Just Only Love
愛がなんだ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Teruko will drop anything for a man who will never choose her — the definitive portrait of one-sided love.
Teruko Yamada, twenty-eight, fell for Mamoru Tanaka the moment they met half a year ago, and has fitted her whole life around him ever since. When he rings with a cold and asks her to bring him something, she pretends she is still out, fills a shopping bag and runs; after midnight he asks her to go home. They sleep together, and she believes she has become his girlfriend. She neglects her work to stay available for him, is warned by her boss, is fired, and counts it as freedom. Her oldest friend, Yoko Sakamoto, a writer who keeps a devoted younger man, Nakahara, running her errands, tells her to stop. Teruko and Nakahara recognise each other: two people who will do anything for someone who does not love them back.
Then Mamoru, who has slipped from calling her Teru-chan to Yamada-san, turns cold and stops calling. Months later he summons her again, and she drops everything, only to find him beside Sumire Tsukakoshi, an older, blunt, chain-smoking woman he is plainly in love with and who plainly has no interest in him. Sumire takes a liking to Teruko. A strange foursome of Teruko, Mamoru, Sumire and Nakahara drinks together and spends a weekend at a lakeside villa, and Teruko and Mamoru sleep together again. Nakahara is the first to step away: he tells Teruko he has decided to stop seeing Yoko.
Mamoru comes to Teruko's flat to say that he loves Sumire and wants to end their undefined arrangement. Teruko knows that if she makes things awkward she will never see him again, so she tells him she no longer cares about him, a lie that lets them go on meeting. At the end Nakahara holds an exhibition of his photographs. Yoko finds it, smiles in front of a picture of herself, and turns to look at him. Teruko is working as a keeper at a zoo, and the film closes on an elephant.
Starring
Yukino Kishiias Teruko Yamada
A twenty-eight-year-old office worker who gives up her job, her time and her pride to be there whenever Mamoru calls.
Teruko Yamada’s story
Teruko has built her life around Mamoru since they met, leaving work whenever he calls and losing her job without regret. When they sleep together she believes she is his girlfriend; then he starts calling her Yamada-san, sends her home at dawn and stops calling. Months later he summons her to meet Sumire, the older woman he loves, and she befriends Sumire, which keeps her near him. When Nakahara gives Yoko up, she tells him to admit it is only because he cannot have her. When Mamoru asks to end their arrangement, she lies that she no longer cares, so that she can go on seeing him. She wants, she says, to become Mamoru. At the end she keeps elephants at a zoo, and she is still, she says, not Mamoru Tanaka.
Ryo Naritaas Mamoru Tanaka
A publishing-company employee who lets Teruko look after him while he chases an older woman who does not want him.
Mamoru Tanaka’s story
Mamoru, who works for a publisher, lets Teruko look after him as a matter of course. He rings her when he has a cold and asks her to leave after midnight. They sleep together, and when she starts behaving like his girlfriend he turns cold, calls her Yamada-san and stops calling. Months later he summons her to meet Sumire, an older woman he is in love with and who has no interest in him. He calls himself shabby and uncool, and the night he and Teruko sleep together again he tells her there is nothing about him to love. Then he comes to her flat to say that he loves Sumire and wants to end their undefined arrangement. Teruko answers that she no longer cares about him, and on that footing the two of them go on meeting.
Mai Fukagawaas Yoko Sakamoto
Teruko's oldest friend, a writer who scolds her about Mamoru while treating the devoted Nakahara as her errand boy.
Ryuya Wakabaas Nakahara
A photographer's assistant in love with Yoko, who recognises himself in Teruko and is the first to walk away.
Nakahara’s story
Nakahara, a photographer's assistant, is in love with Yoko and runs her errands at any hour; he wants, he says, to be where she can call him whenever she feels lonely. He and Teruko recognise each other. At the lakeside villa, when Sumire scorns the way Yoko uses him, he answers that she would not understand. Then, feeling that his devotion is spoiling Yoko, he decides to stop seeing her. Teruko accuses him of giving up only because he cannot have her; he tells her he really does love Yoko, and asks at least to be free to give up. He would like to be happy, he says. He drops out of Yoko's life and holds an exhibition of his photographs. Yoko finds it, smiles in front of a picture of herself, and turns to look at him.
Noriko Eguchias Sumire Tsukakoshi
An older, chain-smoking woman Mamoru adores, who ignores his interest and takes an unexpected liking to Teruko.
Why it matters
Just Only Love is about a love that is neither returned nor refused: one person always available, the other content to let her be. Without judging anyone, it asks whether a devotion that costs a woman her job and her friends is love, dependence, or a stubborn kind of self-possession, and it sets two such devotions side by side, so that one walks away and the other lies in order to stay. Nobody in it is a villain, which is what makes it hard to watch. Released in April 2019, it sold out Theatre Shinjuku through Golden Week, with audiences made up mostly of women in their late teens to thirties and of couples; the cinema reported its busiest run since In This Corner of the World, screens multiplied and viewers came back to see it again. What it leaves is the question in its title: what love is worth, and to whom.