February 20, 2018 (XXXVI:4) Yasujirô Ozu STORY (1953), 136 min.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu Writing Credits Kôgo Noda and Yasujirô Ozu (scenario) Produced by Takeshi Yamamoto Music Takanobu Saitô Cinematography Yûharu Atsuta Film Editing Yoshiyasu Hamamura Production Design Tatsuo Hamada Art Direction Tatsuo Hamada Costume Design Taizô Saitô

Cast Chishû Ryû…Shukichi Hirayama Chieko Higashiyama…Tomi Hirayama …Noriko Hirayama …Shige Kaneko Sô Yamamura…Koichi Hirayama than he had previously. His most famous film, …Fumiko Hirayama - his wife (1953), is generally considered by critics and film buffs alike to Kyôko Kagawa…Kyôko Hirayama be his “masterpiece” and is regarded by many as not only one of Eijirô Tôno…Sanpei Numata Ozu’s best films but one of the best films ever made. He also …Kurazo Kaneko turned out such classics of Japanese film as Flavor of Green Tea Shirô Ôsaka…Keizo Hirayama Over Rice (1952), (1959) and An Autumn Hisao Toake…Osamu Hattori Afternoon (1962). Ozu often employs the recurring theme of Teruko Nagaoka…Yone Hattori changes in post-war Japanese family and society, especially Mutsuko Sakura…Oden-ya no onna concentrating on relationships between the generations. He is Toyo Takahashi…Rinka no saikun also known through his cinematic trademarks such as rigorous use of static camera positioned only a few feet from floor, use of Yasujiro Ozu (December 12, 1903, Tokyo—d. December 12, the color red, and characters looking directly into the camera. 1963, Tokyo) was a movie buff from childhood, often playing The camera was always placed low, close to the floor. He never hooky from school in order to see Hollywood movies in his local used cranes, a moving camera, bird's eye shots. Once or twice he theatre. In 1923 he landed a job as a camera assistant at tried them early in his career, but he abandoned them. When he Studios in Tokyo. Three years later, he was made an assistant edited, he never used overlaps, wipes, fade-ins. He was director and directed his first film the next year, Blade of determined to create a sense of ordinary, everyday life without Penitence (1927). Ozu made thirty-five silent films, and a trilogy tricks or mannerisms. To Ozu the camera was never more than an of youth comedies with serious overtones he turned out in the uninvolved observer. It is never part of the action. It never late 1920s and early 1930s placed him in the front ranks of comments on the action. It is through the repetition of short cuts Japanese directors. He made his first in 1936, The moving back and forth from one character to another that Ozu Only Son (1936), but was drafted into the Japanese Army the created a sense of real life. Some of his other 54 directorial next year, being posted to China for two years and then to efforts are: (1961), Late Autumn (1960), Singapore when World War II started. At war's end, he went Good Tokyo Twilight (1957), Early Spring (1956), back to Shochiku, and his experiences during the war resulted in (1951,The Munekata Sisters (1950), (1949), A Hen his making more serious, thoughtful films at a much slower pace in the Wind (1948), Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947), Ozu—TOKYO STORY—2

There Was a Father (1942), An Inn in Tokyo (1935), A Story of was wearing his university uniform. Initially, he played extras Floating Weeds (1934), A Mother Should Be Loved (1934), and bit parts and became a permanent member of what was (1933), (1933), Until the Day We called the obeya, or ‘big room’, where all the small fry of the Meet Again (1932), Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth (1932), movies waited for the big break. In 1928 he was noticed by Ozu, I Was Born, But... (1932), Spring Comes from the Ladies (1932), who saw promise in this awkward young man who seemed not Tokyo Chorus (1931), The Sorrow of the Beautiful Woman very talented. Ozu gave him a small part in (1931), The Lady and the Beard (1931), The Luck Which (1929). Ryû was often cast by Ozu to play older men; in Touched the Leg (1930), That tonight’s film, he was only 49, Night's Wife (1930), I Flunked, portraying a 72-year old But... (1930), Walk Cheerfully character. In 1936 when he (1930), The Life of an Office was only 32, he appeared as an Worker (1929), Days of Youth old man in The Only Son (1929), Takara no yama (1929), which was the first Ozu talkie. Wife Lost (1928) and Wakôdo no The coming of talkies in yume (1928). He also has 47 had the same traumatic effect writer credits. According to as it had in Hollywood. Ryû renowned film critic , had the picturesque accent of “to love movies without loving his strong Kumamoto dialect, Ozu is an impossibility.” but it gradually became accepted as part of the unusual Takanobu Saitô (b. December 8, charm of his unassuming 1924 in Tokyo, Japan—d. April character. In 1949 he received 11, 2004, age 79) studied initially the Mainichi Film Award for went to the Tokyo University of Best Actor, the first of many the Arts with the intent to become a traditional composer. During such prestigious acting awards. Ryû disarmingly says he was not his schooling, he joined a military music band and later he a natural actor, nor a good one, but for some strange reason Ozu became conductor of the Japan Air Self Defense Force Central saw potential and brought out hidden qualities that made him a Band, a position he held until he retired in 1976. Saitô’s most star. In reviewing Wenders’ documentary on Ozu, the well-known contribution to music was his adaptation of the Independent wrote, “Atsuta and Ryû go to Ozu’s grave in Japanese national anthem “Kimigayo” adding in more . There is no name on the stone, only the character for orchestration for the symphony. He scored 8 of Ozu’s films and mu, ‘emptiness’. Ryû kneels and prays with folded hands, all was featured Wenders’ Talking with Ozu (1993). His films with dignity, humility and stillness, qualities he embodied on film and Ozu are Tokyo Story (1953), Early Spring (1956), Tokyo in real life. He was unique, inimitable.” He eventually appeared shadows (1957), (1958), Floating Weeds (1959), in 52 of Ozu’s 54 films. He had a role (not always the lead) in Late Autumn (1960), Song of hydrangea (1960) and Shirobanba every one of Ozu's post-war movies, from Record of a Tenement (1962). Gentleman (1947) to (1962). Ryû appeared in well over 100 films by other directors. He was in Yûharu Atsuta (b. 1905 in Kobe, Japan—d. 1993, age 88, in ’s Twenty-four Eyes (1954) and played Japan), along with Shigehara Hideo, was one of two cameramen wartime Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki in Japan's Longest Day with whom Ozu worked almost exclusively. Atsuta worked as a (1967). Notably, from 1969 until his death in 1993 he played a cinematographer or d.p. on 37 films including What did the Lady curmudgeonly but benevolent Buddhist priest in more than forty Forget? (1937), Toda Brothers and Sisters (1941), He was a of the immensely popular It’s Tough Being a Man. Ryû parodied Father (1942), Story of an owner (1947), A Hen in the Wind this role in Jūzō Itami’s 1984 comedy The Funeral. Ryû’s last (1948), Late Spring (1949), Early summer (1951), The Taste of film was It's Tough Being a Man (1992). Green Tea Rice (1952), Trip to Tokyo (1953), Early spring (1956), Dusk in Tokyo (1957), Equinox Flowers (1958), Hello Chieko Higashiyama (b. September 30, 1890 in Chiba, Japan— (1959), Late Autumn (1960) and The Taste of Sake (1962). In d. May 8,1980, age 89, place unknown) was known for Tokyo 1961 he won Best Photography at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival Story (1953), Sen-hime (1954) and The Idiot (1951). Graduating for Late Autumn (1960). from the girls' school at Gakushuin, she married a businessman in 1909 and spent eight years in Moscow. In 1925, at the age of Chishû Ryû (b. May 13, 1904 in Kumamoto, Japan—d. March 35, she decided to become an actress and began training at the 16, 1993, age 88, in , Japan) was the second son of the Tsukiji Shōgekijō. She appeared in many stage productions, most priest of Raishoji Temple in the village of Kumamoto Prefecture famously as Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard. Her on the island of Kyushu. His childhood and religious upbringing late start in acting did not hinder her career. She appeared in had a great influence on his character later in life. In 1924, he more than 60 films from 1936 to 1967, when she finally retired went to Tokyo to study Indian philosophy at Toyo Daigaku. In from acting. A selection of her films include Zoku ô-oku maruhi 1925, the Shochiku Movie Company held its first auditions and monogatari (1967), The River Kino (1966), Miyamoto Musashi: Ryû’s classmates dared him to go. By his own admission, he was The Duel at Ichijoji (1964), Sing, Young People! (1963), Diary of not particularly good-looking, but to his astonishment he was a Mad Old Man (1962), The Wandering Princess (1960), Spring accepted. He found out later he had won the audition because he Dreams (1960), The Snow Flurry (1959), Image Wife (1958), Ozu—TOKYO STORY—3

Tokyo Story (1953), Sincerity (1953), Carmen Falls in Love father—as well as his preoccupations with themes of separation (1952), Sisters of Nishijin (1952), Early Summer (1951), The and loneliness. Idiot (1951), Les Misérables: Gods and Demons (1950), The By the time he entered Uji-Yamada Middle School at Angry Street (1950), A Broken Drum (1949), Waltz at Noon the age of sixteen, (1949), Apostasy (1948), The Portrait (1948), Marriage (1947) Ozu was an and The Girl I Loved (1946). intransigent and hard-drinking youth, Setsuko Hara (b. June 17, 1920 in Yokohama, Japan—d. intellectual in his September 5, 2015, age 95, in Kanagawa, Japan) became one of interests but without Japan’s most beloved stars over her 30-year film career. Her academic ambitions. signature character type, variations on a daughter devoted to her When he was parents and home, inspired the nickname that stayed with her seventeen, an until retirement: the Eternal Virgin. To some extent, reality indiscreet letter to a mirrored her roles in these films. In a society that considers younger boy got him marriage and parenting almost obligatory, she remained single expelled from the and childless, something of a controversy in Japan in the 1950s. school dormitory Fortunately she was popular enough to avoid criticism. Toward (though such billets- the end of the decade, she was plagued by ill health, missing out doux were common on several top roles as a result, and she witnessed the death of her enough in single-sex camera-man brother in a freak train accident on set. In 1963, schools like his). shortly after the death of Ozu, she suddenly walked away from Thereafter he had to the entirely. At age 43, and at the height of her commute daily from popularity, she bluntly refused to perform again, angering her home. Ozu adroitly exploited this punishment to gain greater fans, the industry, and the press. She implied acting had never freedom than ever, and this was typical of his contempt for been a pleasure and that she had only pursued a career in order to restrictions of any kind, and his skill in bypassing them. provide for her large family. This explanation is seen as the cause If his studies did not interest Ozu, literature did, and in of her popularity backlash. She moved to a small house in middle school he developed a precocious taste for the work of picturesque Kamakura where she remained, living alone (though such contemporary writers as Junichiro Tanizaki, Ryunosuke apparently sociable with friends), and refusing all roles. She is Akutagawa, and Naoya Shiga. And he had an even greater undoubtedly known mostly for her work with Ozu, making six passion for Hollywood moviues, playing truant in Tsu and films together, including the so-called Noriko trilogy, of which to follow the latest exploits of Pearl White and William Tokyo Story (1953) is probably the best-known. She also worked S. Hart, and writing fan letters to benshi (film narrators) in Kobe. with , , Hiroshi Inagaki, among He boasted that, when he should have been sitting the entrance others. Before choosing to withdraw from film, she acted examination to Kobe Higher Commercial School, he was in 77 productions some of which are 47 Samurai (1962), My actually in a movie theatre watching Rex Ingram’s Prisoner of Daughter and I (1962), The End of Summer (1961), Late Autumn Zenda. (1960), Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960), The Wayside Having failed such examinations as he did take, Ozu Pebble (1960), Nippon tanjô (1959), A Holiday in Tokyo (1958), was unemployed for a time after leaving middle school, then Tokyo Twilight (1957), Settlement of Love (1956), Sudden Rain worked for a year as an assistant teacher in a village school near (1956), (1954), Tokyo Story (1953), Matsuzaka. By the time the family was reunited in Tokyo in Shirauo (1953), Tokyo Sweetheart (1952), Repast (1951), Early 1924, his heart was set on a film career. His bourgeois father Summer (1951), The Idiot (1951), Late Spring (1949), Here’s to naturally opposed this choice but Ozu, who became famous for the Girls (1949), Tonosama Hotel (1949), Temptation (1948), his stubbornness, went ahead anyway and, through a family The Ball at the Anjo House (1947), No Regrets for Our Youth friend, secured an introduction to the Shochiku company, formed (1946), Kita no san-nin (1945), Hawai Marê oki kaisen (1942), a few years earlier. The executives at Shochiku’s Kamata studios Currents of Youth (1942), Toyuki (1940), Tokyo no josei (1939), were astonished to learn that, in all his youthful years of Priest of Darkness (1936) and Tamerau nakare wakodo yo dedicated moviegoing, he had seen only three Japanese films, but (1935). they hired him nevertheless as an assistant cameraman—in those days a menial who served as the cameraman’s caddie. from World Film Directors. V.I. Ed. John Wakeman. H.W. Ozu spent most of 1925 in the army reserve, feigning Wilson Co. NY 1987 tuberculosis by “dipping the thermometer in warm water and Yasujiro Ozu, Japanese director and scenarist, was born coughing,” and thus contriving to spend the time restfully in in the old Fukagawa district of Tokyo, one of the five children of hospital. A year after his return to Shochiku he talked his way a fertilizer merchant. When he was ten his father ordained that he into a job as assistant director to Tadamoto Okubo, who should be educated at Matsuzaka, in , the family’s specialized in risqué “nonsense” comedies. Apart from his ancestral home. Ozu grew up there, separated from his father and fondness for bathroom humor, there is no evidence in Ozu’s own indulged by his mother. This imbalance in his own family films that Okubo had the slightest influence on him. Though he presumably accounts for the obsessive analysis in his films of the eventually made up for his ignorance of Japanese cinema by Japanese family as an institution—especially the role of the studying the work of his seniors at Shochiku, Ozu maintained that he then “formulated my own directing style in my own head, Ozu—TOKYO STORY—4 proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others….For father leads them into a battle with his boss’s son. They are me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on shocked when they see their “great man” toadying to his my own strength employer and, when he explains that he needs his job in order to Notoriously hard-working in later years, Ozu enjoyed his stint as feed them, they resolve to eat no more. But their hunger is an assistant director primarily because he “could drink all I stronger than their idealism. They abandon martyrdom and, their wanted and spend my time talking.” He was nevertheless bellies filled, cheerfully accept the status quo. promoted before the end of 1927, joining the Shochiku division This moving comedy was a great success, critically and devoted to churning out period films. financially, and is generally He made his debut as a director with recognized to be Ozu’s first major Zange no yaiba (The Sword of film. The father is shown to be Penitence, 1927), based on a weak, foolish, and inconsistent— Hollywood movie called Kick-In by for example smoking a cigarette the French-born director George while exercising—but his lazy and Fitzmaurice. The script was by Kogo pompous boss is an equally Noda, who was to write all of Ozu’s ridiculous figure, and there is no major films of the 1950s and 1960s. moral justification for the The young director was called up for difference in status between the another session in the reserve before two men. When the boys learn to shooting was complete, and when he accept this injustice they consign finally saw the movie he disowned it. themselves, as their parents realize, This was Ozu’s only period to “the same kind of sorry lives that picture. He switched once and for all we have.” However amusingly to contemporary themes with his presented, it is a bleak perception second film, Wakodo no yume (The Dreams of Youth, 1928), a of the sort that has antagonized activist critics of Ozu’s work, comedy of college life made in imitation of American movies on while establishing him in other eyes as “the artist of life as it is.” the same popular subject. Between the beginning of 1928 and the The conformity and regimentation of Japanese society is end of 1930, Ozu made eighteen films on an assortment of wittily pointed up when a tracking shot of children drilling at a topics—student life, the problems of young married couples, and school is echoed, “in a marvelous use of matched cutting,” by the lighter side of life in the Depression. All of them were one of yawning office workers at their ranked desks. However, as comedies, and some were made in as little as five days. says, “Ozu would later dispense with such It was a hctic apprenticeship. Ozu said it was not until associative editing, camera movement, and cutting on action.” he had made four or five movies that he really knew what he was He was already deeply immersed in the exploration of cinematic doing and “began to like being a director.” Even then, however, theory and technique, and working his way steadily towards the he was building up a team of regular collaborators, some of chaste simplicity of his mature style. He only used dissolves once whom worked with him for the rest of his life. These early in his entire career (in Life of an Office Worker), promptly pictures were generally scripted by Ozu in collaboration with rejecting the device as “uninteresting,” , Akira Fushimi, or Tadao Ikeda, and photographed and by 1932 he was finding the fade equally pointless. Generally by Hideo Shiegehara. Early recruits to the directors’s stable of dissolves and fades are not part of cinematic grammar,” he actors included Takeshi Sakamodo, Choka Iida, and Chishu Ryu remarked. “They are only attributes of the camera.” (who appeared in all but two of Ozu’s fifty-three films). Another Kinema Jumpo “best one” followed in 1933, At this stage, Ozu’s work still showed the influence of the “subtle, beautiful” Dekigokoro (), scripted the Hollywood movies he had so loved during his adolescence. from an original idea of Ozu’s. It deals not with the “people like But increasingly he was finding his own way and moving in the you and me” of the conventional shomin-geki, but with the direction of the shomin-geki—the “home drama” of everyday life relationship between an illiterate brewery worker and his better among the lower middle-classes, in a Japan that was evolving at educated son. The father, long abandoned by his wife, becomes bewildering speed from feudalism to Western-style capitalism. infatuated with a much younger woman who has no interest in The first of his films to bear the hall-marks of the genre him. The son’s recognition of his father’s foolishness leads to a was Kaishain Seikatsu (The Life of an Office Worker, 1929), fight that brings the latter to his senses. The boy becomes scripted by Noda. It is a wry comedy about a hard-up married seriously ill and afterwards, to pay for his medical expenses, his couple who dream all year about the husband’s expected annual father sets off for Hokkaido as a hired laborer. As the boat leaves bonus, then have to come to terms with the fact that, because of Tokyo harbor he recognizes a more important responsibility, the Depression, he loses not only his bonus but his job as well. jumps overboard and swims ashore to rejoin his son, happily Here, for the first time in Ozu’s work “nonsense” comedy gags repeating a silly joke the boy has told him. “This is a sequence took second place to the demands of social and psychological rare in Ozu,” wrote Joan Mellen, “involving a human being realism. … immersed in the elements and there achieving peace with In the course of his career, Ozu would receive six himself. Kibhachi’s swimming is filmed as a natural and Kinema Jumpo “best ones,” more than any other director in the beautiful act, expressive of an emotional resonance Ozu attaches history of Japanese cinema. to the return to his son.” An original script from an idea of Ozu’s own, I Was Ozu’s own father had become reconciled to his choice Born, But…centers on two small boys whose admiration for their of career, and by then he was living in the parental home in Ozu—TOKYO STORY—5

Tokyo, as he did for the rest of his life. He was terrified of subjects of many of his later movies. The same year he was women and, though he frequently fell in love with his actresses, drafted and sent to China as an infantry corporal—an experience and sometimes went so far as to arrange meetings, nothing ever he could scarcely bring himself to speak of either in his diaries or came of these assignations and he remained unmarried. His in subsequent conversation. father died in 1934, choosing him as head of the family “though When Ozu returned to Shochiku in 1939, his he knew that I was the last person to be relied upon.” Much cameraman Hideo Shigehara mad moved on to another company. moved, Ozu seems to have taken his responsibilities very The two films he made during the war were shot by Shigehara’s seriously and to have matured former assistant, Yuharu Atsuta, considerably, though he always who became his regular remained a heavy drinker. cameraman…. . Ozu’s admirers claim The director’s first picture that, in his two wartime films, had been based on one by George he refused to exploit his subjects Fitzmaurice, and another for propaganda purposes. Joan Fitzmaurice movie, The Barker Mellen agrees that he was (1928), inspired Ukigusa neither a propagandist nor an monogatari (A Story of Floating imperialist, calling him in fact Weeds, 1934), which was infinitely “the least overtly didactic of any superior to its model. Ozu won his Japanese director, but argues third consecutive Kinema Jumpo that the movies he made during “best one” for his rendering of a and after the war nevertheless traveling theatre troupe’s visit to a endorse a reactionary Japanese mountain village where the group’s leader, now married to a spirit: “Ozu evoked traditional ideas not because the militarists jealous actress, encounters a former mistress and the son he had forced him to, but because he believed in them,” and he casually fathered. called this “a picture of great accomplishes his propaganda for the war [which is scarcely atmosphere and intensity of character, one in which story, actors, mentioned] through appeals to a traditional style of obedience, and setting all combined to create a whole world, the first of which is, however, only a brief step away from enlisting that those eight-reel universes in which everything takes on a obedience in the service of the State.” consistency somewhat greater than life: in short, a work of art.” The facts remain that at least one of Ozu’s wartime Ozu held out against sound long after other Shochiku scripts was rejected by the censors as “unserious,” that he directors had adopted it—he was intent on reducing his means somehow avoided making a single militaristic or imperialistic rather than extending them and he had, besides, promised his film, and that he took serious risks in defending against the photographer Hideo Shigehara to wait until the latter had censors the work of fellow-directors like Akira Kurosawa. perfected a sound system of his own. “If I can’t keep promises According to , “he always made such funny like this,” Ozu wrote in his diary in June 1935, “then the best jokes, always got everyone in such a good mood, and was so thing would be to give up being a director—which would be all expert in saying a serious thing in a light way, that nothing ever right, too.” He finally succumbed the following year, afraid that happened to him.” In 1943 Ozu was sent to Singapore to make he was being “left behind by the other directors.” The new propaganda films and even then managed to do no such thing. He medium affected his working methods less than he had expected: passed the time viewing confiscated American movies and was indeed, the stationary microphone gave him even greater control impressed above all by one absolutely remote from his own style, over his actors than before, forcing them to rely on the small, Orson Welles’ . After six months as a prisoner of stylized movements and changes of expression that for him war, Ozu was repatriated in February 1946. spoke more clearly and precisely than more expansive action. By this time, he was very clear about what he wanted to His first talkie was Hitori musuko (The Only Son, 1936), do, and how he wanted to do it. Like many Japanese, he had adapted from an old script by “James Maki” (Ozu). The heroine begun by exploring Western styles and attitudes, but as he grew is an elderly woman worn out by her struggle to put her son older turned more and more to the traditional Japanese ideals, through college. After a long separation, she uses up her meager defined by Donald Ritchie as “restraint, simplicity, and near- savings to visit him in Tokyo and finds that her grand hopes for Buddhist serenity.” The conflict between the radical him have come to nothing—he is an ill-paid schoolteacher, individualism of the young and the older generation’s nostalgic scarcely able to support his wife and child. Nevertheless, he devotion to these qualities is often a source of tension in his borrows enough to entertain her, and promises to resume his films, whose theme is almost invariably the Japanese family— studies; she goes home to “die in peace.” In fact, the son seems most often the relations between parents and children. already quite defeated by life and this is one of the darkest and “Pictures with obvious plots bore me now,” Ozu said most poignant of Ozu’s films. after the war. He thought that conventional drama made it easy He made one more picture before the outbreak of the for a director to arouse emotions in his audience, but was only an Sino-Japanese War, a gently ironic study of a marital crisis called “explanation” of human emotions that concealed the real truth. Shukujo wa nani o wasuretaka (What Did the Lady Forget?, His endless variations on a few simple and archetypal themes 1937). The first film Ozu made at Shochiku’s new sound studio gave him all the scope he ever needed for his purpose, which was at Ofuna, it was also the first in which he addressed himself to the rigorous exploration of character as a revelation of what was the problems of upper middle-class professional people, the fundamental in the human condition. It was an approach that had Ozu—TOKYO STORY—6 much in common with the work of one of Ozu’s favorite when her husband is away and their child needs medical writers, Naoya Shiga, who in his novels also eschewed plot and treatment they cannot afford. When her husband is finally dramatic effect to study in minute detail the often irrational repatriated and she confesses her fall from grace, he knocks her interactions that take place within the microcosm of the family. down the stairs, but gradually comes to understand and accept that she had no choice. It seemed to Joan Mellen that Ozu “had Donald Ritchie writes that “Ozu’s later films are brilliantly and honestly confronted the postwar moment,” probably the most restrained ever made, the most limited, showing how Japan—like the heroine—had become prostituted controlled, and restricted.” They are typically built up as a to the sleazy values of the Occupation. Ozu himself thought the mosaic of brief shots—often one for each line of dialogue— movie “a bad failure.” taken from directly in front of the actor who is speaking, and For his next picture, Banshun (Late Spring, 1949), Ozu from a very low angle. “The Ozu shot,” Ritchie says, is “taken was reunited with his favorite scenarist Kogo Noda, with whom from the level of a person seated in traditional fashion on tatami he wrote al of his subsequent scripts. They would begin with the [matting]. Whether indoors or out, the Ozu camera is always dialogue, always written with particular actors in mind, and let about three feet from floor level, and the camera never moves. character and setting emerge from that. Both men worked best There are no pan shots and, except late at night while in the rarest of instances, no dolly consuming huge quantities shots. This traditional view is the of sake or whiskey at some view in repose, commanding a very inn, and they hardly ever limited field of vision but disagreed. Ozu maintained commanding it entirely. . . .It is the that the quality of a film was aesthetic passive attitude of the directly proportionate to the haiku master who sits in silence and number of bottles he and with painful accuracy observes Noda emptied. cause and effect, reaching essence Late Spring launched the through an extreme simplification.” series of almost plotless Audie Bock maintains that Ozu masterpieces that crowned consistently shot from a height of Ozu’s career. A young even less than three feet, however, and suggests that the effect of woman (Setsuku Hara) lives with her widowed father (Chishu this on the audience “is to force [it] to assume a viewpoint of Ryu) and will not consider marriage, preferring her state of cosy reverence. . .toward ordinary people. Its power is not one of dependence to the responsibilities of childbearing and household contemplation but of involuntary veneration.” management. The father, afraid that she faces a lonely and barren future after his death, lets it be known that he himself intends to As Bock says. Ozu placed his characters in film after remarry, and she then sadly and reluctantly takes a husband. The film in similar settings—“the home, the office, the tea salon, the father remains alone as he had always intended, condemned by restaurant or bar are the places in which the plain but deeply his sense of duty to a solitary and empty old age. illuminating conversations occur.” And the director was Ozu’s late films typically open with a sequence establishing a notoriously perfectionist about the positioning of objects within mood of quiet, dispassionate observation. Late Spring starts with these sets, often “demanding that furniture, teapots, cups, vases one in a temple in Kamakura, the old Japanese capital. “nothing be moved one or two centimeters this way or that until he got happens,” wrote Donald Richie. “No one is visible. The shadows exactly the composition he wanted, whether it maintained of the bamboos move against the shoji; the tea kettle is boiling, continuity from shot to shot and satisfied logic or not.” the steam escaping. It is a scene of utter calm. There is no Ozu was no less demanding in his direction, of actors, subject, no theme, unless it is the gratefulness of silence and Bock says. He would allow no one to dominate a scene…..Like repose. This quality having been established, one of the the stories, the settings, and the events, if the acting became characters enters and the story begins. Empty rooms, uninhabited individualized and special, Ozu’s balance would be upset.” landscapes, objects (rocks, trees, tea kettles), textures (shadows Chishu Ryu, who gave his finest performances under Ozu’s on shoji, the grain of tatami, rain dripping) play a large part in direction and in the later films became in effect the director’s Ozu’s world.” spokesman, said he felt he “was only the colors with which Ozu The most discussed scene in Late Spring comes at the painted his pictures….I once heard Ozu say, “Ryu is not a very end, after the daughter has left. The father sits alone, skillful actor—that is why I use him.” Less modest performers methodically peeling a pear. He lets the peel drop and his head naturally resented Ozu’s habit of making them rehearse some falls slightly. “Is it too much to suggest that Ozu…designed the minute gesture twenty or thirty times in pursuit of an effect that film to set off this one shot? Asked Don Willis. “The slight he would not bother to explain, even though his purpose would falling movement of Ryu’s head is the suggestive emotional become clear when the film was finally edited. centre of Late Spring, as Setsuko Hara’s great performance is the The first film Ozu made after the war was Nagaya no expressive centre.” And Richie wrote that “the end effect of an shinshi roku (The Record of a Tenement Gentleman, 1947), a Ozu film…is a kind of resigned sadness…..The Japanese call this rather uncharacteristic piece drawing on one of his old scripts. quality (an essential manifestation of the Japanese aesthetic spirit Kaze no naka no mendori (A Hen in the Wind, 1948) was also mono no aware, for which the nearest translation might be somewhat atypical with its relatively melodramatic story about a lachrimae rerum, Lucretius’s reference to those tears caused by woman forced into a single night of prostitution during the war, things as they are.” Ozu—TOKYO STORY—7

From the lonely figure of the father, Ozu cuts away to a deserted For many critics, the simplicity and purity of Ozu’s shore, and the film ends with an image of gentle waves. Audie mature style reached its apotheosis in Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Bock believes that the director uses images of this sort not as Story, 1953) described by Robert Boyers as “a work that fairly “symbols in the western sense, but [as] vehicles for the epitomizes transcendental style.” [Transcendental style is defined transcendent, ineffable quality of life that takes us outside of by as “a form which expresses something deeper mere human emotion.” than itself, the inner unity of all things.”] An elderly couple This aspect of Ozu’s work is discussed at considerable (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyami) living by the sea at length by Paul Schrader in Onomichi in the south of Japan, visit Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, their married children in Tokyo. Bresson, Dreyer, in which he defines They find that their son and daughter transcendental style as “a form which have become mean and selfish, expresses something deeper than itself, dehumanized by life in modern the inner unity of all things.” Schrader Tokyo, and they are kindly treated continues, “In Ozu’s films as in all only by Noriko (Setsuke Hara), their Oriental art, the form itself is the ritual widowed daughter-in-law, who in which creates the eternal present spite of her poverty has retained the (ekaksana), gives weight to the traditional Japanese virtues. emptiness (mu), and makes it possible The old people are hauled to evoke the furyu, the four basic off to the hot spring resort at Atami, untranslatable moods of Zen….The which they hate. They return to greatest conflict (and the greaest Tokyo, where the wife spends a resulting disillusionment) in Ozu’s happy night in Noriko’s small films is not political, psychological, or domestic, but is, for want apartment while the husband is out drinking with old cronies. On of a better term, ‘environmental.’…Ozu responds to the disunity the way home, the wife becomes ill and the family, concerned at in Japanese life by evoking the traditional verities of Zen art in a last, assembles briefly at her deathbed. When the others leave to contemporary, cinematic context.”\ pursue their own affairs, Noriko stays behind to console the old Late Spring, called “one of the most perfect, most man and it is he who urges her to forget her duty to his dead son complete, and most successful studies of character ever achieved and marry again. In the end he is alone but outside, in Onomichi in Japanese cinema,” was a Kinema Jumpo “best one,” and so harbor, life goes on. was Bakushu (Early Summer) which followed in 1951, after the Richie points out that Ozu could have provided some comparatively minor Munekata Shimai (The Munekata Sisters). consolation by ending the film “with a final shot of the daughter- It has been pointed out that Ozu’s theme is not so much the in-law going off into a happier future.” He does not do so partly Japanese family as it dissolution, and this is very much the case because he does not believe in such consolations, partly because in Early Summer, in which Setsuko Hara again plays the woman he “refuses to compromise his theme….By ending the drama (the whose late reluctant marriage unravels a close-knit family in this daughter-in-law) before he ends the film, by returning to the case one of three generations. father, by showing us the by-now familiar port shots, which recur Ochazuke no Aji (The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, like closing chords in this final coda, by referring, finally, to the 1952), dealing with a middle-aged childless couple , builds to a larger context of city, sea, mountains, he also suggests that what somewhat more conventionally dramatic crisis than usual. The we are seeing occurs every day, that it is common, that it has refined and arrogant wife, scornful of her unsophisticated happened before and will happen many times over, that it is the husband, realizes how much he means to her when it seems that way of the world.”…, rating this film as one he is about to be sent away on business. At the end they share a of his ten personal favorites of all time, writes, “By holding to quintessentially Japanese mean of rice soaked in green tea which truth, much more than to naturalism, Ozu gives us a process of is “simple and unpretentious. It's how married life should be.” mutual discovery, the characters’ and ours.” Their “modern” niece whose story provides a subplot, comes to …Ozu’s last film Samma no aji (An Autumn Afternoon, recognize over the same period that “feudal” arranged marriages 1962), was yet another variation on his favorite theme, with yet can sometimes make sense. another widower marrying off his daughter and then facing his Joan Mellen compared this film, to its disadvantage, own loneliness. Tom Milne wrote that this film (like its with Mikio Naruse’s similar Repast (1951), saying that in Ozu’s predecessor) is mainly light and even ribald in tone, but “closes movie “the wife’s side is finally given very little credibility on a strangely moving almost cathartic note of mingled grief, ….Where Naruse blames the wife’s unhappiness in part on social resignation and tranquility when Harayama, alone at home after conditions….Ozu, more conservative, suggests that it is in the his self-sufficient son had gone to bed, breaks down and weeps nature of things for…people sometimes to be thwarted in their quietly….Nothing, apparently, has prepared for the emotional desires….In his insight into the silent, forced submission to depth of the last scene, yet it is a perfectly natural climax towards circumstance of the Japanese wife, Naruse shows a sympathy which the the whole film has been imperceptibly moving with the trials of the Japanese woman of which Ozu was through a mosaic of characters and incidents which interlock incapable.” In fect, Ozu said that he had “wanted to show sometimes obviously and sometimes obliquely, to illuminate the something about a man from the viewpoint of a woman,” but underlying theme of loneliness.” Ozu’s mother died while he was acknowledged that this film, adapted from an old script, “wasn’t working on this film , and the following year he himself became very well made.” Ozu—TOKYO STORY—8 ill with the cancer that killed him on the eve of his sixtieth are insufficient to account for the rigor and precision of Ozu’s birthday. technique. No other Japanese director exhibits Ozu’s particular Younger and more militant filmmakers in Japan, style, and the connections to Japanese aesthetics are general and believing that the world can and should be changed, have in often tenuous. (Ozu once remarked: “Whenever Westerners don’t recent years tended to reject and scorn Ozu’s theme of understand something, they simply think it’s Zen.”) There is, acceptance and resignation, the “uncinematic” stasis of his late however, substantial evidence that Ozu built his unique style out films and his fondness for the arts and conventions of the feudal of deliberate imitation of and action against Western cinema past, in particular condemning his nostalgia for the traditional (especially the work of Chaplin and Lubitsch). Japanese family structure, which they regard as perniciously Ozu limited his use of certain technical variables, such conformist and authoritarian. At the same time, this “most as camera movement and variety of camera position. This can Japanese” of directors has acquired a devoted following abroad, seem a willful asceticism, but it perhaps best considered a where the purity of his “transcendental” style and the universality ground-clearing that let him concentrate on exploring minute of his insights into the “ordinary sorrows” of life established him stylistic possibilities. For instance, it is commonly claimed that during the 1970s as one of the masters of world cinema. every Ozu shot places the camera about three feet off the ground, but this is false. What Ozu keeps constant is the perceived ratio of camera height to the subject. This permits a narrow but nuanced range of camera positions, making every subject occupy the same sector of each shot. Similarly, most of Ozu’s films employ camera movements, but these are also schematized to a rare degree. Far form being an ascetic director, Ozu was quite virtuosic, but within self-imposed limits. His style revealed cast possibilities within a narrow compass. Ozu’s compositions relied on the fixed camera-subject relation, adopting angles that stand at multiples of 45 degrees. He employed sharp perspectival depth; the view down a corridor or street is common. Ozu enjoyed playing with the positions of objects within the frame, often rearranging props from shot to shot for the sake of minute shifts. In the color films, a shot will be enhanced by a fleck of bright and deep color, often red; this from The St. James World Film Directors Encyclopedia. Ed. accent will migrate around the film, returning as an abstract Andrew Sarris. Visible Ink Detroit 1998. “Ozu” by David motif in scene after scene. Bordwell Ozu’s use of editing is no less idiosyncratic. In Throughout his career, Yasujiro Ozu worked in the opposition to the 180-degree space of Hollywood cinema, Ozu mainstream film industry. Obedient to his role, loyal to his studio employed a 460-degree approach to filming a scene. This (the mighty Shochiku), he often compared himself to the tofu “circular” shooting space yields a series of what Western cinema salesman, offering nourishing but supremely ordinary wares. For would consider incorrect matches of actions and eyelines. While some critics his greatness stems from his resulting closeness to such devices creep up in the work of other Japanese filmmakers, the everyday realities of Japanese life. Yet since his death only Ozu used them so rigorously—to undermine our another critical perspective has emerged. This modest understanding of total space, to liken characters, and to create conservative has come to be recognized as one of the most abstract graphic patterns. Ozu’s shots of objects or empty locales formally intriguing filmmakers in the world, a director who extend the concept of the Western “cutaway”; he will use them extended the genre he worked within and developed a rich and not for narrative information but for symbolic purposes or for unique cinematic style. temporal prolongation. Since Ozu abjured the use of fades and Ozu enriched this “home drama” genre in several ways. dissolves, cutaways often stand for such punctuation. And He strengthened the pathos of family crisis by suggesting that because of the unusually precise compositions and cutting, Ozu many of them arose from causes beyond the control of the was able to create a sheer graphic play with the screen surface, individual. In the 1930s works, this often led to strong criticism “matching” contours and regions of one shot with those of the of social forces like industrialization, bureaucratization, and next. Japanese “paternalistic” capitalism. In later films, causes of Ozu’s work remains significant not only for its domestic strife tended to be assigned to a mystical super-nature. extraordinary richness and emotional power, but also because it This “metaphysical” slant ennobled the character tribulations by suggests the extent to which a filmmaker working in popular placing even the most trivial action in a grand scheme. The mass-production filmmaking can cultivate a highly individual melancholy resignation that is so pronounced in Tokyo Story and approach to film form and style. An Autumn Afternoon constituted a recognition of a cycle of nature that society can never control. from Yasujiro Ozu A Critical Anthology. Edited by John To some extent, the grandiose implications of this Gillett and David Wilson, BFI 1976: Robin Wood: “Tokyo process are qualified by a homely virtue: comedy. Story” Ozu had one of the most distinctive visual styles in the The film [ Tokyo Story ] is pervaded by a profound cinema. Although critics have commonly attributed this to the sense of the inherent unsatisfactoriness of life, of the discrepancy influence of other directors or to traditions of Japanese art, these between a person’s human qualities and what his life actually Ozu—TOKYO STORY—9

gloriam. These scenes, although undeniably great, are clearly imposed from without by Mizoguchi. One of the basic tenets of Japanese art is that it be artless art: the artistry must come from within the work. As for Mizoguchi’s themes, they, too, are not uniquely Japanese: for instance Max Ophuls’ Letter from an Unknown Woman is a very Mizoguchian film. All this is not to say that Ozu is necessarily better than Mizoguchi or Kurosawa, but it does say that one must bring a new set of values to bear in discussing Ozu’s art. The criteria that one must use for Ozu should be those of Japanese art and not cinematic art. If one is unsympathetic to Japanese art, one will probably be unsympathetic to Ozu. But if one considers Japanese art on the same level as European art, then Ozu’s art will become more lucid and more profound. R.H. Blyth wrote that the placing of Japanese literature on an equal standing with European literature is contingent upon the consideration of Bashô on the same level with Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, and Homer. I further contend that if one does indeed accept Bashô in this way, then by considering Ozu with respect to Bashô —and Bashô is Ozu’s creative ancestor rather than D.W. Griffith—one will come to the conclusion that Ozu is the finest artist to use the film as a medium.

The basic idea behind Japanese art is Zen. Zen is the immediate and therefore inexpressible individual experience whose aim is inner enlightenment. D.T. Suzuki has stated that amounts to. We see that the parents have retained the image of “Zen is not subject to logical analysis or to intellectual treatment. their children as they were before they left for Tokyo and It must be directly and personally experienced by each of us in become embroiled in the struggle for day to day survival, with his inner spirit.” Art is the form-language of the human soul. The the resulting inability to see beyond the stresses of the moment. soul tries to disclose through art beauty—the revealing principle Only at the mother’s death and the sequences following it do we of the cosmos. This beauty is found in the mu (roughly translated see where Ozu has been leading us with his quiet accumulation as nothingness). If one can penetrate the mu, then one can of scenes. Not only the meaning of her own life is called into achieve inner enlightenment/. This beauty can be found question, but that of the lives of all the characters—the son who anywhere—in a simple flower, in a solitary cloud, in a short has grown up to be a doctor, the grandson who may grow up to poem. The revelation of beauty is the goal of art. be one. “Isn’t life disappointing?” bitterly asks Kyoko, the youngest child of Noriko, the widow of the son killed in the war. David Bordwell: “Tokyo Story: Compassionate Detachment” After the others have all left. The older woman sadly agrees. (Criterion notes) “Isn’t life disappointing?” sums up the action of the When Tokyo Story was released in late 1953, Western film, but is not its last word. We feel that Kyoko has learnt from audiences were just being exposed to Japanese cinema. Akira her experience, and learnt more than disillusionment, because the Kurosawa had made his breakthrough with three years experience has included Noriko; and is a teacher. . . .We earlier, and was moving to the forefront of the recognise the perfect marriage of theme and style: by means of international festival scene. In 1955, Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate his style, Ozu communicates to the spectator precisely that of Hell would win two Academy Awards. The time would have detached consideration, the seeing of events in a wider been ripe for a very different sort of Japanese film to arrive on perspective, which he regards as a prerequisite of successful the global stage. Yet Yasujiro Ozu remained unknown abroad, human relations. Of this most of his characters are quite chiefly because decision-makers considered him “too Japanese” incapable, but it is embodied in the character of Noriko. to be exported. Although other Ozu films were shown sporadically in Marvin Zeman: “The Zen Artistry of Yasujiro Ozu” Europe and the UK, it was Tokyo Story that broke the barrier. In my opinion, what the other great Japanese directors, There were screenings here and there in the mid-1950s, an award Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, have created is part of Western art from the in 1958, and programs organized (film) rather than Japanese art. Kurosawa, for instance, is for the by Donald Richie, throughout his life our great champion of most part a Western artist since even his themes are similar to Japanese cinema. Then the film opened in New York in 1972, those dealt with in the West, to say nothing of his technique. . . . coinciding with the publication of Paul chrader’s Transcendental Mizoguchi’s art, while dealing with Japanese themes, must also Style in Film, and it won the hearts of influential critics. When be considered Western: what one remembers from a Mizoguchi Richie’s Ozu was published two years later, critics came to film is, most often, purely cinematic—the rippling of the water realize that this quiet filmmaker was one of cinema’s finest after Anju’s suicide in Sansho Dayo, the boat emerging from the artists. In the 1992 and 2002 Sight & Sound international critics’ fog in , the death scene in Yang Kwei Fei, ad infinitum, ad polls, Tokyo Story was ranked as one of the ten greatest films Ozu—TOKYO STORY—10 ever made. In the 2012 poll, it came in third, mother-in-law, Tomi, will die, so she is unprepared. Who can say behind Vertigo and Citizen Kane. that pragmatism is less virtuous than innocence? Jane Austen, The capricious way in which this work entered world Anton Chekhov—these are the artists who come to mind when film culture might make us suspect that its renown is accidental. we confront a story told through such tactful revelations of Surely Late Spring (1949) and Early Summer (1951), to cite only temperament and states of mind. Yet there is nothing soft about two examples, are no less Ozu’s tact, which can be excellent. Ozu himself hinted astringent. “What a treat,” at a reservation: “This is one of reflects Tomi, “to sleep in my my most melodramatic dead son’s bed.” pictures.” But Tokyo Story is in Tokyo Story also fact a generous introduction to exemplifies Ozu’s unique his distinct world. It contains style—low camera height, in miniature a great many of 180 degree cuts, virtually no the qualities that enchant his camera movements, and shots admirers and move audiences linked through overlapping to tears. bits of space. In dialogue There is, first of all, scenes, Ozu seldom cuts away the mundane story. Ozu and from a speaking character. It’s his scriptwriter, Kogo Noda, as if every person has the often centered their plots right to be heard in full. In around getting a daughter other films, he deploys his married, a situation through distinctive techniques more which an array of characters’ playfully, but here he seems lives could be revealed. chiefly concerned with But Tokyo Story lacks even this minimal plot drive; it carries to creating a quiet world against which his characters’ personalities the limit Ozu’s faith that everyday life, rendered tellingly, can stand out. provides more than enough drama to engage us deeply. An The same delicate poise emerges in a refusal to tilt the elderly couple leave the tiny town of Onomichi to visit their scales. It would be easy to sentimentalize the father, Shukichi, children and grandchildren. Inevitably, they trouble their hosts; for instance, but when he staggers back drunk from his reunion, inevitably, they feel guilty; inevitably, the children cut corners Shige remarks that he’s reverted to his old ways. The implication and neglect them. In the course of the trip, the old folks become is that his carousing once caused family problems. (This aware of both the virtues and vanities of their offspring. On the resonates after Tomi’s death: “If I had known things would come train ride home, the mother is stricken, and shortly thereafter, she to this, I’d have been kinder to her while she was alive.”) The dies. This simple arc of action conceals a strong and cunning warmhearted Noriko confesses to forgetting occasionally about structure. her dead husband, measuring herself against a cruelly high After leaving their youngest child, Kyoko, behind in standard. Likewise, most of the siblings aren’t deeply selfish, just Onomichi, the Hirayamas are shown visiting their other children, preoccupied and caught up in the lives they have made for in descending birth order. First they stay with Koichi and his themselves. Even Shige, whom Western viewers are inclined to family, then with Shige and hers, then with Noriko (the widow of censure, surprises us with her sudden, copious, utterly sincere their third-born child), and finally with young Keizo in . burst of tears at her mother’s death; and her harsh edges are Offscreen, they have already visited Keizo first, en route to mitigated by the fact that she’s played by Haruko Sugimura, one Tokyo, but Ozu and Noda portray only their stopover during of Japan’s most beloved female performers. their return trip—partly to allow us to form expectations about Thanks to Ozu’s compassionate detachment, the final how hospitable their youngest son will be, but also to respect the scenes take on enormous richness of feeling, as we watch family-tree structure. (Ozu had experimented with this device in characters contemplate their futures. Noriko smilingly says to his first extended-family film, 1941’s The Brothers and Sisters of Kyoko, “Isn’t life disappointing?”; Shukichi assures Noriko that the Toda Family.) she must remarry; the neighbor jovially warns Shukichi that now This patterning would seem overneat were it not he’ll be lonely. Yet the momentous revelations are tempered by carefully buried in a wealth of details of gesture and speech, from the poetic resonance of everyday acts and objects. Shukichi the frantic energy of the grandsons (one whistles the theme from greets a beautiful sunrise—signaling another day of brisk fanning John Ford’s Stagecoach) to the plaintiveness of three elderly and plucking at one’s kimono. An ordinary wristwatch links fathers fretting over their sons’ failures. Again and again, mother, daughter, and daughter-in-law in a lineage of hard- personalities emerge through concise comparisons. The earned feminine wisdom. And the roar of the train headed back businesswoman Shige is hardheaded enough to pack a funeral to Tokyo dies down, leaving only the throbbing of a boat in the kimono for the trip home, but it never occurs to Noriko that her bay.

Ozu—TOKYO STORY—11

COMING UP IN IN THE SPRING 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXVI February 27 Fred Zinnemann, High Noon 1952 March 6 Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, Singin’ in the Rain 1952 March 13 Satyajit Ray, The Big City 1963 March 27 Ingmar Bergman, Persona 1966 April 3 Ousman Sembène, Black Girl 1966 April 10 Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon 1975 April 17 Robert Bresson, L’Argent 1983 April 24 David Lynch, Mulholland Drive 2001 May 1 Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 2017 May 8 Jacques Demy, The Young Girls of Rochefort 1967

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Ozu’s grave with the kanji character mu (void)