19 Feb The God of Ramen (2013)

Optional Demigods

This is a tricky one. This documentary is centred on a fellow who is celebrated as the best chef, in precisely the stance we have with ‘Jiro Dreams of Sushi’. That film predates the release of this but not the beginning of filming. Jiro has a small, Michelin-rated sushi place in the heart of Tokyo. He is much admired, and we follow him through the various special tricks he applies. His sons, former apprentices, are also senior chefs with their own restaurants. The story with Jiro is that this man is engaged with his customers to the extent of knowing handedness and how it works in the experience. Watching that film, one feels motivated, elevated, encouraged. There’s commitment, talent, human engagement. It is performance and humanity as much as preparing food. I recommend that film, which incidentally uses Philip Glass in the sound track.

Here, we have a similar situation, a Japanese chef, this time of another signature dish: ramen. This is not in one of the main urban centres. People line up for 2 hours, and it would be longer if a quota was not imposed. The recipe, much copied by successful apprentices, is important. But there’s a bit of local celebrity involved, and we never know how important it is that the servings are more generous than standard.

Kazuo Yamagishi is the guy, but this is less a celebration of an artist than a tragedy. Our man is admired as much for his generosity with apprentices than his food. We see story after story of appreciation and thanks. Many testimonies of the quality of the food. But the overall narrative is of a poor boy from a rural town, who married his cousin who he had known since toddlerhood.

Together, they started the same tiny shop we find him in later, where he worked for 46 years with few breaks. We hear about how he and his wife ran the place every day until she was diagnosed ironically with stomach cancer. He says he never told her, and she died in a month. No children. While he kept the shop going, he abandoned the tiny room they shared in the back, and their apartment above. On screen he forbids the camera from visiting those areas. “Why would I torture myself?’

Over the ten years of filming, we early see him with doctors who understand the immense pain, and insist on knee replacements. Instead, he ignores them and is back at work the next day. We watch over a decade as he gains weight, hammers away at routine, and gets more and more in pain — relying more heavily on apprentices who in the tiny space can normally only watch.

Then we see him in hospital, having collapsed and near death. He survives, and gets a knee replacement during his seven month hospital stay. Meanwhile, the apprentices try to keep the business going but no one comes. He works up to return, and crowds converge, but he only lasts 20 minutes.

The last quarter of the film is a bit of a mess. What do you do?

A development demolishes the restaurant, and replaces it with an apartment building, in which he has an apartment — paid for by a former apprentice who has a successful franchise based on his recipe.

We see a defeated man. On the web, we find he died eventually at 80.

You may experience this differently than I did. Jiro still inspires me over a decade after seeing it. This reveals a life I wish to avoid.

Posted in 2025

Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

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