Ozu Yasujiro

Ozu Yasujiro
‘The Extraordinary in the Ordinary’
Very Short Biography
• Ozu Yasujiro - b. in Tokyo
12 December, 1903 - d. in
Tokyo, 12 December,
1963
• Born as a son of the head
clerk of a wealthy
merchant.
• Brought up in Matsuzaka,
where his father comes
from.
• Wild childhood and love
of cinema.
Very Short Biography
• Failed in university
exams but found
employment in a small
local primary school.
• Through his family
connection, he entered
Shochiku Studios as an
assistant cameraman in
1923.
Very Short Biography
• Since The Sword of Penitence (1927) to An
Autumn Afternoon (1962), Ozu made 54 films
(only 36 survived).
• No films during WWII
• After the war (1947), he made one film a year.
Ozu’s Films
• Ozu survived
transformations of cinema
- silent  talkie  colour
• Two phases divided by
WWII
• Prewar phase - comedies,
farces, genre films (shoshimin geki = ‘common
people’s drama’), even
detective films.
Ozu’s films
• His distinctive theme and style began to emerge
around 1936. Ozu returned to Japan in 1946 after
spending war years in Singapore, and his theme
and style were fixed ever since.
Ozu’s Mature Films
• The Only Son (1936)
• A widowed mother raises
her only son, who has turned
out to be very bright but
found his family too poor
for him to study in higher schools. His mother
sacrifices everything to give him education.
Many years later she visits him in Tokyo to find
that to her disappointment he is a mere night-school
teacher. (一人息子）
Ozu’s Mature Films
• There Was a Father
(父ありき, 1942)
• During a school trip, a
widowed high-school
teacher let one of his students die in a boat accident.
He gives up his job but finds it difficult to
earn enough to educate his son. He goes to Tokyo
leaving behind his son in order to find a better paid
job. His son completes his education and becomes a
local high-school teacher while his father continues to
work in Tokyo.
Ozu’s Mature Films
• The Late Spring (晩春1949) - Story about the relationship
between a widowed professor and his only daughter who is
reluctant to get married because she would rather stay with
father looking after him. The professor successfully devises
a trick to entice his daughter to get married, though this
inevitably means their separation.
Ozu’s Mature Films
• Early Summer (麥秋1951) - Story about Noriko who is
twenty-eight years old and generally considered that she has
passed her prime time for marriage. Her family and family
friends try to introduce some men, but to everybody’s
surprise, she suddenly announces that she will marry a
widower with children.
Ozu’s Mature Films
• Tokyo Story (東京物語1953)- It is about an elderly couple
from the province who visit their children in Tokyo but are
rather unkindly treated by them. Only their daughter-in-law
(war widow) provides them with genuine care and spiritual
relief. On their way back home, their mother is taken ill and
dies without recovering her consciousness.
Ozu’s Mature Films
• Equinox Flower (彼岸花1958) - a successful middle-age
businessman has two daughters. He proposes an arranged
marriage for his elder daughter with a man from a
politically influential family. The younger daughter
declares that she only marries out of love. Despite of his
progressive statement about relationship, their father refuses
his consent to the marriage of her elder daughter to a man
that he does not know.
Ozu’s Mature Films
• An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚の味1962) - a widowed
father lives with his only daughter who has reached a
marriageable age. His colleague approaches him with a
prospective match but he delays mentioning it to her. His
chance meeting with his former high-school teacher and his
daughter who remains unmarried in order to take care of her
father makes him decide to spare his own daughter from
falling into the same miserable fate.
Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
• Plot is almost completely eliminated; his narrative
centres on domestic relationships, events in a family
- birth, growing up, falling in love, marriage, aging
and death, and character studies. (Plot = a
narrative devise to render a strong emotional or
artistic effect.)
• Assemblage of similar characters - middle-class,
lower middle-class parents or (widowed) parent,
children in their late twenties or thirties, who are
ready for marrying.
Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
• Hirayama (father’s sir name) - An Autumn
Afternoon, Equinox Flower, Tokyo Story,
• Noriko (daughter’s first name) - Early Autumn,
Tokyo Story, Early Summer, Late Spring
• Akiko (daughter’s first name) - An Autumn
Afternoon, The End of Summer,
• Koichi (son’s first name) - An Autumn Afternoon,
Tokyo Story
Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
• Similar narrative settings - a household in
which parents and children live together.
Children are ready to marry. Parents and
children face the problems of separation and
aging. Their settings are Tokyo or its
suburbs (Kamakura). Working in office and
commuting.
Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
• Ozu’s mature films - a record of slow, gradual
metamorphosis of the Japanese society and
family.
- the slow disintegration of family
- the gradual decline of identity
• Mild criticism or regret against social, economic
and cultural changes and western influence.
• Subtle nostalgia - from distanced and
dispassionate positions his films depict what
Japan has lost or is losing.
Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
• His films examine the struggles in the cycles of
birth, growth, aging and death so essential to
human beings;
• Pains in the transition from childhood to
adulthood;
*Small conflicts between the young and the old;
*The tension between tradition and progression
• Universality of Ozu’s themes and motifs
Ozu’s films very Japanese yet very universal.
Ozu as Auteur
• Complete grip on filmmaking in every stage
• Mr. Ozu looked happiest when he was engaged in
writing a scenario with Mr. Kogo Noda, at the
latter’s cottage on the tableland of Nagano
Prefecture. By the time he finished writing a
script, after about four months’ effort, he had
already made up every image in every shot, so
that he never changed the scenario after we went
on the set. The words were so polished up that he
would not allow us even a single mistake.
Ozu as Auteur
• The same crew - Ozu gumi (Ozu team)
• Noda Kogo (scriptwriter)
• Atsuta Yuharu (photographer)
Ozu as Auteur
• Hara Setsuko (1920 - ) Ozu’s favourite actress
• Ryu Chishu (1904 - 1993) - Appears in most of
Ozu’s films from The Only Son to An Autumn
Afternoon

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