Shall We Dance?
Shall we ダンス？
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A salaryman secretly takes ballroom lessons — a pleasure he cannot explain to his wife.
Shohei Sugiyama is head of accounts at a button company in Tokyo. He has a wife, Masako, a teenage daughter, Chikage, and a house with a garden in the suburbs. Nothing is wrong, and yet something is missing. From the train one evening he sees a young woman standing at the window of a small dance studio, looking out. He watches for her night after night, then goes in and signs up for ballroom lessons, telling no one at home.
His teacher turns out to be not the woman at the window, Mai Kishikawa, but the gentle veteran Tamako. He makes friends with two other beginners, Hattori and Tanaka, and is bossed into shape by Toyoko Takahashi, a forceful single mother who has danced for years. At the studio he also finds his colleague Aoki, mocked at the office as a misfit and secretly a devoted dancer in a long-haired wig. When Shohei asks Mai to dinner, she rebukes him: she does not want people coming there for the wrong reasons. Mai once danced in the world championships at Blackpool and teaches at her father's studio against her will. Shohei discovers that it is the dancing he loves.
Masako, worried by his late nights, hires a private detective, Miwa, who reports that her husband is taking dance lessons. Shohei is paired with Toyoko for an amateur competition, and Mai coaches them, her own love of dancing reviving. On the day, Shohei hears his daughter cheer and realises his family is in the audience; flustered, he steps on Toyoko's skirt as he catches her, tears it off, and they have to stop.
He gives up dancing. Aoki and Toyoko bring him a letter from Mai, who is leaving to dance abroad again, about her failure at Blackpool and what dancing with them has given back to her, and invite him to her farewell party. The night before, he snaps at Masako when she tells him to keep dancing, then, after a word from his daughter, apologises. On the evening of the party, from the train, he sees a sign in the studio window: “Shall we dance, Mr Sugiyama?” He arrives as Mai is choosing her partner for the last dance. She walks up to him and asks, “Shall we dance?”
Starring
Koji Yakushoas Shohei Sugiyama
A steady salaryman with a family and a house in the suburbs, who secretly takes up ballroom dancing.
Shohei Sugiyama’s story
Night after night Shohei watches a woman at a dance-studio window from his train, then goes in. The classes draw him in, and when Mai rebukes him for asking her to dinner, he finds that it is the dancing he loves. At the studio he discovers Aoki, the colleague the office mocks, dancing under a wig. At the amateur competition, hearing his daughter cheer, he loses his nerve and tears Toyoko's skirt. When the office laughs at Aoki's disqualification, Shohei tells them not to mock what they do not understand, but he gives up dancing himself, and snaps at Masako when she urges him to go on, then apologises. From the train he sees the sign in the studio window, reaches Mai's farewell party in time for the last dance, and she asks him to dance.
Tamiyo Kusakarias Mai Kishikawa
A top-level dancer who failed at Blackpool and teaches at her father's small studio against her will.
Mai Kishikawa’s story
Mai stares out of the studio window at the passing trains. When Shohei, a new student, asks her to dinner, she tells him sharply that she does not want people coming there for the wrong reasons. Asked to coach him and Toyoko for an amateur competition, she watches him keep practising through Toyoko's scolding and finds her own love of dancing returning. She decides to leave her father's studio and dance abroad again, and writes to Shohei about her failure at Blackpool, which she puts down to dancing alone and never truly trusting her partner, and about how dancing with them has changed her. At her farewell party, as she is about to choose her partner for the last dance, he arrives in a suit, and she walks up to him smiling and asks, “Shall we dance?”
Naoto Takenakaas Tomio Aoki
Shohei's colleague, mocked at the office, who dances with fierce devotion under a long-haired wig.
Eriko Watanabeas Toyoko Takahashi
A forceful single mother and long-time student who partners Shohei at the competition.
Hideko Haraas Masako Sugiyama
Shohei's wife, who suspects an affair and hires a detective to find out where he goes at night.
Akira Emotoas Toru Miwa
The private detective Masako hires, who discovers that her husband is taking dance lessons.
Why it matters
Shall We Dance? is about a man who has done everything he was supposed to do and finds it is not enough, and about how hard it can be, in a culture of reserve, to admit to wanting pleasure. In Japan at the time ballroom dancing was thought old-fashioned and faintly embarrassing, something a salaryman would hide from his colleagues and his wife. The film swept the Japan Academy Prizes, set off a new ballroom boom in Japan, and set a box-office record in the United States for a Japanese film that was not animated. Its gentlest insight is in the marriage. Masako suspects an affair, and what she finds instead is a husband who needed something he could not put into words for her. The film asks what couples lose by keeping their longings from each other, and answers, lightly, with a dance.