I have been gorging on documentaries and selected movies during the long lockdown. Many of them are heavy on the mind, so to cap the night with something light, I would click on a Japanese drama series Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, with 3 seasons now available on Netflix.
Every episode is compactly packaged in a 30-minute long vignette, with each story set in a typical Tokyo casual diner for after-work drinking that serves alcoholic drinks and snacks, managed by a master chef called Sensei whose visage shows etchings of a mysterious past. I read that it is based on a Japanese manga.
This setting brings me back to the masterworks of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s who loved to locate some of his films’ memorable scenes in such pubs called izakaya where his main characters would get inebriated with sake after office hours before trudging home.
In Midnight Diner, the 12-seater bar accepts all kinds of customers, some regular, others who just drop by and go. They are accorded a warm “irishaimase” as each enters through the sliding door panel. The characters are eclectic: office workers, retirees, gays, models, sex workers, yakuza types, and artists from the demi-monde world of Metro Tokyo. Who else but their kind would still be roaming the streets at this time of the night? Among them are the dreamers, failures, driven, discontented, desperate, frustrated, disconsolate, suicidal, even perverts. They all seem to be sinners, with a past, which they are all trying to escape or to mask.
Come to think of it, the diner is more like a confessional or a psychiatric couch where people come to pour their hearts out about something and everyone is presumed to keep it all confidential. It serves as a refuge of sinners, a comforting place for the afflicted. Best of all, no one tells people to say or do a penance at the end.
What I like about this world is that it is not judgmental. It seems there is a tacit understanding that no one should judge because we are all blemished, imperfect and damaged, so no one should dare cast a stone. Just enjoy the meal or your glass of beer, talk a while, then pay the Sensei and take your leave.
And throughout, the laconic Sensei attends to them all, no questions asked. From time to time, he may ask questions just for small talk and to show his concern for what’s happening to his customer at the moment but he lets the customer talk without too much prying. He has the look of someone who has seen it all, and from time to time dredges out some pithy insights or counsels to the characters going through some painful or discomfiting episode in their lives.
The program is like a revolving melancholy-go-round where each episode focuses on one character at a time, sometimes a regular customer, at other times a non-regular customer who just happens to stumble into the place randomly.
At the end is a resolution of some kind, not a fantasy kind of happy ever after ending, but more of a catharsis or epiphany that induces a change or transformation in the character.
The actions or non-actions (for most of the time the characters are just sitting around relishing their short-order food prepared by the sensei) unfold slowly, with 80 percent of the shots in medium close-ups. This contributes to the confining atmosphere, which, thanks to the inviting ambience, is felt more like convivial intimacy as in a family dining together. From time to time the scene shifts somewhere, usually when there are flashbacks meant to explain the backstory of the character in focus.
The episodes unfold as short vignettes which to me are just like parables, easy to absorb illustrations that shed light on humanity and offer insights or lessons in life that are there served on a platter. It is for us to take it or not.
The tone is light mood like light oil on the wok. The pacing is just short-order right, with the timely smattering of salty jokes and peppery witticisms and aphorisms, and then a little sizzle of voyeuristic scenes to enliven or whet the appetite during the cooking.
Watching the show, one can learn much about eating places for after office, a subculture of Tokyo life. Food is ordered one at a time over several courses rather than all at once. The chef will serve the food when it is ready and before perusing the menu, one typically orders beer. Quickly prepared dishes are ordered first, followed with progressively more robust flavors such as yakitori or kara-age, finishing the meal with a rice or noodle dish to fill up. This is why in each episode, characters can spend plenty of time making small talk.
There’s another peculiar cultural facet I found interesting about the Tokyoites. Strip teasers or models of adult magazines are not shunned or disdained. In one episode I just watched, a strip teaser sits and engages in friendly banter with customers who had just watched her strip show in a nearby bar. They even praise her act and she, in turn, does not blush or show any shame in the company of such men. From what I saw, Japanese sex workers are treated like normal, average people who need to make a living. It’s so casual and normal for the Japanese. At least, as portrayed in that show.
The Sensei—what about him? There was this song that said what if God was just like one of us?
I also read about this new popular manga, which depicts the adventures of Jesus and Buddha who have decided to come down to Earth as roommates in Tokyo. That is what I was thinking: what if God was just a chef of a small diner, serving us good and tasty dinner and indulging us with our small favors and requests, listening to our petty troubles and squabbles and constant whining with grandfatherly understanding and pointing us to the right path. As customers drawn to his accommodating nature, we come to be fed in body as well as spirit; our thirst slaked by a glass or two of refreshing and intoxicating words from the barrel of distilled wisdom. I look forward to an episode devoted to revealing his backstory.
In conclusion, I have come to use Midnight Diner as a meditation aid. Each episode helps trigger deep thoughts and reflections about human beings and my person in particular. It can also inspire a poem or an essay if the muse happens to be with me.
As a postscript, I am also left with cravings for the mouthwatering food items expertly prepared by the Sensei, which are meant as sideshow short cooking lessons for the faithful viewers. My Japanese cuisine IQ became suddenly richer upon encountering appetizers like boiled and salted soybean called edamame, as well as chilled tofu with toppings called hiyayakko, not to mention other delectable items like plum rice ball, chicken fried rice, fried chicken breast with cheese, yakisoba sandwich, and so on. Talk about mixing show genres: drama anthology and cooking show. It’s truly a delightful recipe that works, especially for hungry binge viewers like me!