a journey to a city, but also a journey back in time, in search of one of the greatest and most notable names in cinema history, with the intention of finding traces of the revered master in contemporary Japan, whose paradigm is Tokyo, a chaotic, strange and vast metropolis with its agglomerations and contradictions.