Glass-pane presents: 'When a Woman Ascends the Stairs' (1960)
A bar hostess starting her shift opens and layers the infinity of time with a gesture.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki) (1960), dir. Mikio Naruse, Japan
First, the Kohayagawas step out from behind the glass door and take on their new roles:
Loyal Uncle Yanosuke, grinning and clever as a tomato, lifts the keys from his neighbor and takes the little flat-bed truck to the steel mill, where he finds “Good morning, Mr. Sekine” (Daisuke Katō) and letters from Mistress 1, Mistress 3, and his newly betrothed Mama on his desk—
Yuriko springs up from cloudy covers, blows a wisp of hair out of her eye, and frowns at the Jupiter pink dress she slept in. I was going to wear it out dancing with George tonight! And now it’s all wrinkled. She climbs out of bed, brushing a magazine onto the floor, and the smell of toast and coffee Keiko always makes, thank God for her, lifts her across the carpet. “Junko (Reiko Dan), please tell Komatsu I’m going to collect on debts before the shift today.” Sure thing, Mama-chan. And I’ll call Dad today about that mink stole he promised me—
Papa Manbei leaves his kimono and washcloth on the floor (the time for rest is over, we have serious investments to make) and his wool coat swallows him up. The ladies at Carton Bar will be waiting for him—who is he kidding, Keiko, Mama herself will be waiting for him! A meeting with Mama, her face like a jewel, she will ask him for money and so be it for just a moment between them. “I want to open my own bar, Mr. Goda,” (Ganjirō Nakamura II) she had told him the day before, and he had no reason to doubt that she could. She is shrewd, but lacks authority. I’ll take it upon myself to show her how—
Even Mariko Munekata, just last week marching around Hiroshi’s living room, imitating an officer and narrating his confusion in an iron voice (“But she didn’t believe him—” “Smoke?” “—so he tried to bribe her…”) ascends the stairs, the smitten, dependable, shrewd, and beautiful Keiko, who everyone calls Mama (Hideko Takamine). She takes her place among the other girls. “Keiko, isn’t that kimono a bit plain?” the bar owner asks. “Wear something flashier.” “Yes, madam.”
4:30 comes around and I have to be all in. It is only the very beginning of a day which threatens to go on endlessly, even though I can clearly see the mile markers that will carry me through it: 4:30, setting up, 5:30, waiting, 7:00, the rush, 8:30, getting hungry now, 9:45, a breath out, 10:30, dinner and goodbye. I don’t have to collapse into bed because the rhythm of the day keeps a soft and steady energy—11:30, brushing my teeth, 11:40, under the covers, 12:00, reading and dozing off, 12:??, sleeping, &:*(, getting up to pee, #:~%, a dream about boys in tennis shorts (I saw Challengers this weekend), 6:>@, a clang outside and Radish meowing for breakfast, 8:30, my alarm and a big glass of water. So of course 4:30 doesn’t last forever, no matter how it feels when I’m staring it down and the rest of the day opens up before me. When I ascend the stairs, it is that moment only and all other moments.
We got our new summer shirts at work yesterday, which are the same yellow as our winter sweaters but in linen. When we get new uniforms, I take a lot more time getting ready because I feel something precious about the newness. I tie my apron around my waist very slowly and without twisting the fabric, so that it lies flat against my stomach, and I fold my towel into one long quarter piece and smooth out the ripples where it bunches over my pocket. I like to take my time here because I feel like a performer about to go on stage, or a tailor in front of a push-pinned dummy, or a priest.
Doing these tasks deliberately—reducing them to their specific movements—projects that eternal present out from my body: I don’t stand at the foot of the stairs and look up at how far they climb then, I make the stairs climb. At first ridding myself of rush feels gentle, as if I could rest between every motion and lull myself into a sort of sleep by gesture. Then the presence of the moment terrifies me: the rest of the world falls away as some kind of imagination. There are thousands of people going shopping in Shanghai, cooking drippy chicken in clay ovens in Bengaluru, a deer stopping dead in a forest, a market crash, a popping engine in a Russian car did I make all these things up? as I cross one arm of my apron over the other. Outside, right now, construction workers are scraping some kind of spackle off the building out my window and scattering hordes of little flecks of it like snow or styrofoam. I see the rest of the world outside of my perception and the eternal present of tightening the apron knot swarms with all of its life.
When I was in high school I used to hang out with my brother in his room, which the roof of our house gave walls that sloped to the ceiling and tiny porthole windows, like a pod or a cave. He liked to show me songs I wouldn’t know because I didn’t listen to hip-hop and I remember once, while he was flicking through songs on his computer, seeing his room and us two in it tessellating out into a black void, like on glass microscope slides stacked endlessly forward and backward. Each moment on a screen, zoomed out to see the empty space where it floated, the illusion of movement of so many still images, and yet each still image also moved. The illusion of movement of so many movements, a rolling dot-dot-dot—I feel like we are now still held in that room, in red ten years ago, where Nick presses pause and says, “Did you get that? ‘Catch him in the cut when he roll his truth, and I don't give a fuck how you stuff your bags…’”
The construction workers aren’t scraping spackle anymore because I got lost in my brother’s room. Mama takes the first step, a whole field expands around her foot, and the present falls into it. She takes the next step, a new field forms, and the present falls in again. With another step, another field, and the stairway ferrets glass panels of presents like Nick and I in our hurtling pod. In one field, it is both precisely 4:30 and no time I could identify. I have fallen into the present, but I can step right out, but I will step into another, but can step out of that one too.
Nick texted me today: “Dude u gotta look into this drake kendrick beef … greatest beef songs since hit em up.” Now there’s Dan and Radish and I don’t worry about what everyone in school thinks of me; I am growing my beard out darker and curlier, trying to look stronger and older; I am not afraid of going bald because the heavens open a spot on my crown, a pineal eye, and force it to stare at the sun and strike me dumb—it makes me feel like a monk; I am worried that everyone at the restaurant thinks I am ugly, that my baldness makes me look like an aging baby, or that my torso is too long. We are back in that room, where I sit as a child and a man.
Old-time animators used to paint layers in their scenes on sheets of glass, by hand. They could increase or decrease the distance between the panes to create depth, or let the foreground fall away and “zoom,” or press all time together into a single band.
See other films from: 1960s | Japan
Cross Dissolve is my blog about film, how it makes me feel, and how I see it reappear in my life—how movies and living dissolve into one another. Please subscribe if you enjoyed today’s entry. Thank you for reading!
Love, Tyler
Your writing is the finest of wines. :) You ARE a monk—and to be naturally-tonsured is a gift!