The premise of Tokyo Cowboy is nothing new: an uptight main character serendipitously ends up having their life changed after experiencing time amongst people who don’t always color inside the same lines. Bonus points if the person experiencing this transformation ends up leaving their home country in order to do so. How many times have we seen movies like this? On a rudimentary level, Eat Pray Love is the first film that comes to mind (albeit Julia Roberts’ character isn’t a Japanese salaryman but rather a wandering divorcée), but there are other examples, as well. If you want to talk shows, Netflix’s Emily in Paris does a pretty good job with the whole “Stupid American living in a new country” trope, and 2009’s Up in the Air nails the “coldhearted businessman” aesthetic pretty damn well. The point is, that this type of story is kind of stale, which is why Marc Marriott’s latest film is a bit of a drag.
Tokyo Cowboy follows Hideki (Arata Iura), a successful salaryman who pitches the idea of turning a struggling American cattle farm into a profitable enterprise by teaching the ranchers how to farm “sustainable wagyu beef.” Along with being a true go-getter when it comes to his work, Hideki is also in a not-so-secret relationship with his boss, Keiko (Ayako Fujitani), who tries to support Hideki’s plan while still remaining true to the company. The company agrees to fly Hideki and a man named Wada (Jun Kunimura) out to Montana to inform the ranchers of the new business plan, but things don’t go as expected, and soon Hideki finds himself in over his head. Not only did he fail to recognize the difficulty of farming wagyu cows in America, but he also consistently ends up being the butt of the joke, his salaryman mindset constantly getting in the way of his ability to connect with the American ranchers. In fact, Hideki feels like so much of a joke that it becomes hard to figure out if we’re supposed to be laughing at his corporate mindset or the fact that he is a Japanese man with Japanese habits trying to fit in in America.
This is where the movie fails. What is supposed to be a heartwarming story of a rigorous businessman having his very own Cheryl Strayed moment in the middle of Montana ends up feeling more like an opportunity for audiences to find humor in cultural differences — and not in a good or flattering way. There is always the risk of films feeling cringey when they focus too much on highlighting cultural divides, and Tokyo Cowboy majorly falls into this trap. The first time Hideki introduces himself to the Montana ranchers, Peg (Robin Weigert) tells him, “You’re gonna have to repeat that like a thousand times,” because his name is apparently way too unusual for her to be able to pronounce correctly. Later, when Hideki and Javier (Goya Robles), a ranch hand, share photographs of their girlfriends with each other, Hideki refers to Javier’s partner as “beautiful,” but Javier falls back on the stereotypical “cute” when looking at a picture of Keiko. Since neither of these moments present themselves in a way that asks the audience to be critical of these microaggressions, they just end up making the movie feel utterly out of touch with its own cultural blind spots.
Tokyo Cowboy is purportedly based on Marriott’s own experience living in Japan studying film with the great Japanese director Yoji Yamada. He tells Creative Screenwriting, “I had this “fish out of water” experience and I felt very isolated and disconnected sometimes.” If that’s the case, one wonders why he didn’t write the film from his own perspective as an American living in Japan? Why, instead, try to embody the point of view of a Japanese man coming to America? In fact, Marriott didn’t even write the screenplay at all. It was written by Dave Boyle and Fujitani, herself. Boyle is an American filmmaker who likes to make films with predominantly Japanese casts and characters. His 2009 film White on Rice (yes, this is seriously the title) is described by one critic on Rotten Tomatoes as “akin to an Asian minstrel show,” and one gets the sense when watching Tokyo Cowboy that not too much has changed since then. While Marriott’s film is not overtly racist by any means, it does tiptoe and occasionally cross some finely drawn lines that will no doubt make some moviegoers wince. Who’s to blame for this poor sense of cultural sensitivity? We can’t really know for sure. But one thing is for certain, sometimes it’s better to talk about our experiences through our own eyes instead of somebody else’s.
Photo courtesy of Purdie Distribution
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