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 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 roughly divided by WWII

• Prewar phase – metteur-en-scène phase:

• comedies, farces, genre films (sho-shimin geki = ‘common people’s drama’), even detective films.

Ozu’s films

• His distinctive themes and styles began to emerge around 1936. Ozu returned to Japan in 1946 after spending war years in Singapore, and his themes and styles were his fixed signature in the post-war era.

Ozu’s Mature Films

• The Late Spring (Banshun: 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 (Bakushu’u: 1951) - Story about Noriko who is 28 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 (Tokyo Monogatari1953)- An elderly couple 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 (Higan Bana: 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 (San’ma no Aji: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.)

• Assemble 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 national 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.

So Japanese and So Universal

• “If in our century, something sacred still existed, if there were something like a sacred treasure of the cinema, then for me that would have to be the work of the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu…

So Japanese and So Universal

• For me never before and never again since has the cinema been so close to its essence and its purpose: to present an image of man in our century, a usable, true and valid image in which he not only recongnises himself, but from which, above all, he may learn about himself.”

• Wim Wenders, Film Director

So Japanese and So Universal • Admiration and accolades from film directors all

over the world• Influence on a large number of people• Considered as one of the greatest film directors

and auteurs in the 20th century because of his film contents and film styles

• British Film Institute Sight and Sound Directors’ 10 Best Films of All Time 2012

• Critics’ 10 Best Films of All Time

So Japanese and So Universal

• Aki Kaurismaki, Finish film director tribute 1

• Hou Hsiao Hien, Taiwanese film director tribute 2

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

Ozu as Auteur

• Other actors frequently appeared in Ozu’s films

• Sugimura Haruko and Yamamura So