Silent dialogues: The shifting flow of silence and solitude in Tokyo Story and implications for L2 pedagogy

This study aims to illustrate portrayals of silence and solitude in the film Tokyo Story (1953), directed by Yasujirō Ozu, and to depict the ways human relationships and bonds evolve through characters’ silent dialogues. Drawing on the intertwined concepts of silence and solitude understood as means of self and mutual reflection, and shared understanding through dialogue, this study focusses on close analysis of the interactions between a widow, Noriko, and her parents-in-law during their stay in Tokyo and Onomichi as they seek mutual support and encouragement for their future journey. This study adopts a variation of qualitative Multimodal Analysis, termed Multimodal Social Interaction Analysis, that draws upon Multimodal Discourse Analysis (Kress van Leeuwen, 2020) and Multimodal Conversational Analysis (Mondada, 2019 a, b). This modified theoretical framework was devised to explore the use of silence in films in Japanese contexts, involving the analysis of dialogues, silence, gestures, and semiotic resources such as surrounding sounds, visual stillness and cinematography. This study reveals the diverse forms and meanings of multifaceted uses of silence. These include attentive, empathetic, self-protective, shared, and truthful silence, with solitude experienced as inner dialogue underlying a character’s stream of consciousness as inner dialogue but also gradually strengthening the bonds which will have an essential role in their future paths. This study seeks to widen perspectives on silence within interaction, which acts as an implicit but facilitative interactional tool, also suggesting pedagogical implications for life-long and second language education as well as revisited humanistic approaches to understanding personal growth.