Asako I & II is almost a quintessential Lacanian love story: the constant interweaving between Asako's "object of desire" and "object-cause of desire" reminds of Hitchcock's design in Vertigo. Like Scottie, Asako projects her fantasies about another man onto another person who resembles him. Scottie’s hysterical desire eventually kill Judy/Madellin as collapses his illusions in the form of death. In contrast, though, Asako is cursed and sways almost uncontrollably between the two men. She is not able to violently etch her fantasies on her objects like masks and tattoos, as men like Scottie do. Unlike Judy/Medellín, both men in Asako I & II have an almost absolute autonomy. They are both able to say "no" to Asako. As a result, Asako, as the protagonist, is always in a somewhat passive position in the first half of the story. Her desire is always driven by something beyond herself: falling in love at first sight outside the art museum when Mai asks her for her name, then becoming irressitably attracted to Ryohei because of his resemblance to Mai, before accepting him — again because of an absolutely, accidential externality, the 3.11 earthquake. Lastly, when she was about to marry Ryohei and leave Tokyo, she wavered once again and left with Mai, who crashed her dinner with Ryohei. And so we came to this scene. Mai and Asako headed north, stopping at a sea-walled shore in Sendai. Here, Asako's desire reversed again, saying that she wants to live with Ryohei. Mai accepts indifferently and drives away, as Asako walks alone on the sea wall. The camera cuts to a close-up, as the sound of the sea erupts around her.

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It is no coincidence that this scene takes place near the sea. The casual mention of its precise location — "near Sendai" — gives viewers an even more obvious hint, for Sendai was precisely the area most devastated by the tsunami during the 3.11 earthquake. If the 3.11 earthquake and the corresponding ocean symbolize the absolute externality and contingency of desire that has always commanded Asako, opening before her like the cavity of a monster, then the meaning of this scene is clear. This is the first time that Asako chooses to face her desires and make a choice as a subject. And note the man who has always been bound to the sea and "natural disasters" is not the "free soul" Mai, but Ryohei, the ordinary middle-class worker who humbly climbs the social ladder. This is coherent with the logic of the film: the sea here is not a metaphor for some transcendent freedom, but for the overwhelming repetition of the "everyday" and what Freud called the "death drive". The regularity and repetition of the waves correspond to the return of Asako's desire to a "reality" regulated by society. But of course, this is also a somewhat ironic situation: is the decision that Asako made after breaking through the shackles of her heart simply to return to Ryohei and become a housewife? For Hamaguchi, Asako's breakthrough in "love" seems to be more important than the specific choice she made.

Perhaps this is the paradox that the film's two references to natural disasters want to express: the seemingly banal "everyday" needs to be maintained by some kind of absolutely radical accident and rupture. The love between Asako and Ryohei, which follows the traditional norms of society, requires earthquakes, tsunamis, and sudden partings if it is to be sustained, because these accidents are not external to the "everyday" but are in fact their innermost components. The relationship between the sexes, even with the blessing of the institution of marriage, is troubled with an inexorable distrust (conversely, it is precisely the social system of marriage, the institutional Other, that is relied upon to maintain it). It is in this awkward but delicate balance that Asako and Ryohei must continue.

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In the final scene of the film, Asako chases Ryohei back to the house they had seen together in the rain, and the camera cuts from a long shot to a close-up from the side. In the foreground, Asako and Ryohei run down the path like little figures in a painting. The landscape of the Japanese countryside presents it self as an absolute static Other (even the rain has quietly stopped), enveloping the two protagonists who are aburst with life. Unlike their encounter in the crowd after the earthquake, the energy of desire and action seems to no longer to come from some externality, whether it is Tokyo or nature in the avatar of the earthquake. But the long shots also produce a sense of powerlessness: where are they going? Where can they go? Everyone seems to be a little ambivalent: Ryohei, Asako, the director, the audience.

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So the two of them stands on the balcony again, looking out to the ordinary river instead of each other's eyes. There is no sacred bond or consecration here. Their love returns to some kind of dependence on an externality, but it also this that allows them to live and continue.

Ryohei: "The river is dirty"

Asako: "But it's also beautiful"