The Scent of Incense

After Tsuna dies, Ikuyo has no one to care for Tomoko and is unable to provide for her daughter independently. Facing financial desperation and limited options for a single woman in early 1900s Japan, Ikuyo makes the painful decision to sell Tomoko to a geisha house, believing this will at least ensure her daughter's survival and future prospects, even though it means Tomoko enters a world of performance and social stigma.

Ikuyo's earlier abandonment when she left Tomoko with Tsuna to remarry establishes her pattern of choosing her own survival over staying with her daughter.

Ezaki was imprisoned and sentenced to death for war crimes committed during WWII. By pretending not to recognize Tomoko, he was attempting to sever their connection to spare her the pain of his impending execution and to let her move forward with her life without being associated with a convicted war criminal. His stoic rejection was an act of final love, choosing to let her go rather than burden her with his fate.

Ezaki's family's initial refusal to accept Tomoko because of Ikuyo's past profession hints at how deeply social reputation and disgrace affect personal relationships throughout the film.

Ezaki's family rejected Tomoko because her mother Ikuyo had become a prostitute after reuniting with her in the geisha district. In early 1920s Japan, a woman's profession and reputation were directly linked to her family's honor. Even though Tomoko herself was a geisha, the stain of her mother's occupation made her unsuitable in the eyes of Ezaki's military family, who valued social standing and respectability.

This rejection sets up the recurring theme of how Ikuyo's choices continue to shadow Tomoko's life long after the initial abandonment.

Ikuyo left Tomoko because she was preparing to remarry and believed she could not take her daughter to her new marriage. In the social context of the Russo-Japanese War era, a woman remarrying faced practical challenges in accepting a child from a previous relationship. Ikuyo chose the security of her own future over staying with her young daughter, a decision that would define the trajectory of their fractured relationship.

This first abandonment establishes the pattern of Ikuyo prioritizing her own survival and circumstances over her maternal bond with Tomoko.

After being sold into the geisha world and experiencing the limitations placed on her by society and romantic disappointment, Tomoko chose to gain independence and power within the only system she knew. By becoming a madam, she could command respect, control her own financial destiny, and protect other women in a world that offered them few options. The 1923 earthquake would later destroy this business, forcing her to rebuild once again.

Tomoko's early entry into the geisha world and her complicated relationship with Ezaki plant the seeds of her desire for self-determination.

Tomoko rejected Nozawa's offer to become his mistress in the early 1930s because she had already sacrificed too much of her autonomy in the geisha world. After years of being controlled by the geisha house system, enduring social stigma, and losing Ezaki, Tomoko chose to maintain whatever independence she had left rather than become another man's hidden companion. Her decision reflected her growing determination to define her own terms in a male-dominated society.

This choice echoes her earlier resistance to the constraints placed on her by both her mother's choices and societal expectations.

The rift between Tomoko and Ikuyo developed through a series of painful separations: Ikuyo's initial abandonment to remarry, the sale to the geisha house after Tsuna's death, Ikuyo's descent into prostitution, and the social shame that followed Tomoko throughout her life. Each of Ikuyo's choices to prioritize herself created new wounds, yet the film shows them reuniting during wartime hardship, suggesting both love and resentment coexisted unresolved until Ikuyo's death.

The recurring pattern of Ikuyo leaving and returning establishes a cyclical nature to their relationship that ends only with death.

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 devastated Tokyo and destroyed Tomoko's geisha house, wiping out the business she had built and the stability she had achieved. This disaster forced her to confront loss yet again, reinforcing the film's theme of constant rebuilding amidst personal and societal upheaval. The earthquake represents another external force that disrupts her already fragile existence.

Tomoko's rise to madam earlier in the 1920s sets up this dramatic fall, showing how quickly her achievements could be undone.

Ikuyo died in a traffic accident in the late 1940s, precisely when Tomoko was hospitalized, preventing them from being together in their final moments. This tragic coincidence underscores the film's theme of missed connections and the impossibility of reconciliation. Ikuyo dies still separated from her daughter, and Tomoko is left unable to say goodbye, adding another layer of grief to their complicated history.

The war years when Tomoko and Ikuyo sheltered together in the cellar hinted at a potential healing between them, making this final separation even more poignant.

At the film's end, Tomoko adds Ikuyo's name to the family shrine, a gesture that represents a form of reconciliation and acceptance despite everything that happened between them. By including her mother's name among the ancestors, Tomoko acknowledges Ikuyo as part of the family lineage despite the pain she caused. This quiet final act symbolizes memory, lineage, and endurance, allowing Tomoko to finally lay the ghosts of their troubled relationship to rest.

The film traces their entire history of estrangement, making this shrine inclusion the culmination of their complex bond.

After leaving Tomoko with Tsuna and presumably facing economic hardship as a single woman in early 1900s Japan, Ikuyo had limited options for survival. When she reunited with Tomoko in the geisha district, she had already turned to prostitution as a means of survival in a society that offered few economic opportunities to women without family support or inheritance. This desperate choice further cemented the social stigma that would later haunt Tomoko's own prospects.

Ikuyo's pattern of making survival-based choices at the expense of her maternal role began with abandoning Tomoko to remarry.

After being reunited with Ikuyo following his disappearance during WWII, Hachiran eventually returned to his hometown in the late 1940s. This return marks the closing of his chapter in the family's story and represents the dispersing of the makeshift family that had formed during the war's devastation. His departure, like many others in the film, reflects the transience of human connections in the face of historical upheaval.

Hachiran's reappearance during the war years briefly reunited the fractured family before the peace-time dispersals began.