100 Yen Love
百円の恋
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A 32-year-old slacker takes up boxing after a humiliating affair — a body reclaimed.
Ichiko Saito is thirty-two and has never left home. She lives above the lunch-box shop her mother, Yoshiko, runs, playing video games, smoking and doing nothing. When her younger sister, Fumiko, moves back with her son after her marriage ends, the two trade insults until it turns into a fist fight, and their mother gives Ichiko money to leave. She rents a small flat and takes the night shift at a 100-yen shop staffed by people the world has also passed over: a manager with depression, and Noma, a divorced older clerk who will not stop talking at her. A former employee sacked for stealing comes by each night for the expired lunch boxes.
On her way to and from work Ichiko watches a boxer training in a gym, Yuji Kano, a customer who buys only bananas. He asks her out, and gives her a ticket to his last fight before he reaches the age limit. He loses, but the embrace between the two men at the end stays with her. That same night Noma takes her out to eat, forces her into a hotel and rapes her.
Kano moves into her flat. He takes a job at a tofu shop, and before long he leaves her for a woman he meets there. Ichiko throws herself into boxing. She runs, skips, shadowboxes at the till on her night shifts, and her body and face change. At thirty-two, the last age at which it is allowed, she sits the professional test and passes.
Her family comes to her debut, and so does Kano. Her opponent is far stronger, and Ichiko is beaten badly and loses. Outside the venue she finds Kano waiting. In tears she tells him she wanted to win. They walk off into the night together.
Starring
Sakura Andoas Ichiko Saito
A thirty-two-year-old who has never left home or held a job, until a fight with her sister pushes her out.
Ichiko Saito’s story
On the night shift at a 100-yen shop, Ichiko starts watching a boxer, Kano, train in a gym on her way to work. He asks her out and gives her a ticket to his last fight. He loses, and the embrace between the two men stays with her. That night a co-worker, Noma, rapes her. Kano moves in, and before long leaves her for a woman from his new job at a tofu shop. With nowhere to put her anger, Ichiko walks into the gym. She trains until her body and face change, and at thirty-two, the last age allowed, passes the professional test. At her debut, with her family and Kano watching, she is beaten badly. Outside, she finds Kano waiting and tells him in tears that she wanted to win. They walk off into the night.
Hirofumi Araias Yuji Kano
A taciturn boxer near the age limit who buys only bananas at her shop and fights his last bout.
Yuji Kano’s story
Kano trains alone in a gym that Ichiko passes on her way to work. When he leaves his bananas at her till and she takes them to the gym, he asks her out on the spot, and gives her a ticket to his last fight before the age limit. He loses, and embraces his opponent at the end. Retired, he moves into her flat and takes a job at a tofu shop, and before long he leaves her for a woman he meets there. When Ichiko makes her professional debut, he is in the crowd. She is beaten badly, and he waits for her outside the venue. When she tells him, weeping, that she wanted to win, he asks whether she wants to get something to eat, and they walk off into the night together.
Tadashi Sakataas Akira Noma
A divorced veteran clerk at the shop, bossy with the weak and fawning with the strong, who fastens on to Ichiko.
Saorias Fumiko Saito
Ichiko's short-tempered younger sister, back home with her young son after her husband left.
Miyoko Inagawaas Yoshiko Saito
Ichiko's mother, who runs the family lunch-box shop and in the end pays her to move out.
Why it matters
100 Yen Love is about a woman nobody expects anything from, least of all herself. Ichiko is thirty-two and lives at the bottom of a world of night shifts and expired lunch boxes, where a man from work can rape her and life simply goes on. Shin Adachi's script, which won the first Matsuda Yusaku Award in 2012, refuses the sports-film promise that effort is rewarded: she trains, changes and still loses. What she gains is the capacity to want something badly enough to weep for it. Sakura Ando's transformation of body and bearing won her the Japan Academy Prize for Best Actress, and the film was Japan's submission for the foreign-language Oscar. In place of a triumph it leaves a plain question, about what it takes for someone priced at a hundred yen to decide what she is worth.