Ozu Yasujiro

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Ozu Yasujiro

• The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

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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.

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Very Short Biography

• Failed exams for university but managed to secure
  employment in a small local primary school.
• Through his family connection, he entered
  Shochiku Studios as an assistant cameraman in
  1923.

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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.

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Ozus Films

• Ozu survived transformations of cinema - silent ?
  talkie ? colour
• Two phases divided by WWII.
• Prewar phase - comedies, farces, genre films
  (sho-shimin geki common peoples drama), even
  detective films.

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Ozus 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.

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Ozus 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 pursuing further study in higher schools.
• His mother sacrifice everything for her
  education.
• Many years later she visits him in Tokyo to find
• that to her disappointment he is a mere night
  school
• teacher. (????)

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Ozus Mature Films

• There Was a Father
• (????, 1942)
• During a school trip, a
• widowed high-school
• teacher let one of his students die in a rowing
  boat accident.
• He gives up his profession 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.

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Ozus Mature Films

• The Late Spring (??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
  ruse to entice his daughter to get married,
  though this inevitably means a separation.

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Ozus Mature Films

• Early Summer (??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 everybodys surprise she
  suddenly announces that she will marry a widower
  with children.

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Ozus Mature Films

• Tokyo Story (????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, Tomi is taken ill and dies
  without recovering her consciousness.

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Ozus Mature Films

• Equinox Flower (???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.

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Ozus Mature Films

• An Autumn Afternoon (?????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.

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Ozus Themes and Motifs

• Plot is almost completely eliminated his
  narrative centres on domestic relationships,
  universal 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.

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Ozus Themes and Motifs

• Hirayama (fathers sir name) - An Autumn
  Afternoon, Equinox Flower, Tokyo Story,
• Noriko (daughters first name) - Early Autumn,
  Tokyo Story, Early Summer, Late Spring
• Akiko (daughters first name) - An Autumn
  Afternoon, The End of Summer,
• Koichi (sons first name) - An Autumn Afternoon,
  Tokyo Story

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Ozus 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.

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Ozus Themes and Motifs

• Ozus 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.

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Ozus 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 Ozus themes and motifs
• Ozus films very Japanese yet very universal.

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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
  latters 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.

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Ozu as Auteur

• The same crew - Ozu gumi (Ozu team)
• Noda Kogo (scriptwriter)
• Atsuta Yuharu (photographer)

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Ozu as Auteur

• Hara Setsuko (1920 - ) Ozus favourite actress
• Ryu Chishu (1904 - 1993) - Appears in most of
  Ozus films from The Only Son to An Autumn
  Afternoon