Advent + Christmastide + Epiphany Film | Tokyo Godfathers

"A Gift from God" in Tokyo Godfathers

"This is a Christmas present from God!
She's our baby!"
+ Hana
Tokyo Godfathers

On a cold December day during Advent in Worcester, I was nestled on the couch in the "magic room," our welcome space once again transfigured with Christmas lights piercing the darkness with little flashes aglow shining on strings stretching across the stairs and the fireplace reaching their pinnacle on a tree glimmering near the entry. 

I laughed. I shed a tear.
And knew I was watching a masterpiece.

A Christmastide + Epiphany Film
Worth Waiting Decades to See

Somehow, it took me 20 years to sit down and soak in Tokyo Godfathers. Released in 2003, I had heard rumors from time to time that this was a more legitimate Christmas film than most included in the genre. It's shocking and stirring in all the ways that the true Christmas story plays out in Matthew 1:18-2:12 and Luke 2:1-20.

In fact, it captures much of the meaning of Christmas and Epiphany combined. I found myself repeating what Hana continues to say throughout the film, "This is a Christmas present from God." 

Tokyo Godfathers, like the baby in the film, has the dynamic power to share good news of a God who comes to the lowly in trash heaps and breaks down barriers so the last, least, and lost can welcome love into the messiest places of their hearts and lives (i.e. their "mangers"). Similar words from Leslie Leyland Fields (changing the first line to complement the film) ring true in new and exciting ways in Tokyo Godfathers:

Litter-strewn floor,
dirty clothes of outcasts;
crumbling, crooked walls;
a gift to heal their pain
in the child laid to cry in a trash heap.

Who would have chosen
the God of all the heavens and earth
be born in this place?

Who, but the same God
who stands in the darker,
fouler rooms of our hearts
and says let the God of heaven and earth
be born here – in this place.

Tokyo Godfathers Manger

What If ... Kore-eda and Joon Ho
Created a Christmas Parable

Tokyo Godfathers plays like if Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu (After Life, Nobody Knows, Shoplifters), and South Korean director Bong Joon Ho (Snowpiercer, Parasite) decided to collaborate and animate a true Christmas parable together, full of the compassion, violence, curiosities, social commentary, quiet wonder, and sometimes dread that often permeate their films.

Tokyo Godfathers is a PG-13 Japanese anime created by Kon Satoshi set in Tokyo, beginning on the night of Christmas Eve, featuring three main characters (well, four counting the gift of the child) who come across as outcast shepherds of the streets, or perhaps even more so as messed up magi that each encounter the power of the Nativity they are suddenly embodying together in wild ways.

Miyuki is an adolescent runaway, ashamed of what's she's done and terrified to return home despite the new company she keeps.

Hana is a trans women, full of sorrow and joy, yet alert to the wonders of the world around her, including looking for the cross sections of the divine and human. 

And Gin is a grieving dumpster fire of a man, angry, sad, and self-hating, yet somehow kept alive by his companionship with Miyuki, Hana, and the child they are now carrying around the city.

These three homeless people, whose own lives they are not even sure they want to carry anymore, begin to carry this child and begin to find a home together, a puncture of heaven breaking into the dingy streets of their small parcel of earth, as their steps follow the star of the child's mother, somewhere alight in the night.

The Magi of Gin, Miyuki, and Hana featured in Tokyo Godfathers

Real & Miraculous
Perhaps More than 

Any Other Christmas Film

A multitude of events occur throughout this film that provide glimpses of Gospel narratives and more. A wedding gets crashed. A suicide gets stopped. Criminals are confronted. Prostitutes provide shelter. Abusive people are shown grace. New families are created across gender, class divides, biology, and race.

Tokyo Godfathers is a Christmas sermon as strong and profound as St. Chrysostom's:

Have you ever seen wealth
in such great penury?

How could He who was rich
have become, for our sake, so poor

that He had neither bed nor bedding

but was laid in a manger?

O immeasurable wealth
concealed in poverty!

He is bound with swaddling bands,

yet He breaks the bonds of sin.

Before He could speak

He taught the wise men

and converted them.

He lies in a manger,

yet He rocks the whole world.

The baby girl does all of the above for Miyuki, Hana, Gin, and more. I don't want to give away much more of the potency that is packed into this 90-minute film. But if you're hungry to be filled with something good this season, I offer you the visual and verbal feast that is Tokyo Godfathers. It's a miracle of a film. It is a masterpiece.

In many ways, this anime illustrates what it would be like if Mary's Magnificat was cried out during Christmas in modern Tokyo by the Gospel chorus of an adolescent girl, a trans woman, and a drunk man: 

My soul magnifies the Lord

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior

For He has looked with gracious favor

On the lowliness of us servants.

Surely from now on all generations

Will call us blessed

For the Mighty One has done

great things for us

And holy is His name ...

He has scattered the proud

In the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought the rulers down

From their thrones

And lifted up us lowly.

He has filled us hungry

With good things

And sent the rich away empty.

To hear the song for yourself, all you have to do is join Miyuki, Hana, and Gin at their table and listen to the story of how they became Tokyo Godfathers when God gave them a Christmas present one day in the surprise of a miracle child.

Tokyo Godfathers Eucharist (Meal of Grace & Gratitude) with Hana, Miyuki, and Gin

P.S. And maybe Hana, Miyuki, and Gin can help us understand even more the finale of Malcolm Guite's sonnet:

The Magi

Sonnet by Malcolm Guite

It might have been just someone else's story;

Some chosen people get a special king,

We leave them to their own peculiar glory,

We don't belong, it doesn't mean a thing.

But when these three arrive they bring us with them,

Gentiles like us, their wisdom might be ours;

A steady step that finds an inner rhythm,

A pilgrim's eye that sees beyond the stars.

They did not know his name but still they sought him,

They came from otherwhere but still they found;

In palaces, found those who sold and bought him,

But in the filthy stable, hallowed ground.

Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice

To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice.

More Film Reflections:

+ Children of Men

+ A Quiet Place

+ Arrival

+ Joyeux Noel  

+ All the Light We Cannot See 

 

+ Of Gods and Men  

+ A Hidden Life

Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

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