Because I live in a world where the concepts of “mongrelization” and “miscegenation” feel deliriously archaic, the central conflict of Sayonara should feel antiquated. Still, watching the unthinking bigotry of Major “Ace” Gruver (Marlon Brando with a Southern accent) be overcome through the power of love bypassed my cynicism and wormed its way into my heart.1 Why? Because it’s about loving fearlessly, a topic that’s evergreen even when it’s in the context of the now-outdated “you can’t bring your Japanese wife to America.”2
The movie starts with Gruver telling his subordinate, Airman Joe Kelly (Red Buttons), that Kelly’s engagement to a Japanese woman is a terrible mistake. Gruver can’t understand a love that comes with practical concerns, but Kelly tells him that all that means is “you don’t feel as strong about your girl as I do mine.” Gruver’s own fiancée is perfect on paper—an all-American girl and daughter of a general—but it dawns on him that his love towards her is one of obligation, not ferocity.
It’s when Gruver meets Hana-Ogi (Miiko Taka), a famous Japanese dancer, that he discovers a passionate, all-consuming love. From there, it’s matter-of-fact: he’ll do what it takes to be with her, even if it means enduring prejudice or giving up his career. Yep, that’s a movie that can make you feel stuff, even in 2024.
Rating: 6/10, first hour is a slog but once Hana-Ogi shows up, away we go.
Cast and Crew
Sayonara was based on a James Michener novel, and Michener is someone you’ve gotta go deep on. He’s known for his centuries-spanning generational sagas specifically tied to places, including (deep breath) “Hawaii,” “Alaska,” “Texas,” “The Covenant,” “Mexico,” “Chesapeake,” “Poland,” and “Centennial.”3 Michener also wrote “Tales of the South Pacific,” a Pulitzer Prize winner that was adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein, plus “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” which was turned into a 1955 William Holden film.4
Old-school stand-up Red Buttons scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar playing against type as the airman who marries a Japanese woman and then commits ritual suicide with her. His famous comedy routine was “never got a dinner”; you can watch a supercut of it here. He was also in the John Wayne film Hatari! (1962, known for the Henry Mancini theme “Baby Elephant Walk”) and the disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure (1972).
Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán had a supporting role as a star kabuki performer. This’ll be our only Montalbán sighting, so let’s speed-run his credits: the Planet of the Apes movies5; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982); the Spy Kids franchise; fantasy-granter Mr. Roarke on “Fantasy Island”; and a car commercial where he waxed poetic about “Corinthian leather” that became a meme before we had memes.6
Miiko Taka (as Hana-Ogi) and Miyoshi Umeki (as Katsumi) played the women Ace Gruver and Joe Kelly fall in love with, respectively. Audrey Hepburn was initially slated for the role of Hana-Ogi, but she passed and it went to Taka, who had no acting experience. She gave a killer performance.
Taka was a “nisei,” or second-generation Japanese-American, and was interned during World War II. Umeki, on the other hand, was an “issei,” or first-generation immigrant from Japan. For her work in Sayonara, Umeki was the first Asian person to win an acting Oscar—and, double threat, she also sang the film’s theme song.7
The Trivia
Alrighty, let’s give a brief discussion of three different types of Japanese theater. Noh and kabuki are the ones that get the most play in trivia and it can be tricky to tell them apart. Noh’s considered the oldest major theater art still performed today (it’s from the 14th century) and is spiritual and aristocratic in nature, while kabuki8 was developed 300 years later to cater to a broader audience. Noh stages are simple and symbolic, while kabuki features elaborate sets, dynamic movements, and colorful costumes and makeup. There’s also bunraku, a traditional form of puppet theater. It involves large puppets manipulated by puppeteers who are visible to the audience.9
And now, a similarly reductive rundown of traditional Japanese instruments. This video is worth a watch, as it shows the shakuhachi, shamisen, biwa, koto, and taiko. The shamisen, whose name means “three-stringed,” has a long neck and is played with a big ivory pick. It’s probably the instrument you think of when you think “traditional Japanese music.” Don’t mix it up with the biwa, which is a short-necked lute, or with the koto, which is more like a zither.10 Finally, taiko are traditional Japanese drums, while the shakuhachi is a Japanese bamboo flute.
If you looked really closely at that graphic, you saw the drum is called “wadaiko” and not “taiko.” “Taiko” is the more general term; a wadaiko is a type of taiko. “Taiko” is also used to describe an ensemble of drummers drumming.
Odds and Ends
According to the U.S. Foreign Service, Japanese is the hardest language for English speakers to learn…James Garner co-starred in Sayonara; we’ll see him again, but in the meanwhile, you should know his TV roles as Bret Maverick on the Western “Maverick” (1957-1962) and Jim Rockford on “The Rockford Files” (1974-1980)11…Irving Berlin, whose work we’ve covered before, wrote the theme song “Sayonara” while Franz Waxman handled the film’s score…Gruver mentions being in a play by Molnar; Ferenc Molnar (1878-1952) was Hungary’s most celebrated playwright12…Brando’s film before Sayonara was The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), where, role reversal, he played a Japanese guy…They say Gruver has nine air victories, making him almost twice as good as Pete Mitchell from Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
But I’m not a good judge of this stuff—I was moved by Green Book (2018) too. And I guess Sayonara’s sorta like Green Book, if the plot of Green Book had Viggo Mortensen falling in love with Mahershala Ali.
Why couldn’t they bring Japanese wives to America? Well, I think it was due to the 1924 Immigration Act, whose goal was to preserve the “ideal” of U.S. homogeneity, and the expiration of the 1945 War Brides Act. A Sayonara plot point is the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (also called the McCarran–Walter Act), which revised the 1924 law and exempted U.S. citizens’ children and spouses from numerical caps.
The two with non-obvious names are about South Africa and a fictional town in Colorado, respectively.
Yeah, it’s the other one where William Holden blows up a bridge. Dude hated bridges.
Montalbán was only in the 3rd and 4th Planet of the Apes movies. Remember, they don’t have normal sequel names, so let’s take a look at them, starting from the first one:
Planet of the Apes (1968); Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970); Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971); Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972); Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973; it feels like they mixed the order of those last two up). Then, the rebooted film franchise (ignoring the 2001 Planet of the Apes remake): Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014; looks like they got these two backwards as well), War for the Planet of the Apes (2017), and an expected 2024 entry, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. At your next trivia get-together, plop down their names and see if anyone can put them in the right order.
Also, remember they’re based on Pierre Boulle’s novel “La Planète des singes,” known in the U.S. as “Planet of the Apes” and in the U.K. as, lol, “Monkey Planet.” Boulle also wrote the book The Bridge on the River Kwai was based on.
Best I can tell, the linked video for the Chrysler Cordoba is the earliest one with Montalbán. In it, he calls the Corinthain leather “soft,” though later ads would have him calling it “fine” or “rich.” “Corinthian leather” doesn’t mean anything, by the way—it just sounded better than “New Jersey leather.”
Umeki was later in both the Broadway and film versions of Flower Drum Song (1961), a Rodgers and Hammerstein joint with a majority-Asian cast and the famous song “I Enjoy Being A Girl.”
The name “kabuki” is from the Japanese words meaning “song,” “dance,” and “skill.”
This paragraph pretends like Japanese theater boils down to just noh, kabuki, and bunraku. This is of course false.
Okay, a zither is like a guitar in that the body of the instrument is used to create resonance when the strings are plucked, but unlike a guitar, it has no neck.
“The Rockford Files” was famously pitched as “Maverick, but a present-day private detective.”
Molnar wrote “Liliom,” which Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted into “Carousel.”