Summer Wars (2009): Why Did Grandma Sakae Support Wabisuke? The Earnest Desire Hidden Behind Her Phone Calls

Summer Wars(Official) is a feature-length animated film directed by Mamoru Hosoda, released in 2009.

I clearly remember going to see it with a friend when it was released, back when I was still a student. It is now my favorite work among Hosoda’s films, and remains one of my favorites even when including works by other directors.

However, there was a scene that felt off from the very first time I saw it. Of course, I now consider it to be an “incredibly good scene,” but I think it took about three viewings of Summer Wars before I could feel that way (which also goes to show how much I liked the film, seeing it that many times after its theatrical release).

The scene where I felt that unease was “the scene where Grandma calls everyone.”

*This article is an English translation of the original Japanese article, “【サマーウォーズ】栄ばあちゃんは何故、侘助を支援したのか-彼女が掛けた電話に隠れた切なる思い-”.

The Problem: Did Grandma Sakae Even Need to Make Those Calls?

In Summer Wars, after “Love Machine” causes the initial incident, Grandma calls people one after another—including her own relatives and people in high positions like the Superintendent General of the Metropolitan Police. As a result, the situation calms down, and disaster is averted. In the film, it is said to be “thanks to Grandma,” but is that really true?

The unease I felt lies exactly here. In other words, I am driven by the thought that “even if Grandma hadn’t made those calls, the situation would have been resolved.”

At that moment, not just in Japan but all over the world, people were in chaos, yet they were still doing what they could. Even without Grandma’s calls, the situation must have been moving in a positive direction, little by little. When she yelled “I was just about to do it!” to the people on the other end of the line, they surely were just about to do it, and orders might have already been issued.

Despite this situation, the fact that it is staged as quite a “good scene” is the true nature of the discomfort I felt. However, as I mentioned earlier, I now think of that scene as a wonderful one. But rather than being a scene that shows Grandma’s competence, I think it is wonderful because it looks like a scene that unearths the history of hardships Grandma has carried.

So, why was that scene necessary?

To unravel that, we must face the greatest mystery of Summer Wars: “The problem of why Grandma Sakae supported Wabisuke.” First, let’s turn our thoughts to Grandma Sakae’s past.

Summer Wars Prequel [Grandma Sakae’s History of Anguish]

Grandma Sakae in Summer Wars looks like an absolute monarch.

However, putting together what is said in the film, it seems that Grandma only became an absolute monarch quite recently, and that this status was due to Grandma Sakae’s own capability.

Grandma Sakae is the direct descendant of the Jinnouchi family, and her spouse was an “adopted son-in-law” (Mukodono). However, that son-in-law seems to have lived freely, taking a mistress and even having a child. Of course, this situation might have been born from a certain kind of stress caused by remaining an “adopted son-in-law,” but there is no mistake that he was a “fool.”

But isn’t that strange? If the Jinnouchi family was originally a matriarchal family where women were strong, this wouldn’t have happened. With Grandma Sakae’s ability, the Jinnouchi family surely would have achieved growth and become something even more wonderful than what we see in the film (even if they took a hit from the “post-war” period).

However, the reality is that the Jinnouchi family’s assets were drastically reduced by the dissipation of Grandma Sakae’s spouse. Something is somewhat strange.

Here, I’m going to digress a little and talk about my personal experience.

My mother’s family home was a farm, and they had adopted sons-in-law for two generations in a row. The adopted sons-in-law were my grandfather and my uncle.

On the night of my grandfather’s wake, my drunken uncle said, “In the end, I never had a beer poured for me even once.”

Even though they were both adopted sons-in-law, there was still a hierarchy, and it was probably my grandfather (Grandma Sakae’s father figure in this analogy) who controlled the situation.

My grandmother and aunt were the direct descendants, but that didn’t mean they held the real power.

I know it’s wrong to compare the wealthy merchant Jinnouchi family with a rural farming family, but I think even Grandma Sakae might have been forced to obey the way of the “Family” (Ie) which placed “men” at the top.

Then, at the stage when the “nuisance above him” was gone, Grandma Sakae’s spouse finally spread his wings and indulged in dissipation to the fullest.

Perhaps after her spouse’s death, Grandma Sakae recovered the situation with her own ability, resulting in “Grandma Sakae’s Empire” that we saw in the main story. The important thing is that “the way of life with Grandma at the apex” was not the original tradition of the Jinnouchi family, but likely something created by Grandma Sakae’s own capability.

That situation was the crystallization of Grandma Sakae’s blood, sweat, and tears.

Now, why did such a Grandma Sakae secretly sell a mountain and send Wabisuke to America?

She not only took in the child her adopted husband made outside the marriage—who had caused damage to the Jinnouchi family—and raised him with love, but she even supported Wabisuke to the point of creating a secret she couldn’t tell her family.

The Mystery of Summer Wars [Why Grandma Sakae Supported Wabisuke]

From here, I would like to think about the reason for Grandma Sakae’s inexplicable behavior: “Supporting Wabisuke.” First, I will present the most negative way of thinking.

Reason 1: The Reason I Don’t Want to Think About

The most impressive scene in the movie Summer Wars is the scene where Sakae walks holding little Wabisuke’s hand.

In that scene, Sakae says she is happy to welcome Wabisuke into the family, but that can’t be true. Normally, she should be furious.

However, a person like Sakae is not someone terrible enough to throw such thoughts at a child coming into a new environment amidst anxiety. Or rather, it means she is a kind and accomplished person, enough to throw words that are the exact opposite of those ugly inner feelings at an innocent child.

However, when Wabisuke, who was isolated within the family one way or another, finally reached the age to leave the house, it wouldn’t be strange if some dark thoughts arose in Grandma Sakae as well.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Wabisuke was extremely brilliant, and he himself probably wanted to leave the Jinnouchi family. If she sold a mountain behind her relatives’ backs to make money and handed it to such a Wabisuke saying “You can do it,” it would mean Grandma Sakae “spectacularly drove Wabisuke far away.”

Thinking about it that way, the moment where Grandma Sakae almost cries when Wabisuke says “I worked hard,” becomes a “emotion born from atonement for guilt,” as if to say, “I really just wanted to keep you away, but you worked so hard without even knowing that.”

Grandma Sakae looks perfect, but it wouldn’t be strange if a dark desire to keep Wabisuke further away than anyone else existed as the truth of her inner self.

However, although it’s strange for me to write this, I basically do not adopt this way of thinking. Of course, a fraction of these thoughts might have existed in the truth of Grandma Sakae’s heart, but I believe the essential reason she supported Wabisuke lay elsewhere.

Reason 2: The Likely Reason

So, what were Grandma Sakae’s actual thoughts? I think it was: “Wabisuke, you alone must go somewhere that is not here.”

Sakae is a person of ability.

I think she would have lived a completely different life if she had been born a man.

However, being a direct descendant of the Jinnouchi family and in a position to take an adopted husband, Sakae was bound by the “Family.” Of course, she might not have hated it from the bottom of her heart, but I cannot believe she didn’t think “there must have been another life.”

What did Sakae see in Wabisuke?

Did she not overlay her past self onto Wabisuke, who was trying to display his superior talent while desperately devoting himself to his studies (or perhaps other things as well) despite being treated like a pariah by the family?

In other words, it seems she tried to send Wabisuke off with encouragement, saying, “I couldn’t do it, but you alone must not be bound by the ‘Family’ and must go somewhere that is not here.”

However, it is impossible to explain this to the other family members. First, just handing a large sum of money to an “illegitimate child” would be a problem, and furthermore, the reason would become an issue. If she stated the reason mentioned above, it would be a denial of the “Family” itself, and would fundamentally collapse the kingdom she was trying to build.

Being clever is also a problem.

In the end, in order to balance the new “Family” with herself at the apex and her feelings for Wabisuke, she had no choice but to push the responsibility onto Wabisuke. And this also aligns with the “dark parts” mentioned earlier.

In this way, I think the “Grandma Sakae’s Wabisuke Support Incident” happened against a background of complex feelings.

And here, we can finally return to the first problem.

Why was “the scene where Grandma Sakae calls everyone” necessary?

The Present That Could Have Been

The people Grandma Sakae called during the first incident were many “people with power.”

Those were connections she could obtain “because it was the Jinnouchi family,” and at the same time, they were people who would listen only because it was Grandma Sakae. And above all, the people Grandma Sakae called seemed to be:

In other words, the reason I felt uncomfortable when I first saw that scene was because “the incident surely would have been resolved without making calls.” But as I watched it repeatedly, that scene began to look like a scene representing the “History of the King of the Jinnouchi Family’s battle with the Family,” succinctly expressing that “it is the result of the days lived desperately by a single human being named Sakae, as well as the fact that despite her ability, she could not be there.” Now, it exists within me as a famous scene.

Writing things like this might make me seem like a terribly “progressivism-obsessed” person, but I don’t particularly think of the “Family” as the villain. But that might be because I am a “man.”

Appendix

Is There Someone Like The Protagonist Kenji Koiso?

The main part of this article was “The Story of Grandma Sakae and Wabisuke,” but we must not forget the protagonist.

I graduated from a mathematics department at university, and there certainly were guys like Kenji Koiso.

That applies in terms of mathematical talent, in terms of physique, and also in terms of personality.

I have a specific memory of someone like him (unfortunately, it is not me).

He is like a “stereotype of a math lover,” but since they actually exist, I can’t complain.

When I first watched Summer Wars, I didn’t understand what Kenji Koiso’s final line, “Please take care of us” (Yoroshiku onegaishimasu), meant. However, when I realized that it was the reply he couldn’t give when Grandma Sakae told him, “Please take care of Natsuki,” after the trouble with Wabisuke, I felt somewhat happy.

The fact that the guy who is usually quiet becomes reliable when push comes to shove might be a “Math type thing” or a “Science type thing.” Because talented guys don’t stay silent.

Men’s War

In the work, the Jinnouchi family is supposed to be a “matriarchal family” or a “family where women are strong,” but somehow or other, it is the women who are cooking the meals.

Seeing this, one might think, “In the end, women are being made to do the housework,” but the situation is probably not that simple.

It has been said for a long time that it is a problem when a man answers “Anything is fine” to the question “What do you want to eat today?”

That is true, because it means he is saying “I don’t know” to the command “You decide what we eat today,” so of course it would be irritating.

However, this probably never happens in the Jinnouchi family.

The ones who can decide what to eat that day are the women, and the cooking methods and seasoning are also entirely under the women’s authority.

Therefore, men have no choice but to eat what is served. If they were ever asked, “What do you want to eat today?”, they would have to recall the menu of the past week and what has been served so far, and say “~ would be nice.” Of course, they would likely be shot down effortlessly with, “Compared to that, this is better.”

In any case, they surely wouldn’t dare say “Anything is fine.”

In the end, in that work, women are not “being made to cook meals,” but are “cooking what they want to eat themselves.”

Men are simply partaking in the leftovers of that. Even if they have fallen, the Jinnouchi family surely still has assets, and even in that trivial sense, the men are yielding.

Such men end up venting their pent-up feelings in “external wars.”

I think this is the reason why there were only men fighting “Love Machine” in Summer Wars.

In the end, Natsuki-senpai settles it with Hanafuda, and that was something taught by Grandma Sakae.

It is quite a story where “men are absent.” I don’t mind that, though.

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