Ozu International: Essays on the Global Influences of a Japanese Auteur 9781628922875, 9781501304743, 9781628922882

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Ozu International

Ozu International Essays on the Global Influences of a Japanese Auteur Edited by Wayne Stein and Marc DiPaolo

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Wayne Stein, Marc DiPaolo, and Contributors, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ozu international : essays on the global influences of a Japanese auteur / edited by Wayne Stein and Marc DiPaolo. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-62892-287-5 (hb : alk. paper) 1. Ozu, Yasujiro, 1903-1963–Criticism and interpretation. I. Stein, Wayne, editor. II. Di Paolo, Marc, editor. PN1998.3.O98O85 2015 791.4302’33092 – dc23 2014040133 ISBN: HB: 978-1-6289-2287-5 PB: 978-1-5013-2004-0 ePub: 978-1-6289-2289-9 ePDF: 978-1-6289-2288-2 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain

For Andrea and Lee-Shawn –Wayne For Michael Shugrue –Marc

Contents Preface: Ozu, Ray Carney, and the Problem of Ethical Spectatorship Marc DiPaolo Acknowledgments Introduction

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Part One Ozu in Cultural Context: Considering Class, Gender, and Domestic Spaces 1

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Tokyo Is a Nice Place: The Suburban, the Urban, and the Space in Between in Early Ozu John Berra Vanished Men, Complex Women: Gender, Remembrance, and Reform in Ozu’s Postwar Films Mauricio F. Castro Tokyo Twilight: Alienation, Belonging, and the Fractured Family Elyssa Faison A Sensitivity to Things: Mono no aware in Late Spring and Equinox Flower J. M. Hammond

Part Two 5 6 7

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Ozu’s International Reception and Influences

Too Slow to Handle? Ozu, Malick, and the Art-House Family Drama 93 Isolde Vanhee Good Morning: The Limits of Cinema and the Issue of Order Suzanne Beth 115 In Yoko’s Room: Hou, Ozu, and the Poetics of Space Tom Paulus 133

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The Representation of Time as Death: Authentic Being in Tokyo Story and Last Year at Marienbad Jack Lichten

Afterword: The Samsara of Ozu Cinema—Death and Rebirth in Our Daily Struggles Wayne Stein About the Contributors A Mantra of Liberation Wayne Stein Index

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Preface: Ozu, Ray Carney, and the Problem of Ethical Spectatorship Marc DiPaolo

In The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World (2000), controversial film scholar Ray Carney cites Yasujiro Ozu as a central creative influence on Mike Leigh and draws parallels between the stylistic and narrative concerns of the Japanese and British directors. Both auteurs craft character-driven stories set in the domestic spheres of their homelands; grant dramatic weight to the perspectives of multiple, parallel characters instead of privileging one protagonist’s worldview, and create the illusion that narrative time unfolds in a manner that mimics the viewer’s real-world experience of time (76, 108, 117, 206). Most importantly, Carney suggests, both men are comicrealist filmmakers: The dramatic potential of a fundamentally “light” or playful relation to experience is something Leigh could have learned from … Ozu. Both Leigh’s and Ozu’s styles embody essentially comical or “loose” relationships to their own material that overlap with the comical, playful, or “loose” attitudes of their own most interesting characters. They hold experience lightly. It would, in fact, be not too much to argue that this Mozartian tone is Ozu’s supreme gift to cinema (even though any notice of it has been almost completely omitted from the tone-deaf writings of commentators like David Bordwell) (Bordwell 1988, 193–194).

Though this biting dismissal of Bordwell’s Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (Bordwell 1988) seems argumentative, humor is, indeed, central to Ozu’s oeuvre, and scholars on the whole do tend to undervalue or fail to discern humor in art. Still worse than being humorless, Carney contends, academic writers on filmmakers such as Ozu tend to be misguided ideologues. Carney’s scholarly project is concerned primarily with identifying a small handful of directors like Ozu and Leigh—including Tarkovsky and

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Cassevetes—who make humanistic films that encourage viewers to perceive the world directly instead of viewing it through an ideological lens. Since the explosion of dogmatic thinking is central to these filmmakers’ artistic aims, Carney contends, scholars who come to those directors eager to apply dogmatic thinking to their films via the application of a theoretical or cultural studies reading to a filmic text are missing the point. Cultural studies critics violently reduce the films of both Leigh and Ozu to simple ideological thesis statements in a piece of academic writing and, in the process, lay waste to the noble, carefully constructed humanism of the films. Therefore, Carney would argue, those who come to Ozu’s films with a viewing methodology already in place have never merely watched the films or experienced them the way Ozu and other humanistic filmmakers intended their movies to be experienced. While Carney goes too far decrying all forms of cultural studies scholarship—and while he would certainly hate my cultural studies writings— there is something to what he argues. Certainly, in “Against Readings” (Edmundson 2009), Mark Edmundson voiced similar complaints about ideologically motivated readings finding exactly what they set out to find, making every text functionally the same, and closing off more interesting avenues of thought than they open. In the Edmundson vein, Carney’s seemingly naïve approach is humanistic, focuses on the ways in which international films cross cultural boundaries to speak to global audiences, and owes much to an outmoded species of literary criticism I was taught to embrace as an undergraduate—New Criticism. The New Criticism approach to literature emphasizes careful reading, respect for language and craft, and wallows in the experience of the text itself, but it is a limited and somewhat conservative approach to the experience of reading. Quite possibly, Carney’s model viewer of Ozu would be the late film critic Roger Ebert. Ebert felt that Ozu was underappreciated in the Unites States and did what he could to draw attention to one of his favorite directors by underlining the accessibility, dramatic power, and universal appeal of Ozu’s movies. Anyone could relate to Ozu’s characters, Ebert explained in “Saluting a Master of the Cinema, Yasujiro Ozu” (1993):

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We are programmed to think in terms of “foreign films,” as if somehow their values are just as foreign as their languages. With Ozu, that is not the case. Last winter I taught a class on the greatest films of all time, as selected in an international poll held every 10 years by Sight & Sound magazine. One of the films was Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953). Most of the class members hadn’t seen an Ozu film before, and were not necessarily looking forward to it, so I was surprised by the intensity of their response. As Ozu’s story unfolded, telling of the old couple who come to visit their children and are received correctly but distractedly, there was first of all complete silence in the auditorium, and then I began to hear snuffling and the blowing of noses, and when the movie was over and the lights went up it was clear that for many of the viewers it had been a powerful emotional experience. Weeks later, when the class ended, it was agreed that none of the other “greatest films” had equaled the Ozu in its emotional impact. There is an irony there, because for many years Ozu was considered by Japan’s film authorities to be “too Japanese” to be understood by Western audiences.

By focusing on the “reader-response” or viewer response watching an Ozu film in the here and now, Ebert’s Ozu is alive in the present and his work has visceral immediacy. This Ozu is the maker of movies more than a halfcentury old that can make young people cry. In contrast, Louis Giannetti’s Understanding Movies—a standard first-year film studies textbook since the 1970s—uses Ozu as an example of a brilliant-for-his-time, conservative filmmaker whose work seems tame compared to the more stylistically adventurous films made by David Lynch, John Waters, or Jean-Luc Godard. Ozu is, literally, Giannetti’s textbook example of old school, especially in comparison to the more modern Kurosawa (Giannetti 2002, 485). The lefthanded compliment paints Ozu, essentially, as that Japanese fellow who always makes movies about fathers who are sad after their daughters marry and leave them alone in their empty house drinking saké, waiting for death, while the camera sits filming their pain at the level of the tatami mat. These fathers probably wanted to arrange their daughters’ marriages, but their young, rebellious offspring went and married for love and rejected their superior, traditional, non-American values.

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That is the textbook, “old school” Ozu stereotype. There is a measure of truth in it. We all know why that memorable image of Chishu Ryu sitting alone is iconic, whatever iteration of it we call to mind first. Indeed, this anthology even contains an essay by J. M. Hammond that offers a trenchant analysis of the iconic image. Still, we do not want the apparition of lonely Chishu Ryu to loom so large in our memories that it engulfs all other Ozu visuals—that it seems to us as if it is the only moment Ozu ever filmed. This powerful, memorable moment should not cause us to forget that Ozu also made college comedies and gangster films, as well as other movies that break this mold, such as Floating Weeds and Good Morning. It would be better to have a broader view of the Ozu filmography or a more emotional reaction to the first film you have seen of his at Ebert’s screening than to understand too quickly how Ozu is reacting like any traditionalist would in the face of occupying American forces imposing their will on Japanese cultural mores—with an uncomplicated nostalgia for the Japan of his youth. This is the kind of conception of Ozu’s worldview that film studies 101 textbooks encourage undergraduates to embrace.

Figure 1 In Tokyo Chorus (Tokyo no korasu, 1931), heroic salaryman Shinji Okajima (Tokihiko Okada) angrily confront his boss (Reiko Tani) over the ruthless firing of an elderly colleague close to retirement.

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“I’d rather people feel a film, before understanding it,” Robert Bresson said, and I agree with him. The question then arises, once one has truly felt a film, how does one go about understanding it? My problem with Carney’s take on ethnical spectatorship is not that he objects to understanding a film too soon, or that he tries to judge the film on its own terms. My problem is that he suggests there is never the right time to consider the biography of the filmmaker or the cultural context, and that just seems too dogmatically rigid an approach to take. Once I have watched Tokyo Chorus (1931) and been first moved by the father’s heroism standing up to his employer on behalf of a wrongfully fired colleague, then saddened and horrified by his being fired as well, and descending rapidly into dire poverty, and kept in great suspense over what will happen to him and his family—well … once I have done this, am I then to be chided for wanting to learn more about the role of the salaryman in Japanese society in the 1930s? Is it not understandable for me to want to discover what was happening in Ozu’s life when he made the film, and therefore consult Donald Ritchie’s Ozu: His Life and Films (1977) and the documentary I Lived, But … (1983)? Carney sees cultural criticism as morally suspect, possibly because he sees its potential to reduce a director like Ozu to his race, or gender, or generation, much the way that psychoanalytic critics might sometimes go too far into reducing a subject of study—who happens to be a human being—to a diagnosis or label. Perhaps Carney is responding negatively to the strain of racism that he sees as nascent in any attempt at examining Ozu as a “Japanese director.” However, that racism can just as easily rear its head in a reading that attempts to be completely color-blind and erase all cultural difference. Since color-blindness is a near impossible ideal to achieve, failed color-blindness often amounts to “whitewashing.” Taking any philosophy to its ultimate extreme means making it inhuman, so Carney’s “New Criticism” style approach, carried too far, amounts to whitewashing and willful blindness, while the cultural studies approach, carried too far, amounts to reducing subjects to labels and cultural signifiers. While adherents of one school of film/literature criticism disdain the adherents of the other, both schools are necessary to keep one another honest. Cultural Studies picks up where New Criticism leaves off and New Criticism insists

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that Cultural Studies not leave the text behind or warp it into something it is not just to prove some kind of ideological point. I would argue that the solution to the problem of ethical spectatorship would be to acknowledge that all of the scholars discussed above have explored one aspect of the truth of the best way to experience film—and Ozu—and have taken that aspect as far as they can go with it. They are all right, but they are all become wrong at the moment they begin to mock one another’s concerns, as the concerns of both “camps” are valid. To understand Ozu, and to understand any film, one must fully experience it emotionally and spiritually, one must be able to find meaning in it (if not a message or moral with a bow on it), and one must be aware of the technical and artistic aspects of the filmmaking process and the means by which the filmmakers crafted the final product we see before us. In What to Listen for in Music (1988), Aaron Copland writes that, “we all listen to music according to our separate capacities,” (Copland 1998, 440) but that there are, arguably, three ways of listening to music. The simplest listening method, the sensuous plane, stimulates emotion and spiritual feelings, fostering escapism from the pains of life, putting listeners in a dreamlike state—“dreaming because of and apropos of the music yet never quite listening to it” (441). This plane of listening, Copland says, is the one most abused by laymen. The second plane, the expressive, is the level at which the listener finds meaning in the music, but that meaning may be difficult to express in words and it may not satisfy other listeners because it does not gel with the meaning that they have found in the music. But that is the normal state of things. “And if it is a great work of art, don’t expect it to mean exactly the same thing to you each time you return to it” (443). Of course, “in order to follow the line of the composer’s thought, [the listener] must know something of the principles of musical form,” (444) Copland argues, and that involves listening on the third level—the sheerly musical plane. Laymen often do not know enough about “the melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the tone colors” (443) to listen on this plane, and music composers and performers sometimes become so preoccupied by the sheerly musical plane that they neglect listening on the sensuous and expressive planes.

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What Copland argues is that, while we may be predisposed to listen to music sensuously or expressively or on the sheerly musical plane, the ideal listener does all at once. In a sense, the ideal listener is both inside and outside the music at the same moment, judging it and enjoying it, wishing it would go one way and watching it go another—almost like the composer at the moment he composes it; because in order to write his music, the composer must also be inside and outside his music; carried away by it and yet coldly critical of it. A subjective and objective attitude is implied in both creating and listening to music (444).

I would argue that it is the world’s simplest mental exercise to translate Copland’s observations about listening to music properly into advice for how to experience movies properly. Ebert would have likely objected to being called the champion of watching Ozu on the “sensual” plane—because that plane could be dismissed easily as the domain of the naïve film viewer— but he makes the best argument for how and why one should enjoy Ozu on that level. Also, Ebert very effectively challenges Ozu’s on-again-off-again reputation as a boring, conservative filmmaker who would never inspire “sensual” enjoyment in any modern viewer. That is not to say that Ebert is ignorant of the expressive plane of Ozu’s films, or the sheerly filmic. Of course, he is aware of them and has written of them. Carney has staked a claim to being one of the few critics capable of truly grasping the expressive plain of Ozu (and filmmakers like him) without reducing Ozu’s meaning to a one-sentence-thesis-statement-in-a-Cultural-Studies-academic-essay. However, cultural critics, deconstructionists, and film theory scholars alike have just as much right to tread upon the expressive plane of Ozu criticism as Carney, whatever “Keep Out” signposts he sticks on the grass near Ozu. Finally, other filmmakers, film theorists, and industry historians often focus their attention on all that makes Ozu sheerly filmic and look to him as a director who is an expert in his craft. All of these scholarly approaches to Ozu have merit, and all of these approaches will be found in this interdisciplinary scholarly anthology on Ozu.

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If the ideal music listener can best appreciate music by being both emotionally involved with it and intellectually engaged with it, then the ideal film viewer is both inside and outside the film when experiencing it. The essays in this book examine Ozu’s film canon within the time and place they were made as well as look at how the narratives change when the films are removed from their original cultural context by being viewed overseas or after the passage of many years’ time. Some essays focus more on Japanese cultural history, others more on film theory, and still others examine Ozu’s philosophical and psychological truths from yet another disciplinary standpoint. As editors of this anthology, Wayne Stein and Marc DiPaolo do not favor one of these approaches to Ozu over another. What we favor is an awareness of the richness of the cinematic experience that Ozu provides us. These essays, collectively, show us just how much there is still left for Ozu to teach us today.

Bibliography Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Carney, Raymond and Leonard Quart. The Films of Mike Leigh: Embracing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Copland, Aaron. “How We Listen to Music.” Excerpt from What to Listen For in Music, reprinted in The Conscious Reader. 7th ed., Edited by Caroline Shrodes and Michael Shugrue, 440–445. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 1998. Desser, David, ed. Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Ebert, Roger. “Saluting a Master of the Cinema, Yasujiro Ozu.” RogerEbert.com. Accessed July 9, 2014. http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/saluting -a-master-of-the-cinema-yasujiro-ozu. Edmundson, Mark. “Against Readings.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Accessed July 9, 2014. http://chronicle.com/article/Against-Readings/2346. Giannetti, Louis D. Understanding Movies, 9th ed., 485. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002. Ozu, Yasujiro and Kogo Noda. Tokyo Story: The Ozu/Noda Screenplay. Translated by Donald Richie and Eric Klestadt. Berkeley, Stone Bridge Press, 2003.

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Richie, Donald. Ozu. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974. Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Breyer. New York: A De Capo, 1972. Yoshida, Kiju. Ozu’s Anti-cinema. Translated by Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2003.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank our contributors for their hard work crafting essays for this anthology as well as their patience and good will as the project evolved and reached fruition. We appreciate the valuable time and feedback the following manuscript reviewers offered this project: Bryan Cardinale-Powell, Brian DiPaolo, Marc Lucht, and Catherine Webster. And we are particularly indebted to the hard work of Elyssa Faison, whose feedback as manuscript reviewer was invaluable. On top of knowing her Japanese history, language, and culture, she is just plain wonderful to work with. Eric Kuritz has also earned a warm thanks to for his hard work in securing screen captures for this text. Working on this book made Wayne appreciate growing up in Korea and Japan more. He would like thank Marc for his gentle soul, and his university for all the support he continues to receive. He is thankful to his former Japanese and Asian students, especially the former presidents of the campus Buddhist Association: Chiko, now a very humble Buddhist monk in Japan, and Veron, a very kind Buddhist nun in Taiwan. Much appreciation goes to all the martial arts teachers who taught him about Japanese culture though their own high character: Kawanabe Sensei, Sugawara Sensei, Ichimura Sensei, and Paul Frank Sensei. Much gratitude goes out to his budo brother Kirby. Special appreciation extended to Sonia for her insights, suggestions, and positive support. Finally, he would like to wish the best to his amazing babies, who are now adults in colleges, Andrea and Lee-Shawn. Namaste, blessings, and love to Jizo and, of course, to Ozu Yasujiro. Marc would also like to thank James South, the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and Keith Talley, former Chair of the Department of Music, for their friendship and support. He would like to tell his wife and children—Stacey, Quentin, and Keira—that he

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loves them and they are cute. Also, he thanks his brother Brian for introducing him to Ozu and inspiring him to pursue this project. To conclude, both editors, Wayne and Marc, would like to thank Katie Gallof, Senior Acquisitions Editor, and Mary Al-Sayed, Editorial Assistant: Literary Studies, Philosophy of Religion, and Film and Media Studies at Bloomsbury for believing in the project, helping us complete it, and putting it out into the world. W.S. and M.D.

Introduction

This book is a study of the director who made the greatest film of all time. In 2012, Sight and Sound’s poll of directors named Tokyo Story (1953) the best film ever made. Halliwell’s Film Guide has shared this sentiment. The film has grown in stature in recent years, placing among the top ten in Sight and Sound’s critics poll in 1992, 2002, and 2012. Japanese critics have joined in the chorus of praise, naming it the best Japanese film ever made (Kinemo Jumpo magazine, 2009). Considering how beloved Tokyo Story has become in critical and academic circles in recent decades, one might argue that its director, Yasujiro Ozu (1903–1963), should be more known in America than he is. One of the goals of this book is to bring greater scholarly attention to a man whose filmography deserves broader exposure and closer study than it has garnered thus far. The editors of this volume have assembled an international group of writers with diverse research interests—ranging from film and religion studies to Japanese language and cultural studies scholars—to reassess Ozu’s films. In Japan and much of Europe, the director and cowriter of such classic films as I Was Born, But … (1932), Late Spring (1949), and Tokyo Story is regarded as one of the finest auteurs who ever lived. And yet, as recently as twenty years ago, critic Roger Ebert argued that his works were remarkably underappreciated in the United States. That state of affairs has been changing steadily ever since Ebert began his campaign to get Ozu greater attention in America. Certainly, the Criterion Collection has been a great deal of help in this regard. The Collection has released a range of more than fifteen Ozu titles on DVD and Blu-ray, covering every phase of Ozu’s career at least in part, including his silent films, blackand-white talkies, and color films. Thanks to Criterion, and both paid and free digital streaming services, Ozu’s films are now available to a broader audience than ever and are ripe for (re)discovery by American film enthusiasts and Japanophiles.

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The best-known and most widely available books about Ozu— respectively written by Paul Schrader (1972), Donald Richie (1974), and David Bordwell (1988)—contain much insight into Ozu and his career, but some time has passed since their publication. A growing number of contemporary scholars have emerged to build upon the work that Richie, Schrader, and Bordwell have done—as well as challenge or finesse their perspectives. The essays in Ozu International will cover all phases of Ozu’s career, from his silent films (of which the earliest surviving is Days of Youth (Wakaki hi), 1929) through his final color film (An Autumn Afternoon, 1962). In the process, this book will give a burgeoning generation of scholars a book-length forum to advance new critical perspectives on an unfairly neglected director. These scholars have lived, studied, and taught in Belgium, Canada, China, Japan, and the United States and bring fresh, international perspectives to Ozu’s filmography. Critics featured in this anthology explore differences between the various phases in Ozu’s career and engage in the debate over whether or not his early films really have more of a “social conscience” than his later ones. They provide analysis of recurring themes and motifs in Ozu films, including alcohol use, parent–child relationships, gender relations, and transitional periods in life. Cultural studies essays explore how Ozu depicts key elements of office or “salaryman” culture, such as corporate hierarchies, retirement, commuting, and boredom. Essays in this book also consider Ozu’s distinctive approaches to directing, including his iconic low camera positions, “pillow” shots, use of color, lack of concern for continuity, and the impact of these directorial idiosyncrasies on how his films are perceived. The importance of concepts such as mu and mono no aware to understanding Ozu’s films as well as the spiritual significance of Ozu’s films in their treatment of time, impermanence, and mortality are central to several essays written from both philosophical and film theory perspectives. The scholarly works herein also address the relationship between Ozu and the contemporary directors he influences, especially Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Terrence Malick. Finally, chapters in this book consider the contemporary viewer response to Ozu, whether these viewers screen his films privately, in an art-house revival theater, or in a classroom context.

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While the essays address a wide variety of concerns and approach Ozu from starkly different methodological standpoints, they are united in their interest in moving beyond the views of Ozu as a traditionalist, regional filmmaker. Instead, the editors of this anthology and the contributors are interested in considering Ozu as more of a “world” director with international influence and appeal. This would be a subtle-yet-significant refocusing of the critical conversation about Ozu, his films, and his legacy. Consequently, this book is about, in part, what Ozu means to those living outside of Japan and to those who are interested in film narrative who are not, necessarily, Asian Studies scholars but cultural critics, philosophers, narratologists, historians, and feminists. Some of the things that make Ozu accessible to viewers outside of Japan are his interest in domestic themes and gender roles and his use of humor and artful construction of narrative time. This concept of Ozu as a world director would re-invigorate Ozu scholarship by underlying his accessibility instead of portraying him as stodgy and only comprehensible on an emotional, visceral level by Second World War generation Japanese. While it is very easy to cherry-pick essays from this book and not read them all, or to cite one as stronger than another, or to prefer one’s methodology to another, the strength of this book is the way in which the essays work together, each showing how many different ways one may approach the same gifted director and come away with a vast array of fascinating interpretations of his work. Some critics focus on situating Ozu’s films in their original cultural context, others on how Ozu’s stories might grow beyond their historical, domestic roots and appeal to international, contemporary audiences. Both scholarly approaches are valuable, both work, and both are included in this book. The essays in this book are grouped into two parts. The first, Ozu in Cultural Context: Considering Class, Gender, and Domestic Spaces, demonstrates how the director’s films respond to the concerns of specific historical moments— be they economic, legal, military, or domestic. The second, Ozu’s International Reception and Influences, is about how Ozu’s films have been viewed outside of this cultural context, how they have occasioned deliberate and accidental misreadings, inspired other filmmakers to make movies based on an

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“Ozu template,” and how they have been received by viewers as varied as international film critics and contemporary students. The first chapter, John Berra’s “Tokyo Is a Nice Place: The Suburban, the Urban and the Space In-Between in Early Ozu,” concerns the representation of urban space in the prewar films I Was Born, But … (1932), Passing Fancy (1933), and The Only Son (1936). Berra explores the urban development of Tokyo in this period while reconsidering the popular assertion that Ozu’s early films are tonally lighter than his later works. These three prewar films reveal a hidden complexity of social issues along with new evolving urban spaces of Tokyo trying to modernize in the 1930s. I Was Born, But … depicts a suburban landscape that is a hybrid of the new and old, the city and countryside. Passing Fancy represents the urban landscape, shitamachi (downtown), as “a warm atmosphere.” The Only Son represents an area in between the suburban and urban, lacking characteristics of either, exemplified by a “ramshackle housing development that merges on to an industrial wasteland.” According to Berra, these early films depict Tokyo as a place where Ozu’s characters tend to the psychic wounds caused by social, psychological, and filial hierarchies. In Chapter 2, “Vanished Men, Complex Women: Gender, Remembrance, and Reform in Ozu’s Postwar Films,” Mauricio Castro dispels Ozu’s aura of timeless detachment and engages with the social criticism in his postwar work. Castro finds that, at the time of the American occupation, Japanese identities were in flux, suggesting that any “real Japanese flavor” Ozu might have captured is, in fact, a snapshot in time that only seems timeless to outsiders. The essay contends that the historical context of postwar Japan affected social identities associated with gender in Ozu films: Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), Tokyo Story, and Equinox Flower (1958). These films reveal historically shifting cinematic spaces. Setsuko Hara, who plays the character Noriko in the first three films, represents an evolving dissolution of the expected gender roles in Japanese society. While Noriko plays a similar role of a daughter resisting marriage in both Late Spring and Early Summer, she is the widowed daughter-in-law in Tokyo Story, a model of the dutiful matriarchal figure. Finally, Equinox Flower shows the power of “reconciliation” to fight the forces of fragmentation that persist within the wounds of modernity.

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“Tokyo Twilight: Alienation, Belonging, and the Fractured Family,” by Elyssa Faison, challenges the idea that the tonal bleakness of one of Ozu’s most controversial films makes it a departure from his other work. She shows how the film’s concern with the stresses placed upon the family, and the feelings of isolation suffered by individual family members, make Tokyo Twilight very much in line with his other works. The film dramatizes broader cultural forces, such as war, Japan’s colonial legacy, and postwar legislation aimed at women, which had very real consequences in the daily lives of Japanese individuals and families in the 1950s. The fourth chapter explores the significance of mono no aware to Ozu’s films. The nebulous term has been described as meaning “the pity of things,” or an appreciation of the sadness of life. In “A Sensitivity to Things: mono no aware in Late Spring and Equinox Flower,” J.M. Hammond spins the concept around to consider new and varied ways it can be seen as playing out in Ozu’s cinema, from philosophical, political and esthetic perspectives. If at the heart of the esthetic lies a sense of resignation in the face of loss, the instability of this stance is one focus of the essay. Conversely, Hammond also seeks to reappraise Ozu’s sensitivity to the textures of the material world. In this manner, while mono no aware is often considered a passive and sometimes conservative mode of feeling, Hammond argues for, and teases out, the term’s radical potential. Chapter 5, the first chapter of the second part, Ozu’s International Reception and Influences, is Isolde Vanhee’s “Too Slow to Handle? Ozu, Malick, and the Art-House Family Drama.” Vanhee considers the significance of the seemingly left-handed compliment that Ozu’s “slowness” is part of what makes him great, placing him in stark opposition to Hollywood blockbuster films and in the company of meditative filmmakers such as Terrence Malick. Indeed, Malick is one art-house director who may be viewed as being very much like Ozu— and very much not like Ozu. Vanhee examines world directors comparable to Ozu in their narrative pacing and choice of subject matter, noting that: “In contemporary slow cinema, nostalgia for the past has become a popular way of criticizing the present.” Two specialists of slow, serious, and contemplative cinema, Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (1970–) and Hungarian Bela Tarr (1955–) are briefly examined, as is classic American filmmaker

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Douglas Sirk (1897–1987) and his species of family melodrama. However, Vanhee focuses her attention on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (2011) and compares this film to Ozu’s oeuvre, making specific reference to Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), and Tokyo Story. Suzanne Beth shows how Ozu grapples with postwar consumerism and America’s commercial influence on Japan in “Good Morning: The Limits of Cinema and the Issue of Order.” The essay builds upon the ideas put forth from Japanese author and filmmaker Kiju Yoshida, who contends that Ozu disliked films with a “predetermined” meaning that audiences are manipulated into embracing through the technical skill and dramatic trickery of the filmmakers. Though Ozu loved and was influenced by Hollywood cinema, he evolved into a filmmaker who felt that audiences deserved something more—or perhaps something less. Beth offers a close reading of Good Morning (1959), a remake of I Was Born, But … (1932), to demonstrate how Ozu trusted his audiences to make their own meanings of his work. Tom Paulus’s essay, “In Yoko’s Room: Hou, Ozu, and the Poetics of Space,” demonstrates how Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou pays tribute to Ozu while seeming to go in a very different creative direction with his film Café Lumière. Shochiku, the studio that produced Ozu’s films, commissioned Café Lumière as a celebration of Ozu’s centenary. The Taiwanese director filmed Café Lumière in Japan, striving to maintain the spirit of Ozu while adhering to his own style. The film is not a documentary about the cinema of Ozu but is an “Ozu-like” film—specifically like Tokyo Twilight. Jack Lichten’s “The Representation of Time as Death: Authentic Being in Tokyo Story and Last Year at Marienbad” argues that the creation of a coherent time-narrative, with the implication of the possibility of death, is necessary for the creation of an authentic self. Using Bergson and Deleuze to establish the concept of a flow of time, and adding Heidegger’s being-toward-death to create the authentic self, this paper then makes use of Ozu’s works to establish the authentic self and the Alain Resnais film Last Year at Marienbad (1961) to present the failure of this entire system. In Tokyo Story, the mother, Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama), experiences authenticity through an expectation of death and her daughter-in-law shares in this awareness and authenticity.

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In Last Year in Marienbad (1961), the protagonists do not experience the duration of time. Therefore, they remain inauthentic. Lichten also touches upon temporality in the Ozu films A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), Late Spring (1949), and Floating Weeds (Ukikusa, 1959). The book ends with an afterward by Wayne Stein entitled “The Samsara of Ozu Cinema: Death and Rebirth in our Daily Struggles.” In it, Stein examines how the wheel of samsara, a cosmic map, is but a metaphor of the journey found in daily human life and demonstrates how its cyclical nature is reflected in Ozu’s characters, themes, and movies in general. Ozu’s films are fundamentally spiritual and have the capability of moving their audiences to an awareness of the rhythms and cycles of life, Stein writes. He also shows how Ozu’s films dramatize the conflict characters experience when they strive to liberate themselves from, or surrender themselves to, the natural cycles of life represented by the samsara. Thanks to its iconic representation of the struggles of domestic family life, the cinema of Yasujiro Ozu is at once international in its appeal and deeply Japanese and rooted in the shifting-yet-specific cultural and historical moments that Ozu experienced during his lifetime. His films are hilariously funny and heartbreakingly sad. They are relentlessly materialist in their concerns and deeply spiritual viewing experiences. The films are very repetitive and all seem the same. And yet, they are all very different and all indispensible to Ozu’s filmography. Finally, the films are works of fiction and cinematic artistry, and the characters are played by actors, and yet, it is as though we are experiencing the lives of real people and drinking saké beside them as they share their woes with us. Ozu’s films are all of these things at once. They cannot be understood easily or described easily. They are worth great attention, careful study, and should be embraced as resplendent works of cinematic art. The writers of the passages you find within these pages have all meditated on the meanings of Ozu’s films. They humbly offer their observations to you, the reader, to meditate upon further as you continue your journey into the cinematic world of Yasujiro Ozu.

Part One

Ozu in Cultural Context: Considering Class, Gender, and Domestic Spaces

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Tokyo Is a Nice Place: The Suburban, the Urban, and the Space in Between in Early Ozu John Berra

Yasujiro Ozu and cinematic urbanism are not subjects that have been regularly paired for analysis. However, many of the director’s films take place in the Japanese capital and essentially chart its development in both prewar and postwar periods. From his early silent comedies to later meditative dramas, Ozu’s cinema evidences a fascination with Tokyo, where he lived and worked for much of his life, aside from an early teaching post in a mountain area and two periods of military service. Tokyo is often present in Ozu’s work, and his films slowly but surely document its changes. If Ozu was subtle in his direction of actors and mise-en-scène, his treatment of urban space is equally low-key, to the point that changes to commercial centers and residential areas are glimpsed in between extended dinner table scenes. Ozu is often characterized as a director of “home dramas” dealing with middleclass domesticity by chronicling modernity through family units that share a certain level of socioeconomic mobility or stability (Russell 2011, 19–21). Such summary conforms to the widely held, and not entirely incorrect, view that Ozu is a director of films about families in states of transition—an observer who captures telling moments rather than a commentator trying to achieve a wider social picture. This has led to the popular consensus that Ozu is “the most Japanese of directors” (Dixon and Foster 2008, 86), working with minimalist detail as cultural representation is achieved through the distillation of exchanges. Yet while it is also true that, “the pace of an Ozu film is set by its conversation rather than by its action or camera movement” (Weston 2002, 313), his work achieves much of its social commentary through

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its use of space, particularly in those films that take place in Tokyo. The city is a constant presence in his films, represented by familial interiors, cutaways to exteriors as a means of transitioning between scenes, and background noise, while its socioeconomic climate is evidenced in the circumstances of characters as monetary matters infringe on domestic stability. As Mitchell Schwarzer notes, Ozu’s sense of style depends neither on peculiarity nor perfection, and only occasionally does he use famous architecture. The shots range over traditional and modern buildings, from wooden apartments to high-rise apartments to vast factory complexes. (231)

The director’s Tokyo stories do not try to summarize the entire city; rather, they focus on old neighborhoods and new developments, examining the lives of its inhabitants in particular sectors of urban space, encouraging readings based on how the changing landscape of these locations enables character, narrative, and theme. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell assert that, “Ozu spaces, demand to be read plurally, for their own sakes, challenging us to play, however vertiginiously, within them” (Thompson and Bordwell (1976, 73)). Neighborhood specificity is the most important aspect of Ozu’s use of urban space, with economic circumstances, networks of connection, parent–child relationships, and social hierarchies mostly contained within districts or suburbs. Aside from occasional glimpses of architectural landmarks in such films as The Only Son (Hitori musuko, 1936) and Tokyo Story, the capital is often represented as a space without a center, which is in-keeping with the development of the city. As Donald Richie in his essay, “A Lateral View,” explains, Tokyo is actually in its construction more a collection of small towns, or neighbourhoods, than it is a big, hard-core city. It is not centralized, there is no good and bad side of the tracks, no zoning, no real slums. (191)

Examining urban space in the films of Ozu also challenges another popular perception: that the director made light, funny films in the prewar era and adopted more serious themes regarding the future of the Japanese family unit when he returned to Tokyo following his military service. The films he

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made toward the end of his career—Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960), The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki, 1961), An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji, 1962)—take place in the households of middle-class families and found them adjusting to shifting circumstances or value systems. Yet the prewar films of Ozu are of interest in this regard due to the more varied spaces in which their narratives are set. This analysis will examine three Ozu films of the 1930s as means of illustrating the significance of space in his prewar output. I Was Born, But … (Umarete wa mita keredo, 1932) is set in the suburbs, where two young brothers live in relative comfort but their father must conform to salaryman culture, responding to the whims of his boss as a means of maintaining the surroundings that his family are becoming accustomed to. Passing Fancy (Degigokoro, 1933) takes place in the urban space of downtown Tokyo where a brewery worker tries his best to raise his son in an impoverished environment, and the presence of a beautiful woman who begins working at the local restaurant provides sufficient distraction from daily routine. The Only Son occurs in what can be described as an in-between space, a residential area that is located away from downtown or central Tokyo, but verges on a noisy and polluted industrial wasteland. As is often stated, themes, motifs and plots reoccur throughout the films of Ozu and Passing Fancy, I Was Born, But … and The Only Son are not exceptions: each film deals with parent–child relationships and the fragility of the family unit in an ever-changing Japan. However, this analysis will consider these films in relation to how this theme is represented through the appropriation of three distinct spaces (the suburban, the urban and the space in between) to serve character and narrative, thereby noting the significance of such locality to familial relations. I Was Born, But … is a film about the development of suburban space and the hierarchies that form within that space, thereby complicating parent– child relationships as the Japanese family unit adjusts, or conforms, to a new way of life. Although the film is ostensibly an example of the nansensu genre (nonsense comedy) with the story told from the perspective of two children, it is introduced as, “A Picture Book for Adults” and illustrates what Bordwell (1988, 224) has identified as “the social use of power.” The space represented

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in I Was Born, But … is one of regeneration. After almost half of Tokyo was destroyed by the great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, 1923, Japan’s central government committed funds to rebuild the city, resulting not only in its restoration, but also in its expansion. In 1924, half a million structures existed in the Tokyo area, but by 1932 an additional half a million buildings had been added to its urban landscape, resulting in suburbanization and the rise of commuter culture, as families moved into the new developments located along the Tokyu Meguro line. This rail service opened in 1923 and provided access to the commercial or industrial centers. Along the lines were points that often developed first as small commercial districts, with residential areas then growing on the periphery (Allinson 1975, 52). The suburb in I Was Born, But … is a space that tries to replicate some of the cosiness of the furusato (hometown) with access to modern conveniences and the career prospects associated with Westernization, making it what Richie (1992, 190) describes as, “a kind of buffer zone between the home town and the city.” However, such hybridization does lead to conflicting value systems, especially for families that have been transplanted to the new development from elsewhere, such as the unit seen in Ozu’s film. The film begins with the arrival of the Yoshii family in the Tokyo suburbs. Settling into their new home is delayed slightly when the wheel of the moving truck gets stuck in a muddy patch of the road, spinning around and signaling that this may not be an easy transition to a new environment. Mr. Yoshii (Tatsuo Saito) and his wife (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) have two sons, Keiji and Ryoichi (Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sugawara), who are basically good boys but also have mischievous tenancies. They initially avoid going to their new school, playing truant due to threats from a gang of neighborhood bullies. However, when a teacher informs their father of their absence, Keiji and Ryoichi have no choice but to attend classes. With help from an older delivery boy, they are eventually able to deal with the gang and win respect, but a further problem arises when they visit the home of Taro (Seiichi Kato), who is the son of their father’s boss, Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto). Some of Iwasaki’s home movies are screened for the amusement of his friends and underlings, which show Mr. Yoshii playing the clown under Iwasaki’s direction; this suddenly alters Keiji and Ryoichi’s perception of their father, as they question if they can still respect him after behaving in such a manner. At home, Keiji

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and Ryoichi ask why their father has to humiliate himself. Mr. Yoshii explains that Iwasaki holds a superior position in the company and that he must do as asked, although he will later confide to his wife that he is also unhappy about the situation and hopes that their children will have better prospects. Keiji and Ryoichi go on hunger strike to show their frustration with their father, but cannot hold out for long and eat sweet cake for breakfast. The film ends with the boys acknowledging the social order: they do not show any objection when Mr. Yoshii accepts a lift to work from Iwasaki, then walk to school with Taro and their new friends. Although the suburb here can be identified as an example of Westernization, it should be noted that this space does not directly resemble its American equivalent of the time period. Gary D. Allinson asserts that this kind of suburb should be, “compared with America’s horse car and electric streetcar suburbs of the nineteenth century, and most assuredly not with the automobile suburbs of the post-1920s” (52). The development of this suburb is based on the rail network that frequently runs through it, and Ozu’s familiar motif of the train is used on many occasions, passing by the Yoshii home and seen in the background as the children walk to school. Mr. Yoshii waits at the crossing each morning, with a close up of his briefcase at this point indicating that the train is an essential link between the city and the suburb. The motorcar of Iwasaki is seen at the end of the film, to further emphasize his wealth and status in relation to that of Mr. Yoshii, but the emphasis is on railway transportation as, “for the Japanese, if no longer for us, the train remains a vehicle for mystery and change” (Richie 1974, 14). This suburban landscape is also fairly open compared to that of the American suburbs, with houses looking much like plots that have sprung up in the countryside, and the trains running through the background suggesting that this is new terrain due to the need for a high-speed service to connect it to the commercial hub. This furthers the hybridization of spaces, the country and the city. As Alastair Phillips notes, The Yoshii family’s new suburban home appears in the film as a kind of frontier space in this terrain against which natural ground is linked to the spontaneity and freedom of childhood and the built-up environment is associated with the pressures and constraints of adult life. (29–30)

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The Yoshii family is an example of an emerging middle class as Mr. Yoshii is representative of the white-collar employees of the period whose improved social status was tied to the steady economic recovery of large business corporations (Vogel 1963, 4). Yet this was also a time of great uncertainty, as Japan was still in recession: the recovery would not be in full swing until 1934, with almost full employment not achieved until 1937 (Allen 1946, 90–144). Mr. Yoshii plays along with Iwasaki’s embarrassing requests because the family would be in dire financial straits if he were to be fired for disobeying his superior, making the white picket fence around his house as much of a trap as a sign of social mobility. The lengths that Mr. Yoshii goes to in order to please his boss means that respect within the family unit is readjusted through relocation. Misuyo Wada-Marciano observes that “throughout the story we are reminded that the sons expect their father to be a strong patriarchal figure, which magnifies the late impact of their disappointment in the father’s ability to be one” (Wada-Marciano, (2008, 57)). Disappointment encroaches on the suburban space as the boys feel they can no longer look up to their father, while Mr. Yoshii privately expresses frustration with his position in the workplace. Keiji and Ryoichi state that they want to become a lieutenant general and a general respectively when they grow up, but Ozu implies that they will follow in their father’s footsteps by cutting directly from their school to Mr. Yoshii’s office: a scene of young students undertaking daily exercise under instruction from their teacher is followed by a shot of rows of salarymen, yawning at their desks while working for their supervisor, constituting a link between the current education system and the type of life that it is likely to lead to (Phillips 2007, 28). Passing Fancy takes place in the shitamachi (downtown) area of Tokyo. In the early 1930s, such districts were populated by working-class citizens who were struggling through the recession, often relying on the goodwill of other members of the community to make it through particularly difficult periods when work was scarce. At this point in its history, the city of Tokyo had two million inhabitants, while the suburbs were more populated with three million inhabitants. The downtown districts were located in the Eastern part of the city, and were very much blue-collar areas, as opposed to the Western part where wealthier urbanites resided, making clear class distinctions between the two

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sides of the city (Hibiya 1995, 140). Ozu’s film never leaves the neighborhood, exploring downtown Tokyo as a city in itself and dealing with its characters’ predicaments within a relatively enclosed urban space that consists of key locations (apartments, shops, a restaurant, the local theater, the workspace) and never points to the West side of the capital as a means of comparison. Yet, although Passing Fancy acknowledges squalor and social problems, it does not portray downtown as a negative space, as there is a warm atmosphere to all the aforementioned locations that effectively offsets any sense of hardship, although the film is clearly taking place during the depression and a money matter serves a narrative function in the final act. In terms of space, Ozu finds a certain frivolity in the downtown area that is tempered by growing disenchantment in the suburbs and will be entirely absent from his later exploration of the space in between in The Only Son; characters here are seen to be living for the moment, although the potential of the future is considered against the circumstances of the present, as the importance of education and marriage is emphasized, while strain is once again placed on parent–child relations. The film concerns illiterate widower Kihaichi (Takeshi Sakamoto) and his young son Tomio (Tokkan Kozo), who attends elementary school. Kihaichi is employed at a brewery and is friends with younger coworker Jiro (Den Obinata), with whom he often socializes. They go to see the local rokyoku performance and, when leaving the theater, meet a destitute girl, Harue (Nobuko Fushimi).1 The two men have a difference of opinion about whether to assist her: Jiro thinks that Harue should be left to take care of herself, but Kihaichi is clearly attracted to her and arranges for her to stay at the house of his friend, Otome (Chouko Iida), who owns a restaurant. In an attempt to win Haru’s affections, Kihaichi pays more attention to his appearance, hoping that she will see him as more than a friend, but Harue later informs Kihachi that she only considers him to be a very kind uncle figure. Otome also believes that Haru should marry, but thinks that Jiro would be a more suitable partner, and asks Kihaichi to talk his friend into proposing. Kihaichi obliges, although Jiro rejects the notion of marrying Haru and the older man is left frustrated by the fact that nobody sees him as an appropriate suitor. This situation has

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serious repercussions as not only does Kihaichi start drinking heavily and missing work but his relationship with Tomio becomes strained as his son is jealous of the attention and effort that his father is lavishing on Harue. Teased at school due to his father’s illiteracy, Tomio rebels, plucking all the leaves off Kihaichi’s prized bonsai tree and refusing to study. Trying to make amends, Kihaichi gives his son some money, but Tomio spends it all on sweets, which causes a severe case of gastrointestinal distress. The fractured relationships of all concerned are repaired when Harue cares for the sick boy and Jiro raises money for the medical care that the impoverished Kihaichi cannot afford. The economic depths of this downtown space are established in the opening scene of Passing Fancy. Kihaichi and Jiro are watching the rokyoku performance in a dirty theater where a mislaid purse is found on the floor. Ozu follows the progress of the purse as various audience members pick it up and, rather than enquiring if it belongs to anyone, look inside in the hope of finding some money, only to discover that it is empty and toss it away to the next down-at-heel spectator. The theater space is one of escapism, but its décor is shabby and furnishings are limited, while the behavior of the audience regarding the purse indicates the economic level of the citizens who attend performances at this venue. When the purse reaches Kihaichi, he also finds it to be empty but decides to swap it for his purse. He exchanges the contents and tosses his old purse away, with the purse going back through the crowd until it reaches the starting point of its lost predecessor. At this point, Kihaichi’s discarded purse is found not by a poor audience member but two fleas, indicating that this space is not hygienic. The fleas then pass through the crowd, causing irritation to the spectators and, eventually, the performer on the stage. This is a squalid space that a moderate number of people have resorted to sitting in as a means of enjoying an evening of affordable entertainment, yet what could be a depressing statement about their economic circumstances becomes a comedic prologue to the story that follows as some audience members stand up and dance around as if they have fleas crawling around in their clothes. Ozu’s static transition shots will later further illustrate the state of the downtown space: the barely maintained surrounding buildings and water towers show an area that is in

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need of repair, but such transitions reinforce the setting without suggesting any sense of regret regarding its general condition due to Ozu’s presentation of communal relations. If exterior space suggests failed industry, then interior space uses cramped conditions to portray close, if potentially volatile, parent–child relations. Kihaichi and Tomio are often placed close together in the frame, emphasizing how small their home is but also how much they need one another: Kihaichi is well-meaning but prone to bouts of drinking and needs to be reminded of his responsibilities as a parent, while Tomio requires a role model and becomes frustrated when Kihaichi seems to be failing in this regard due to his romantic notions regarding Haru. This closeness leads to an argument when Tomio is frank with his father and expresses his disappointment, resulting in reconciliation. It is Kihaichi’s effort to make amends—giving his son a coin that he spends on sweets that cause his stomach illness—that define this downtown area in terms of community and economy. Unable to afford proper medical care, Kihaichi nurses his son, with assistance from Haru, with the inability to treat illness equated with his impoverished surroundings. Yet the community is seen to be concerned, without the hierarchical divisions of the suburb in I Was Born, But … as everyone wants to help and Jiro is able to borrow the money needed for treatment from the neighborhood barber. When the barber later learns of the reason for borrowing the money, he even states that there is no hurry to pay him back, although Jiro has accepted a well-paid job as a laborer in remote Hokkaido as a means of covering the debt. Compared to the suburb, the downtown is a social space, where time is passed in the company of others in eating and drinking places. Kihaichi and Jiro’s friendship, despite some differences, is entirely genuine, as opposed to the obligatory socializing of I Was Born, But … , while possible hierarchies within downtown space— those who own businesses, such as Otome or the barber, being superior to regular workers like Kihaichi and Jiro—are negated in favor of community spirit. The Only Son deals with the dreams and disappointments that are associated with the Japanese capital or major metropolises in general. If many filmmakers would use such a scenario to craft a story of triumph or

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tragedy, Ozu sees real life, and therefore his cinema, as existing somewhere in between. Yet this in-between state is reflected less by melodramatic histrionics than it is by the space in which much of the drama takes place: a ramshackle housing development that verges on to an industrial wasteland, thereby constituting an urban space that is not quite a suburb, yet is seemingly located far from an identifiable center. The film was derived from an earlier script, ironically titled Tokyo Is a Nice Place, that Ozu had begun shooting but did not complete (Richie 1974, 233). While the title of The Only Son is appropriate as the film deals with the sacrifices that a hardworking mother makes for her child’s education, the title of the original incarnation of the project perhaps summarizes Ozu’s stance toward the evolution of urban space or what Bordwell more generally terms “the failure of modern Japan” (2010). Events take place over the period of 1923–1936, during which time socioeconomic circumstances in Japan underwent significant change: in the 1923 section, Japan is a prosperous nation where jobs for graduates are plentiful and a proper education is a genuine investment in that it is almost guaranteed to lead to a good job. This was a time when a college graduate entering the workplace as a white-collar worker would receive an average salary of eight yen per month supplemented by a bonus that was equivalent to four months’ pay (Silverberg 1991, 66). At the time, this was sufficient for such a worker to live comfortably in Tokyo, with the salary covering the cost of food and housing, leaving a small amount that could be saved or spent on the escapist pleasures of the growing metropolis. However, the 1936 section finds Japan in a deep recession, with Ozu painting a bleak, if not entirely hopeless, picture of the nation, which is firmly at odds with the perception of his prewar films as being knockabout larks. Richie (1974, 223) muses that, “the questioning of basic human values—love, friendship—which occurs in the later films in passing, is here unmuted,” indicating the direct manner in which The Only Son deals with social conditions when compared with the subtlety of Ozu’s later explorations of urban life. Although such a commentary is more commonly associated with Ozu’s postwar output, it is here not only expressed visually but money matters are explicitly discussed in the dialogue between the principal characters.

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The story of The Only Son begins in 1923 in the rural town of Shinshu in Nagano Prefecture, where single mother Otsune (Chouko Iida) is raising her son Ryosuke with limited means, working hard at a silk production factory to ensure that her offspring has a roof over his head and at least receives the benefit of basic education. Due to financial restrictions, Otsune does not intend for Ryosuke to study beyond elementary school, but her son’s teacher, Ookubo (Chishu Ryu), persuades her to invest in further learning as, “you won’t get noticed without a diploma, these days.” Ookubo eventually leaves Shinshu, relocating to Tokyo to continue his education, while Otsune supports Ryosuke’s education once her son promises her that he will, “study hard and become a great man.” By 1936, Ryosuke (Shinichi Himori) is twenty-eight years old and living in Tokyo. His mother goes to visit, expecting her son to have realized his dreams in the big city, but what she finds is more sobering: Ryosuke is working as night school teacher for minimal pay, while he has also married and fathered a child without seeking his mother’s blessing for the union. What follows is a typically episodic Ozu study of parent–child relations but set against the distinct backdrop of a city that represents adversity and disappointment. Otsune finds her son and his family to be living in a ramshackle development near a noisy factory, while an attempt to reconnect with Ookubo finds the former teacher in a similar domestic situation, reduced to selling pork cutlets as a means of providing for family, admitting, “I never thought I’d have to do this in Tokyo.” Ryosuke stretches his salary and borrows money from his coworkers to show Otsune the sights of the city, but such funds are insufficient to cover the expense of her visit, and Ryosuke eventually states that, despite his mother’s support, he has failed at life. The unraveling of familial relationships, from traditional Japanese politeness to direct accusations and long-held resentment works in tandem with the reveal of Tokyo as a city which has some undeniably impressive attractions but is perhaps not the best place to live or raise a child. The train reoccurs as Otsune arrives in Tokyo after traveling through the night from Nagano: we do not see her being met by Ryosuke, but the next scene is the reunited mother and son being driven through the streets of Tokyo in a taxi.2 Although the taxi ride is a practical necessity to teach Ryosuke’s home, it also functions as a tour of the capital’s attractions and developments, as

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the son points out the Eitai Bridge, the Sumida River and Tiyou Bridge to his mother, who remarks “what a big bridge!” when she sees the latter structure. Otsune and Ryosuke have a shared, smiling expression, which could be that of happiness or wonder, although in the case of Ryosuke, this demeanor will shortly be seen to be something of a façade. The music over this scene is jaunty and upbeat, but it fades away as the mother and son reach their destination; Ozu cuts from recognizable landmarks to the taxi pulling up in the middle-of-nowhere, a barely developed space with few immediately noticeable amenities. Ryosuke tells his mother that “my house is across this field” and tempers any expectation that she might have regarding his residence by insisting that “the place isn’t much to speak of.” They walk across the field and reach a residential development that could be considered to be a few notches up from squalor. Ozu’s camera does not wallow in poverty nor does it shy away from it: still shots of the residential development, with his signature clothes or towels swaying in the wind, summarize a space that is home to many but cannot be described as homely, despite the best efforts of residents to form a makeshift community. These shots are accompanied by the constant sound of the nearby factory, which is never seen but constantly heard. As Tadao Sato notes, The most distinctive example of Ozu’s use of sound in The Only Son is at the son’s house in Tokyo, where there’s a small factory next door. We hear monotonous, clunking noise coming from that factory, though we never see the source. And any place where there are factories next door isn’t exactly a nice place to live, is it?

The son’s wife, Sugiko, becomes worried that the noise will keep her motherin-law awake at night and the recurrent sound becomes a reminder of poverty, an annoyance that they cannot afford to move away from. Ryosuke tries to show his mother the glamor of the capital as a means of distracting her from how substandard his general surroundings are but can only afford a trip to the cinema before most of the money he has borrowed from two other night school teachers is spent. The cinema is a space of pleasure seeking in the urban environment, one that reflects new developments and trends, and by 1926, there were 1,056 movie theaters in Japan (Silverberg 1991, 70). The

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films shown were able to offer a respite from the Depression, with comedies and erotic farces being particularly popular with audiences seeking escapism (Mansfield 2009, 184). The Only Son was Ozu’s first sound film, a fact which is referenced when Ryosuke points out to his mother that the picture they are watching is a “talkie,” but Otsune shows little interest in such escapism and is more concerned with the fact that her son seems to have given up on becoming, “a great man.”

Figure 1.1 The space in between in The Only Son (Hitori musuko, 1936), featuring Ryosuke (Shinichi Himori) and Otsune (Chouko Iida).

Lacking the necessary funds for further sightseeing, Ryosuke takes his mother for a walk around the industrial district. The area becomes a backdrop for a discussion of disappointment, with the grim appearance of space that is neither suburban nor urban, thereby existing uncomfortably in between, becoming symbolic of Ryosuke’s struggle to make something of himself in the capital. Walking across the polluted wastelands, he points out the waste treatment facilities in the distance: “Those are the city’s garbage incinerators … Tokyo has so much garbage to burn.” Against this industrialized landscape, poor workers such as Ryosuke seem to be subservient to the machine that is Tokyo, or as Henry D. Smith states in his study of the period, “the city itself acquired a sense of organic movement in

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which people and machines both blended and blurred into a unified kinetic landscape” (Smith, 1978, 69). Otsune and Ryosuke sit on the ground and chat, with small talk concerning Ryosuke’s wife becoming more serious when the son asking, “Mother, what did you think I had become? Are you disappointed?” then conceding, “This isn’t the life I expected for myself.” When he refers to his life, Ryosuke could be commenting on urban life, and space, in general, which has become industrialized in an attempt to compete with the West, but then fall into decay due to a prolonged recession. Sato states, “The only son in the film feels not only that he’s disappointed his mother, but that also the economic crisis has dealt him a great blow and left him powerless.” Ryosuke’s negativity continues at home when he states that his “roll of the dice” has come and gone, with things being as good as they will get, but his mother chides his attitude, even when he insists that, “the competition in Tokyo is fierce.” Due to the lack of privacy in their home, Sugiko overhears this conversation while sitting up in bed, and Ozu frames the scene using the connecting doorway, as the struggles of the city impact on domesticity. The three films discussed here serve to exemplify the variety of Tokyo spaces that Ozu examined in the early part of his career. I Was Born, But … takes place in the suburbs, while the events of Passing Fancy occur in a downtown district, and The Only Son is set in a wasteland that has a ramshackle domesticity but little genuine comfort. In contrast, later films such as Early Spring (Soshun, 1956) and An Autumn Afternoon are located in middle-class developments, leading Ozu’s repetitions to become more obvious due to the recurrence of the environment in which they take place. While the early films occupy distinct spaces within the city, they also occupy distinct genres, with Ozu equating certain areas with particular cinematic tones. The Only Son is a drama, while I Was Born, But … and Passing Fancy can be classified as comedies, wherein knockabout humor is interspersed with social observation. Yet even though I Was Born, But … and Passing Fancy are comedies, their respective localities of the suburbs and downtown lead to variations in terms of the manner in which their seemingly lighthearted narratives are resolved. Passing Fancy is arguably more upbeat in this regard as Ozu equates the suburbs with familial and professional

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compromise, whereas the downtown space has a community spirit with people accepting one another on their own terms, while hierarchies are less firmly defined.3 In the final act of Passing Fancy, Kihaichi sucker punches Jiro in order to take his place as a laborer in Hokkaido, but once aboard the ship, thoughts of how much he will miss his son prompt a sudden change of plans and he dives overboard, swimming back to his offspring but also to the city and the downtown community. If in I Was Born, But … the maintenance of a suburban lifestyle entails a significant sacrifice (the loss of self-respect), in Passing Fancy, sacrifice is seen to be unnecessary because problems can always be resolved downtown and parents do not have to go to such lengths. However, both these comedies ultimately present their respective spaces as urban areas where people are able to survive during a prolonged economic downturn due to the navigation of relations (communal or professional) and some distraction that is provided from the daily grind (eating and drinking, home movies, theatrical performances). In contrast, The Only Son presents a space that is effectively foregrounded in failure, where there are constant reminders that Tokyo has come so far but growth has been stunted by the recession (the development that the family resides in, the industrial enterprises that are adjacent to their home). Regardless of genre, each film, finds strain being placed on parent–child relations. In Passing Fancy, circumstances are perhaps more impoverished than in The Only Son, but this strain has less to do with the conditions or hierarchies of the space than it does with the parent’s immature behavior, hence the slapstick humor. In this respect, it is actually the suburb of I Was Born, But … that becomes the space in between, as Ozu finds attributes that are both positive (home comforts, economic stability) and negative (a growing lack of respect for parents within the Japanese household), while the urban wasteland of The Only Son has no redeeming features. In the final act, Ryosuke extends financial assistance to his neighbor, but this is a gesture that stems more from the mutual recognition of desperation in an unpleasant environment that all tenants want to leave than it does from a sense of sustained community spirit. There are commonalities in the manner in which Ozu presents this space, although such stylistic similarities also serve to distinguish the three

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different spaces within the respective frames of the three films discussed here. Ozu favors low-level camera angles, which effectively tell the stories of I Was Born, But … and Passing Fancy from the perspectives of the children; disillusionment and disappointment creeps in as their fathers behave in a childish manner, readjusting perceptions of the adult world and, in Passing Fancy, causing a role reversal when Tomio stands up to Kihaichi. As these stories are told from the child’s vantage point, spaces become largely archetypal, conforming to a simple vision of the immediate environment where spaces have a specific purpose: the home, school, the playground, the theater, work. The low-level camera work of The Only Son is suggestive of the mother’s disappointment with what her son has become, or rather failed to become, while emphasizing that her offspring is at the lowest rung on the socioeconomic ladder in the big city when he speaks of his frustration while sitting on the floor of his house or on the ground near the garbage incinerator. Yet these are all spaces in transition, with Ozu’s camera both noting change and reflecting its rapidity. The static camerawork of The Only Son provides a link to Ozu’s postwar films, but I Was Born, But … and Passing Fancy utilize quicker cuts, partially because they are comedies but also because Ozu is reflecting the pace of Tokyo’s development at the time. Wada-Marciano has asserted that “we can view the interwar Japanese cinema as a site, an actual space for the convergence of popular culture and the transformation of the city, Tokyo” (18). In this respect, the early films of Ozu chronicle gradual but noticeable change through a popular medium, within the context of genre (comedy, drama) and sub-genre (Ozu’s specialty of the home drama), with urbanization emphasized through the director’s preference for static shots, or transitions, and the effect of this urbanization explored through parent–child relationships. As such, these early films are just as serious, if not more so, than Ozu’s later work, as the variety of spaces surveyed by his camera suggests concern for the development of Japan as reflected by the myriad spaces that constitute its urban fabric. Later films, located in Tokyo, particularly Early Spring, in which a salaryman has an extramarital affair, and An Autumn Afternoon, in which a widowed father arranges a marriage for his daughter, suggest acceptance of compromises or conditions. The characters in these home dramas are

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comfortably settled in their social class, with Ozu touching on familial problems that are less far-reaching than those presented in his prewar films. Yet while Ozu’s overall concerns remain constant across I Was Born, But … , Passing Fancy, and The Only Son, the director does not necessarily offer an opinion regarding whether or not Tokyo is a nice place for the family unit to live. In this respect, Ozu’s stance toward the Japanese capital in his early works very much reflects the city’s sprawling structure in that the quality of life varies from district to district.

Notes 1

Rokyoku is a genre of traditional Japanese narrative singing that became very popular in the first half of the twentieth century; such narratives are often referred to as “sob-stories” since the songs usually concerned sad subjects.

2

This sequence would be revised in Tokyo Story with footage of the capital seen from a tram, as accompanied by cheerful music to suggest a merry jaunt through the city, which by then had been rebuilt and redeveloped.

3

An exception to this in late Ozu would be Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo boshoku, 1957), which contrasts uptown and downtown Tokyo. This is arguably the director’s bleakest film, as the familial uptown space is seen to be dysfunctional, while the downtown space has fallen into disrepute.

Bibliography Allen, G.C. A Short Economic History of Modern Japan: 1867–1937. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1946. Allinson, Gary D. Suburban Tokyo: A Comparative Study in Politics and Social Change. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1975. Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 1988. ———. “Interview on Criterion Collection.” The Only Son, 2010. DVD. Dixon, Wheeler Winston and Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. A Short History of Film. New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 2008. Hibiya, Junko. “The Velar Nasal in Tokyo Japanese: A Case of Diffusion from Above.” Language Variation and Change 7, no. 2 (July 1995): 139–52.

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Mansfield, Stephen. Tokyo: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Phillips, Alastair. “The Salaryman’s Panic Time.” In Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, edited by Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2007, pp. 25–36. Richie, Donald. Ozu. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974. ———. A Lateral View: Essays on Culture and Style in Contemporary Japan. Berkeley : Stone Bridge Press, 1992. Russell, Catherine. Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited. New York and London: Continuum, 2011. Sato, Tadao. “Interview on Criterion Collection.” The Only Son, 2010. DVD. Schwarzer, Mitchell. Zoomscape: Architecture in Motion and Media. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Silverberg, Miriam. “Constructing a New Cultural History of Prewar Japan.” Boundary 2 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1991): 61–89. Smith, Henry D. “Tokyo as an Idea: An Exploration of Japanese Urban Thought until 1945.” Journal of Japanese Studies 4, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 45–80. Thompson, Kristin and Bordwell, David. “Space and Narrative in the Films of Ozu.” Screen 17, no. 2 (Summer 1976): 41–73. Vogel, Ezra F. Japan’s New Middle Class: The Salary Man and His Family in a Tokyo Suburb. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1963. Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo. Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008. Weston, Mark. Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan’s Greatest Men and Women, New York and Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2002.

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Vanished Men, Complex Women: Gender, Remembrance, and Reform in Ozu’s Postwar Films Mauricio F. Castro

The end of the Second World War was just the beginning of the road to recovery for Japan and its people. It is estimated that at least 2.7 million Japanese servicemen and civilians died as a result of the war, with millions more injured, sick, or seriously malnourished. Japan’s infrastructure had been ravaged by allied bombing. Estimates on the bombing campaign on the home islands hold that one-quarter of Japan’s material wealth was destroyed. Outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sixty-four other major cities were bombed. In Tokyo alone, 65 percent of all residences were destroyed (Dower 1999, 45). This was the landscape that the American occupying force would find at the time of Japan’s surrender in August 1945. The loss of life and the massive devastation were followed by a systematic deconstruction and recreation of Japanese government, industry, and social mores by occupation authorities. This national trauma provides the backdrop for some of Yasujiro Ozu’s most iconic works. It is unfortunate, however, that foreign critics have often shown a fundamental misunderstanding of Ozu’s relationship with this environment. Western critics have a long and storied history of underestimating the complexity of Ozu’s role as a social commentator and the specific historic circumstances in which he took on this role.1 These critics essentialize a monolithic and, more importantly, static Japanese identity in contrast to an increasingly Western modernity and they make his films its gospel. For Ozu scholarship to move forward, it is absolutely crucial that the filmmaker and his works be solidly located within the precise historical context that informed

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them. Much as the drama in his films was carefully nuanced, Ozu’s historical groundings can be too subtle for Western audiences removed by both time and culture from the place and period in which these films were made and distributed. What we must strive to understand is that Ozu’s films can serve as documents and commentary on the astounding social, demographic, and political transformations in postwar Japan. The experience of the war and its aftermath, the American occupation and its mandate to bring about reform in Japanese society, and the differing reactions to these events are clearly visible in Ozu’s work. Ozu presents an incredibly complex picture of Japanese society in his films. Among his body of work, four films can be taken to shed light on his view of Japan in the postwar period: Banshun (hereafter Late Spring, 1949), Bakushu (Early Summer, 1951), Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953), and Higanbana (Equinox Flower, 1958). These family stories reflect the changes in Japanese family law, the effects of war remembrance on family life, the meeting of cultures in the occupation, and the complex codes of masculinity and femininity. The war, the occupation, and their aftermath brought about very significant changes in Japanese society in the period when Ozu was directing these films. Thus, Japanese identities were largely in flux, suggesting that any “real Japanese flavor” Ozu might have captured was simply a snapshot in time; not timeless, but grounded in historical circumstances. Likewise, while the older generations are portrayed very sympathetically in these films, these narratives are far more intricate in execution and themes and are not simply nostalgic odes to a better past. These films and their portrayals of masculinity and femininity in the postwar era reflect not only significant changes in Japanese society but also a more multifaceted emotional and intellectual response to these changes by Ozu himself.

Effects of the war and occupation on Ozu’s landscape The American occupation of Japan lasted six years and eight months, from August 1945 to April 1952. Originally headed by General Douglas MacArthur, the occupying force numbered in the hundreds of thousands, peaking at around 300,000. The goals of the occupation went beyond

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establishing a military presence on the home islands. MacArthur’s Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) served as a sort of supergovernment with a reformist agenda to accomplish, and the General had wide-ranging powers with which to bring it about. As he explained to a US Senate committee in 1951, “I had not only the normal executive authorities such as our own President has in this country, but I had legislative authority. I could by fiat issue directives” (Dower 1999, 79). MacArthur did not hesitate to use these powers even early on. He dictated his aims for Japan to his aide General Courtney Whitney on August 30th, 1945, on a flight from Manila to Okinawa: First destroy the military … Then build the structure of representative government … Enfranchise the women … Free the political prisoners … Liberate the farmers … Establish a free labor movement … Encourage a free economy … Abolish police oppression … Develop a free and responsible press … Liberalize education … Decentralize political power … (Gordon 1997, 23)

MacArthur’s directives would lead to sweeping changes to the new Japanese constitution, many of which would meet resistance from the Japanese ruling elites. Originally intending to have the Japanese government draft the constitution itself, MacArthur appointed Prince Fumimaro Konoe to lead a group of constitutional experts in determining if the existing constitution would be amended (Gordon 1997, 24). Konoe’s subsequent suicide and the failure of the Japanese government in drafting a new constitution that would be acceptable to the American occupiers led the Government Section to start drafting its own version of a constitution for Japan. A young woman by the name of Beate Sirota Gordon was working at SCAP’s government section at the time and was assigned the section of the constitution on women’s rights. Her initial draft would go through several changes as it was overseen by her SCAP superiors and later by Japanese negotiators. While much less radical than the original articles, Article 24 of the new Japanese constitution provided Japanese women with new rights. Marriage was explicitly based on the mutual consent of both sexes and would be “maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis.” Furthermore, issues like choice of spouse,

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property rights, inheritance, and divorce would be regulated by laws to be “enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.”2 Article 24, combined with other articles in the constitution ensuring equality under the law regardless of “race, creed, sex, social status or family origin” and the rights of the people to choose their officials, went a long way toward overturning many of the Japanese policies toward women as determined by the Meiji Civil Code.3 By ensuring the rights of women to participate in politics, the new constitution overturned the 1889 exclusion of women from the political sphere which had, ironically, been largely based on Western conservative models (Nolte and Hastings 1991, 156). Whatever the occupiers’ intent, these new constitutional articles aided in both enfranchising women politically and in making the home a private space once again. When referring to late nineteenth-century laws that barred women from politics, historians Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann Hastings point out that “the laws were part of a systematic state interest in how women and the family system could serve the developing nation” (156). The idea behind the exclusion of women was not only fear of radicalism, but the belief that women would best serve the nation by managing their home and overseeing the education of their children, being “good wives, wise mothers” (158).4 Articles 14 and 15 of the constitution adopted in 1947 brought women into the public political space, while Article 24 reformulated the legal conception of marriage to be a compact entered upon in equality by consenting members of both sexes. The intent here was not only to try and ensure the equality of husband and wife but also to ensure that they were the only ones to make a decision as to whom they should marry; this amendment gave grown children the right to marry the person they chose without needing explicit legal consent from their parents. This change is crucial when analyzing Ozu’s postwar work and its commentary on middle-class family structure in Japan. Clearly, occupation-imposed reforms had an effect on the Japanese family as a social unit, but beyond its role in bringing about change in Ozu’s object of study, it is important to note that occupation regulations could also restrict a filmmaker’s work. Japanese filmmakers during the occupation had to be careful to stay within SCAP guidelines.5 Throughout

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the years of the occupation, SCAP had censorship power over literature and the arts in Japan. In fact, up until 1949, two copies of every screenplay had to be submitted in advance and in English before filming started (Dower 1999, 426). Scripts often had to be reworked several times before they would be acceptable to occupation forces. After the film was completed, it would be inspected by censors again, ensuring it would not be found objectionable by the American occupiers. In some cases, a film could be pulled from theaters after it had already started its theatrical run as GHQ did to Fumio Kamei’s Nihon no Higeki (The Tragedy of Japan) in August 1946 (Dower 1999, 428). The occupation thus created an immediate backdrop to Ozu’s postwar films and, in the case of two of the films discussed in this paper, affected the way in which he could present his work to the public. The events and policies of the occupation are important because they present a clear demarcation of when the changes came about in the laws concerning women in society. However, the importance of homegrown social movements and the experience of the war must not be discounted.

Figure 2.1 The presence of the occupation and its influence is felt through the situations faced by Ozu’s families and the occasional visual signifier. From Late Spring (Banshun, 1949), with Setsuko Hara as Noriko Somiya and Jun Usami as Shoichi Hattori.

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Placing Ozu in the postwar Ozu’s place in the Japanese film community was in transition when he returned home after the war. He had been a well known director for years before the war, a critical darling even when most of his films were not financial successes. Early in his career, he had won the Kinema Jumpo Best Picture award three years in a row between 1932 and 1934 for Otona no miru ehon – Umarete wa mita keredo (I Was Born, But …), Dekigokoro (Passing Fancy), and Ukikusa monogatari (A Story of Floating Weeds) (Bordwell 1988, 152). While he did not have much commercial success, working with Ozu was a tremendous opportunity for an apprentice filmmaker. Filmmaker Shohei Imamura, who would go on to direct Nippon konchuki (The Insect Woman) and Jinruigaku nyumon: Erogotoshitachi yori (The Pornographers), was apprenticed to Ozu after he finished college. “We drew lots, and I got assigned to Ozu’s staff … So I thought, ‘Wow, I’m going to work for a real bigtime director’” (qtd. in I Lived, But …). After five years of inactivity Ozu made his first postwar film, 1947s Nagaya Shinshiroku (Record of a Tenement Gentleman). Neither this film nor the next year’s Kaze no naka no mendori (A Hen in the Wind) would garner much financial or critical success (Bordwell 1988, 11). Following these films, Ozu started thinking about financial success as well as critical success. Shizuo Yamanouchi, Ozu’s producer, remembered the concerns of Shochiku president Shiro Kido. “Ozu’s films don’t make money,” Kido told Yamanouchi, “he just makes whatever he wants” (Ozu Behind the Scenes). Yamanouchi noted that Ozu kept an eye on quality but also started constructing films which would be commercially viable: “to make a film that would appeal to the public was definitely on his mind.” This did not mean that Ozu lowered his standards but instead that he attempted to increase the appeal of his films through strategic decisions, such as his casting choices. Ozu’s ability to cast actors who were both bankable and right for the parts he had written served him well in this period. The duality of popularity and quality of his actors, along with the characteristics of the Japanese studio system and its actor pools, go a long way to explain why he kept using many of the same actors throughout his films and the multiple appearances of Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, and Haruko Sugimura. The strategy was successful. Ozu’s

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films came to be both commercially and critically successful, particularly after the releases of Tokyo Story. “That was especially true of Equinox Flower,” Yamanouchi asserted, “it was a big hit.” (Ozu Films Behind the Scenes). The films analyzed in this essay, starting with Late Spring and culminating with Equinox Flower, and their explorations of the Japanese family clearly resonated with the public of the time. There is an aspect of Ozu’s screenwriting and, in fact, his casting that can make comparison of his films awkward: his propensity for casting the same actors in several of his movies and of giving them the same names in each. The most obvious case in these films is Ozu’s repeated casting of Setsuko Hara as three different characters named Noriko in Late Spring, Early Summer, and Tokyo Story. To serve as a reference for the reader, the table below lists several of the recurring actors in Ozu’s ensemble and their character names and roles in each film. Recurring Actors in Ozu’s films Actor/Film

Late Spring

Early Summer

Tokyo Story

Setsuko Hara

Noriko Noriko (Daughter) (Daughter)

Noriko (Daughterin-Law)

Chishu Ryu

Shukichi (Father)

Koichi (Eldest Son)

Shukichi (Father)

Haruko Sugimura

Masa (Aunt)

Tami (Kenkichi’s Mother)

Shige (Daughter)

Kuniko Miyake Akiko (Widow)

Fumiko Fumiko (Koichi’s Wife) (Koichi’s Wife)

Chieko Higashiyama

Shige (Noriko’s Mother)

Equinox Flower

Shukichi (Father’s Friend)

Tomi (Mother)

It should also be noted that while Ozu used different child actors, the young sons of eldest son Koichi in both Early Summer and Tokyo Story are named Minoru and Isamu.

While each of these characters has a different family name in each movie, their roles are usually quite similar. Setsuko Hara’s Noriko is always the good daughter, once the good daughter-in-law, who is soon to be married or is widowed. Chishu Ryu’s Shukichi is usually the beleaguered but serene patriarch of the family, except in Early Summer where he plays the eldest son.

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Kuniko Miyake plays the daughter-in-law married to the eldest son in Early Summer and Tokyo Story. Ozu’s continual use of the same actors in similar roles gives a sense of visual continuity in Late Spring, Early Summer, and Tokyo Story that presents Ozu’s families as an archetype of the middleclass Japanese family. There is a cyclical continuity between these three films in how the families evolve through the events of each film. Starting with Early Summer, the family unit is a multi-generational household that is fragmented by Noriko’s marriage, with the parents going off to live away from Tokyo and the eldest son remaining with his wife and children in a Tokyo suburb when Noriko leaves the household after marriage. In Tokyo Story, a scattered family is temporarily brought together as the parents come to visit the eldest son in his suburban home. The death of the elderly grandmother leaves Shukichi, the grandfather, alone with his youngest daughter who will eventually marry and leave him alone. The scenario of the elderly father and the daughter of marrying age is the starting point for Late Spring, the earliest of the films under discussion. What happens to Ozu’s families is meant to be representative of what was happening to middle-class Japanese families throughout the country at this time.

War memory as shaper In the nine-year period during which the films in question were made, Ozu repeatedly addressed the issue of the war. He was not making films about the war, but his postwar work needed to address the issue of how the war had shaped the nation and people in some way. Even before Late Spring, Ozu was dealing with issues of war orphans and the devastation of Tokyo in Record of a Tenement Gentleman and with returning war veterans in A Hen in the Wind. It is with Late Spring, however, that the war is pushed to the background and made less visible, though it remains a force that shapes Ozu’s characters and their reactions. Early on in the film, Noriko takes a train into Tokyo in order to get some follow-up care at the hospital after having been ill from malnutrition (Dower).6 Once in Tokyo, she encounters her father’s colleague Professor Onodera, who follows her home and comments to her father that she looks much healthier. The origin of her afflictions, though likely easily

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deduced by audiences at the time, is made explicit when the older men note that in Noriko’s case the ubiquitous hunger had been compounded by the strain of labor performed in service of the war effort. By the time the film starts, Noriko is well into marrying age, but her father has not actively sought out an arranged marriage for her in part due to her having been ill. Once she is healthy again, her aunt, Tami, starts pushing for a marriage as soon as it can be arranged, which forces the family crisis in the film. Indirectly, the war shapes the plot, having prevented Noriko from being a viable marriage candidate for several years. Noriko’s age—the late spring of her life—makes her aunt force the issue once she is healthy enough. The specter of the war and its deprivations hangs heavily over the heads of Ozu’s families. One of the most shocking moments in these films is a scene in Early Summer where Ozu’s usually calm and quiet family scene is disrupted by an explosion of energy and conflict. Minoru, the spoiled elder grandchild of the family, believes his father has brought him the toy train track he has so insistently been demanding. He, instead, discovers the rectangular bundle to be a loaf of bread and goes to confront his already upset father Koichi. Minoru, with his brother Isamu in tow, tosses the loaf of bread on the floor in front of his father: Minoru: Koichi: Minoru: Koichi:

Minoru:

Koichi: Minoru:

Liar! Liar! I want train track. Not that! (He kicks the loaf of bread.) Stop that! (Minoru kicks the bread again.) Stupid bread! Stop that! (Koichi stands and grabs Minoru’s wrists in his hands and struggles with him. Isamu runs off.) Why did you do that? You’re not to kick food around! Liar! (Isamu comes back from behind and kicks the loaf of bread, distracting his father for a moment, but he soon turns his attention back on Minoru.) That’s a bad thing to do! You understand? Let me go! (Koichi slaps Minoru in the back of the head. The boys run off to their room, then run away from the house.)

Such confrontations are not unheard of in Ozu’s films; there was a similar father and son struggle in I Was Born, But … , for example. It is, however, a moment of unexpected violence. While elements of the scene are played for

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laughs, like Isamu’s return to kick the loaf of bread once again, it is a disruptive moment in a film where the family scenes tend to be placid and the conflicts emotional instead of physical. Koichi is bothered by the disregard his spoiled children have for food, having been too young to remember the deprivations of the war. Wartime food shortages inform Koichi’s response to such an extent that it leads to such a sharp break in the form of the film—something that sheds light on Ozu’s style. Writing a brief summary of what happens in an Ozu film is often challenging because, while one can satisfactorily summarize the plot in a few sentences, one has a hard time conveying the experience. In terms of action, Ozu’s films tend to be rather light, sometimes leaving the viewer thinking he must have forgotten some part of the plot; after all, how could two hours be taken up by so few events? Yet one rarely hears audience complaints about lack of plot in an Ozu film. Donald Richie explains the theory behind Ozu’s pace: … Ozu’s films are not slow. They create their own time and for the audience, drawn into Ozu’s world, into a realm of purely psychological time, clock time ceases to exist. And what at first seems a world of stillness, of total inaction, is revealed as appearance. Beneath this seeming stillness one finds the potential violence present in any Japanese family, and also the quiet heroism of the Japanese faced with his own family. (xiv)

Richie posits that the drama in an Ozu film is not the constant struggle and melodrama of other filmmakers but rather drama that lies below the surface and erupts at any particular moment, sometimes violently, but often as heroic stoicism. Richie’s idea can be expanded on by further analyzing the use of empty space in Ozu’s films. Quite often between scenes, Ozu will present several shots of empty parts of the house his family lives in before “finding” another of the characters and continuing the plot. These empty spaces serve to return the audience to an emotional baseline Ozu has set through the appearance of “total inaction.” This is essential in order for the quiet moments to have the proper emotional impact. The brief struggle between father and son over a loaf of bread would not have seemed as disturbing if the film constructed drama as constant clash. In the context of placid, almost monolithic family life, the brief scuffle is disquieting.

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It is this commentary through form that may have been too subtle for the tastes of left-wing critics, who called Ozu’s shift in attention from the lower classes in the 1930s and 1940s to the middle and upper middle class in the postwar “irresponsible” (Bordwell 1988, 13). While Ozu’s characters may no longer be concerned with immediate survival, it is foolish to say that social and political issues are not under discussion. Ozu’s later films do not deny poverty exists in Japan, rather they move on to new concerns brought about in the aftermath of the Second World War. Issues of remembrance of the war, masculinity, femininity, and new marriage legislation would likely be overshadowed if Ozu had tried to deal with them in settings where hunger ruled the day. These issues, however, remain in the forefront of the films.

Memory and masculinity, or the incredible disappearing male A whole generation of Ozu’s men was lost to the war. The portrayals of masculinity in the films in question are all intimately tied to the family structure. Ozu’s men are grandfathers, middle-aged fathers, or young boys. Single men of marrying age are absent until 1953s Tokyo Story. The men in this age group who appear in Late Spring and Early Summer have already engaged in a family project of their own; they are engaged to be married or widowed. Otherwise, this generation of men is entirely visually absent. The man Noriko ends up marrying in Late Spring is never seen, only referred to and commented to look like Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees. Likewise, the man Noriko’s boss suggests for marriage in Early Summer never makes an appearance and is only ever spoken of. This absence could be taken to mean that men do not actively participate in society until they start a family, but the loss of their generation is further demonstrated in the films. Both the family in Early Summer and the one in Tokyo Story lose a son named Shoji to the war. In both cases, the loss of Shoji is coded not as a confirmed combat death but as a war disappearance, and these lost men are only ever spoken of, same as the men who did return. In Early Summer, Shoji’s parents discuss the possibility of his return with Tami, the mother of his classmate Kenkichi. While Tami notes that some veterans have returned

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to their families in recent months, Shukichi is adamant that his son will not be coming back. While Shige listens to the Missing Persons Hour on the radio and vividly remembers everything about Shoji, years after she last saw him, Shukichi concludes that, “there’s no hope now.” Because Ozu does not use flashbacks in these films, the impact of the past, of things lost, is felt as a hole in the family. There is a similar conversation in Tokyo Story where Shukichi and his wife Tomi talk about their dead son with their widowed daughterin-law Noriko. Tomi states she sometimes feels as if Shoji were still alive and Shukichi responds by saying it has been eight years since he disappeared, he must be dead. In both cases Shoji is a representative of a generation lost and never recovered.

Figure 2.2 Ozu codes the disappearance of a generation of men as an emptiness in both the families and in physical space. From Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, 1953), with Chishu Ryu as Shukichi Hirayama and Chieko Higashiyama as Tomi Hirayama.

When the young, single, unattached male is again visible toward the end of Tokyo Story, he takes the form of Shoji’s younger brother Keizo, a man too young to have been of military age during the war. The younger brothers of the lost men eventually populate Ozu’s landscape in Tokyo Story and Equinox Flower. There is also a postwar baby boom shown in the films, exemplified

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by the Boys’ Day celebration shown in Early Summer. Koichi’s house is filled with Minoru and Isamu’s friends, driving Koichi to the house of a friend who comments: “So many kids around now. Sunday means noise.” New generations of boys and young men are promised in Ozu’s films, but the men who went to war are lost; even those who came back are never seen. There is another sense of loss regarding the war and masculinity as exemplified by some of Ozu’s characters, a sense of a loss of male authority and camaraderie. Wataru, the protagonist of Equinox Flower, is a middleaged man whose daughter decides to marry someone he does not approve of. Early in the film, he makes it clear to his wife that he hated the war years because they had nothing and because, “There were a lot of stupid people strutting around.” Wataru identifies himself as no fan of militarism. Later, however, when his daughter has married someone he does not approve of and he is having a reunion with his middle school classmates, they ask his friend Shukichi, again played by Chishu Ryu, to recite something as he did in his school days. Shukichi indulges them, but gives them a warning about what he will recite: Shukichi: But it doesn’t quite fit this age. This is based on a farewell poem by the patriot Masatsura Kusunoki. The precepts of my father Remain deep in memory The edict of the emperor I’ll follow faithfully Ten years of patience Now the great day is here Strike a mighty blow Fill the foe with fear For the emperor’s cause We fight once again Vowing that we will battle And die as men Our band of 143 warriors We’re united as one Determined are we to fight Until we have won …

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Shukichi continues to recite for several verses, much to the delight of his classmates, who then start singing a song about the same fourteenthcentury patriot who had fought for imperial restoration; a patriotic school song so popular it had been banned by occupation authorities (Bordwell 1988, 347). Critic David Bordwell places the scene in terms of “a generation of executives who may play golf and drink American whiskey but who also imagine themselves the descendants of samurai and who ache for a past that promised glory” (347). Strangely Bordwell does not link the images of filial piety in a poem that starts with “the precepts of my father” with the fact that Wataru’s daughter has defied his wishes and married someone he dislikes, something that would have brought shame before the war but now leaves Wataru unable to stop the marriage and pressured from all sides to accept his helplessness.

Marriage and the family The occupation authorities made essential changes to Japanese family law in their rewriting of the Japanese constitution, but legal changes do not always lead to immediate social change. Barbara Sato notes that society did not change overnight and “the new status did not remove women from the social and familial webs that entangled their lives” (161). Japan’s new legislation allowed “love marriages” to come about more easily, but in the period between 1962 and 1967, they still accounted for only 46.3 percent of marriages (Sato 2003, 161). Ozu tackles marriage in his films, but issues of arranged marriage as opposed to “love marriage” are more visibly addressed with each new film in this period. Noriko’s marriage in Late Spring is an arranged marriage problematized by her reluctance to leave her elderly father alone. The marriage in Early Summer is also arranged, with Tami proposing to Noriko on behalf of her son, who has no idea what his mother is up to. This particular marriage could be called a half-arranged marriage. Despite legislation indicating marriage as a decision to be made between a man and a woman, Kenkichi’s mother Tami makes the decision for him, leaving him less than thrilled. Still

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when she inquires if he is happy he rather dejectedly acquiesces with, “Yes, I’m happy.” The other half of the marriage comes more along the lines of a “love marriage” as Noriko makes her own choice. Her family had been working to arrange a different marriage, and they disagree with her choice even as they acknowledge they can do nothing about it. There is much to like about Noriko’s new marriage prospect: Kenkichi is a doctor, a school friend of Shoji’s, and had long been a neighbor of Noriko’s family. Still, there are several sticking points: he has a child from his dead wife, he is moving to Akita to be chief of internal medicine at a provincial hospital, and he is not as wealthy as the family’s originally intended match. The family knew they faced dissolution as Noriko was soon to marry, but Shige, Noriko’s mother, says that she always imagined her daughter married into a prosperous family. The objections to the match revolve around issues of class. The family’s disappointment stems from their long-held hope for an upwardly mobile marriage for their beautiful Noriko. Wataru’s objections to his daughter’s marriage in Equinox Flower seem to have class implications as well. When Setsuko rejects the match the family had chosen for her, Wataru questions her about her choice. Wataru does not want his daughter to have an unhappy marriage and is worried that Setsuko is ruining her future. When he asks if her intended is her ideal husband she affirms that she believes so. “He’s not from a distinguished family, as you may wish for my husband,” Setsuko tells her father, “but I don’t think that fact will make me unhappy.” Wataru disagrees. Unlike Noriko, who marries someone of equal social standing, Setsuko marries a salaryman of very limited means. Her father clearly objects to such a marriage, but the issue of class only compounds the sense of loss of masculine authority. As Wataru indicates to his wife, “I never thought that she’d defy me.”

A complicated femininity Historian Barbara Sato observes that, “Ozu’s women are almost bewildering in their complex mix of the old and the new, Western and Japanese, rational and emotional, independent and self-effacing” (2). Sato’s assessment is heavily

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influenced by Tokyo Story and points to the complexity of Ozu’s female characters and the way in which they belie the stereotypical images of Japanese women. Much like the men and women in his films who suddenly had the legal backing to marry anyone they wanted, women did not become stereotypically “modern” by working in an office or wearing Western clothing nor were they steadfastly traditional by virtue of being housewives or wearing traditional clothing. When Ozu does present some of these attitudes on the screen, it is only to have them taken apart and put into perspective by other characters. In Late Spring, Noriko’s aunt Tami brings up what she perceives as the differences between her generation and current young people: Tami:

Shukichi: Tami: Shukichi: Tami: Shukichi: Tami: Shukichi: Tami: Shukichi: Tami: Shukichi:

Young people have changed so much since our day. Take that bride last night. She comes from a good family, yet she plowed into the food and even drank saké. Gobbling up sashimi with that big painted mouth—I was shocked. Of course she ate. Food was so scarce for so long. At my wedding, I was too filled with gratitude to eat a single rice ball. If it were today, you’d eat plenty (smiling). Never (smile). But I guess there’s no way to know. You’d eat. Perhaps. No doubt about it. Okay, I would. But I wouldn’t eat sashimi. Yes, you would. You think so? Absolutely.

Tami puts the behavior of the unseen young bride in terms of a generation that has lost its traditional femininity. The imagery of the big painted mouth eating sashimi is meant to bring up a sense of impropriety in a moment the bride should seem most proper and demure. Tami unfavorably compares the bride with her own behavior years before. This attitude on her part seems to fit with a trend of seeing “Westernized” women as breaking with tradition. Some even saw this new Westernized femininity as masculinized. Mire Koikari points to the example of psychologist Hiroshi Minami who, in examining “fallen women” in the postwar, saw them as having a masculine mindset and

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an eagerness to imitate foreigners (Koikari 2005, 356). Ozu, however, does not let the matter stand unchallenged. Shukichi once more brings up the specter of the war and its deprivations as one of the reasons for social change. Shukichi has an acceptance of things as they are, pointing out to Tami she would act much the same if she had lived through the war before her wedding. Further on in the film, Noriko and her friend Aya discuss the fate of their school friends after a reunion. After going over who could make it and who could not, they come to Watanabe, an old school friend who was not present. Aya indicates Watanabe could not make it because she was seven months pregnant. When Noriko asks her when Watanabe got married, Aya tells her she did not and whispers in her friend’s ear for several seconds. “That’s horrible,” Noriko says when Aya is done. Noriko, despite wearing Western clothing throughout the film, is portrayed as something of a traditional moralist. We never get to hear exactly what happened to Watanabe; it could have been a Japanese man who got her pregnant and left or even an American GI doing the same. Noriko’s friend Aya takes things as they are, thinking such situations are not uncommon nor is there much that can be done. Aya herself is a peculiar character. She works as a stenographer, lives in a Western-style house, wears Western clothing, and is a divorcee. At a glance, she appears to be a thoroughly modernized character. It is only moments after this exchange, however, that she insists Noriko get married. In the final minutes of the film, she also urges Shukichi not to remarry, though this is largely driven by concerns for Noriko’s wellbeing. The complex picture of family in Tokyo Story, where the grown children treat their parents as burdens and only the dutiful daughter-inlaw Noriko and the youngest daughter Kyoko devote any time to them, further complicates this view of women. As Barbara Sato points out, Shige, the eldest daughter, dresses traditionally and fits into stereotypes of domesticity at the same time as she runs her own business and is thus too busy to take care of her parents during their visit (2). Sato contrasts her to Noriko, who adheres to filial piety and yet works in an office, dresses in Western clothes, and lives independent of the family (3). Viewers’ sympathies usually lie with Noriko, but as Donald Richie wrote of Ozu “though a moralist he is scrupulously fair” (xii). In each case, when Ozu

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presents an opinion, he presents a counter-argument. It is Noriko herself who defends Shige and her brothers to Kyoko, who resents the fact they did not stay long after their mother’s funeral and immediately took personal items as keepsakes: Kyoko: Noriko:

Kyoko: Noriko: Kyoko: Noriko: Kyoko: Noriko:

Even strangers would have been more considerate. But look, Kyoko. At your age I thought so too. But children do drift away from their parents. A woman has her own life, apart from her parents, when she becomes Shige’s age. So she meant no harm, I’m sure. They have to look after their own lives. I wonder. I won’t ever be like that. Then what’s the point of being family? It is. But children become like that gradually. Then … you, too? I may become like that, in spite of myself. Isn’t life disappointing? Yes, it is.

Noriko speaks to the inevitability of the fragmentation of family in modern Japan. The elder children may be unsympathetic figures for the audience, but they are simply busy people with lives of their own. David Bordwell takes Noriko’s attitude as either akirame, resignation in the face of destiny or a disappointment to the fragmentation of family having left her to fend for herself instead of being taken in by Shoji’s family as tradition dictates (330–331). Soon after, Shukichi advises his widowed daughter-in-law to remarry as soon as possible, mimicking an earlier scene where Shukichi’s now dead wife Tomi encouraged her to do the same. Ozu’s elderly parents embrace elements of postwar liberalism too, in spite of the possibility of further family fragmentation.

Conclusions: Family fragmentation and family unity in postwar Japan Ozu’s portrayal of the extended contact with the West through war and its aftermath is very subtle. There is not a single American character in any

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of these films, yet their presence is felt in street signs, advertisements, and props which are labeled in English. Often, office scenes involve mention of American companies. In Early Summer, Noriko’s friend Aya indicates she always believed Noriko would be married to someone wealthy and live in a house with a terrier, a refrigerator full of Coca-Cola, and a porch from which she would greet Aya in English with “Hello, how are you?” The impact on Japanese society of the war and the occupation are also felt in the changes the families go through as the movies progress. The influence of cultural contact on the gendered bodies that populate Ozu’s screen is not felt through the presence of other gendered bodies but rather through the effects of war and policy imposed from above. Setsuko Hara as Noriko in Late Spring, Early Summer, or Tokyo Story is a representation of the modern Japanese woman searching for meaning and identity, balancing tradition and obligation with the needs of modern life, new legal rights, and personal desire. She embodies Ozu’s search for national identity and for a balance between the modern and the traditional. The new laws and policies of postwar Japan and certain elements of modernity, such as urban migration and fragmentation, affect Ozu’s families in ways that often leave the viewer saddened. The iconic image of Chishu Ryu sitting in a house contemplating a new life alone is seen at the end of Late Spring, Tokyo Story, and even in Ozu’s final film An Autumn Afternoon and is an established part of the director’s iconography. Critics often bring up the concept of akirame as one of the main themes in Ozu’s work, as characters become resigned to the hand they have been dealt by life. Life is often hard for Ozu’s characters, even those that know where their next meal is coming from. Is the portrayal of these difficulties ultimately a rejection of postwar reforms and the fulfillment of some of what early twentieth-century Japanese feminists strived for? Fragmentation of the family and loneliness are important factors, yet at the end of Late Spring, Shukichi is left alone in the house because of an arranged marriage, not a “love marriage.” Earlier in the film Shukichi and Onodera comment about how daughters ultimately always leave the home. The very last image of the film is of a beach where the waves are gently lapping at the shore, an image that alludes to the cyclical

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nature of family. The transformative events of the war, occupation, and modernity are not responsible for all aspects of fragmentation. The marriages that defy the wishes of the family cause the families stress, but they are not presented as being seedy or dark in any way. The young men Noriko and Setsuko marry in Early Summer and Equinox Flower are both presented as decent, hardworking men who will make them happy. There is an element of cruelty inherent in the separation of happy families, but again it springs from the natural development of family life, not because of the men the daughters have chosen. Ozu goes further to embrace the reforms. As mentioned before, the elderly parents in Tokyo Story embrace postwar reforms to encourage Noriko to be happy and move on with her life. Although Ozu embraces postwar reform, this does not equate to a wholehearted approval of modernity. There are elements of modern life that are still troublesome for Ozu, including: families being scattered through different parts of the country; struggles to meet economic needs; and life becoming too busy for adult children to take care of their parents on the rare occasion of a visit. The image of a train, so representative of modernity and so often seen in Ozu’s work, usually denotes separation or commuting as part of an urban lifestyle. This lifestyle does not prevent one from still being kind or respecting one’s elders. While Ozu may not have meant to revile Shige and her city dwelling siblings, he did show through Noriko that one need not live like they did nor take on their attitudes. The tragedies of war could not be made up for, but the nation and its people could begin to recover. While the young male may have been gone for a time, he eventually returns to Ozu’s screen. The sense of loss Wataru feels regarding his parental authority in Equinox Flower may not be easily solved, but there can be reconciliation. Even modernity need not be discarded in Ozu’s eyes. The last image he leaves us with is that of Wataru riding the train to visit his daughter in Hiroshima in order to reconcile with her. The ultimate symbol of modernity and fragmentation becomes a symbol of hope and reconciliation.

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Figure 2.3 The train, a long-standing symbol of modernity, can signify either fragmentation or reconciliation in Ozu’s films. Ozu’s attitudes toward modernity and change prove far more complex than many of his critics have allowed for. Final shot from Equinox Flower (Higanbana, 1958).

Notes 1

Examples of this trend include Donald Richie’s well known assertion that Ozu was a spokesman for the “real Japanese flavor” and Louis Giannetti’s later juxtaposition of Ozu with filmmakers like Kurosawa Akira, casting the latter as the spokesman for modern values and the anguished individual and the former as the voice of “the conservative majority, especially the parents.” See Donald Richie, “The Later Films of Yasujiro Ozu,” Film Quarterly 13, no.1 (Autumn, 1959): 18–25 and Louis D. Giannetti, Understanding Movies, 9th Ed., (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002), 485.

2

The original text of Article 24 can be read at the Solon Law Archive http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Japan/English/english-Constitution .html#CHAPTER_III (accessed December 19, 2013).

3

Japan Constitution, chap. III, art. 14.

4

Nolte and Hastings point out that this term, though it would gain greater resonance with time, was originally intended to refer to government policy on education regarding middle class women. Sharon H. Nolte and Sally Ann

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5

In some cases filmmakers could, through subtlety and subterfuge, present one set of meanings to the Japanese audience and a different one for the occupiers. For a study of how Ozu may have done this in one of his films prior to the period this essay examines see Edward Fowler’s essay “Piss and Run Or How Ozu Does a Number on SCAP,” in Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, eds. Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 273–292.

6

Food shortages started in some areas of Japan even before the attack on Pearl Harbor and got worse during the war. The devastation of the Japanese mainland and the loss of sources of food from other areas in Asia after surrender made food scarcer. Corruption and government inefficiency kept malnutrition a growing concern in the occupation despite food shipments from the United States, leading to a thriving black market that was incredibly prevalent in Japan until at least 1948. See Dower, Embracing Defeat, 90–97.

Bibliography Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Print. Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W.W. Norton & Company/The New Press, 1999. Print. Early Summer. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Criterion Collection, 2004. DVD. Equinox Flower. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Criterion Collection, 2007. DVD. Gordon, Beate Sirota. The Only Woman in the Room. New York: Kodansha International, 1997. Print. I Lived, But … Directed by Inoue Kazuo. Criterion Collection, 2003. DVD. Japan. National Diet. The Constitution of Japan. Tokyo, Japan: 1946. Web. 6 Nov. 2007. Koikari, Mire. “Gender, Power, and U.S. Imperialism: The Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952.” Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History. Edited by Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. 343–362. Print. Late Spring. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Criterion Collection, 2006. DVD.

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Nolte, Sharon H. and Sally Ann Hastings. “The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 1890–1910.” Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945. Edited by Gail Lee Bernstein, 151–174. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1991. Print. Ozu’s Films from Behind the Scenes. Criterion Collection, 2004. DVD. Richie, Donald. Ozu. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974. Print. Sato, Barbara. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Print. Tokyo Story. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Criterion Collection, 2003. DVD.

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Tokyo Twilight: Alienation, Belonging, and the Fractured Family Elyssa Faison

Yasujiro Ozu directed thirty-nine films between 1927 and the end of the Asia Pacific War. During the seven years of occupation that followed Japan’s surrender, he directed six more under American censorship.1 His first post-occupation film, Tokyo Story, is his most well known, most written about, and arguably most beloved out of a prolific body of work comprising fifty-four films directed over his sixty-year life, cut short as it was by a malignant brain tumor. Produced in 1957, Tokyo Twilight was filmed in black and white (the last of his films made before the studio pressured him to adopt color) and set in winter, in keeping with its somber tone. Because of the gravity of the social issues taken up in this film and the tragedies that befall the Sugiyama family around which it revolves, Tokyo Twilight might be considered anomalous. Indeed, it is infrequently remarked upon in Ozu criticism, perhaps for seeming somehow unrepresentative of the master’s work.2 But while it bears notice for what it says about postwar Japan that Ozu’s other films do not, Tokyo Twilight is in fact entirely representative of Ozu’s work in many respects. In particular, an examination of this film can be useful in exploring the moral complexity of Ozu’s family dynamics: even when we are inclined to like or dislike, blame or valorize one or another of his characters, in the end he does not allow us to do so unambiguously. As Kiju Yoshida, who once worked under Ozu as an assistant director, put it, “Ozusan eschewed dramatic elements in his films as much as possible, rendering events as if they were simple, spontaneous accidents.”3 He tried to depict

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life as it is. Furthermore, and in a related vein, Ozu’s films often lack a clear protagonist, focusing instead on the family in its many forms. This both allows and requires Ozu to give sufficient and nearly equal attention to men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters. By asking viewers to identify in complex ways with the histories and motivations of many characters simultaneously rather than to focus on one—characters whose lives revolve around the particularities of Japanese social and cultural life but whose emotional responses are universally recognizable—Ozu’s films have and will continue to hold a global and timeless appeal. Carlos Fuentes remarked with regard to the work of Luis Buñuel: “A really important director makes only one film; his work is a sum, a totality of perfectly related parts that illuminate each other.”4 This is perhaps most apparently true as expressed in and by Ozu’s oeuvre, and it was something Ozu himself acknowledged, though in a more humble fashion. “I am a tofu maker,” he famously claimed: One person cannot make so many different kinds of films. It is possible to eat many different types of food from around the world at a restaurant in a Japanese department store, but as a result of this overly abundant selection the quality of the food and its taste suffers. Filmmaking is the same way. Even if my films appear to all be the same, I am always trying to express something new, and I have a new interest in each film. I am like a painter who keeps painting the same rose over and over again.5

We see this explicitly in Ozu’s remaking of his earlier films: his 1959 color remake of his 1934 silent film A Story of Floating Weeds; Good Morning, another 1959 color reworking of a silent film titled I Was Born But … from 1932; and Late Autumn from 1960, a reimagining of his critically acclaimed 1949 film Late Spring. We see it also in the use of groups of actors who appear again and again in Ozu films and in the re-use of character names. But among his films, particularly among his late films produced during the post-occupation era, Tokyo Twilight stands out for its bleak tone and the extreme tragedy that is the life of Akiko, the youngest child in the Sugiyama household. While her older sister is beset by her own family problems, having temporarily left an alcoholic husband, the much

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younger Akiko seems unable to find her way or figure out who she is. While most Ozu characters deal with the tensions caused by younger generations growing up and leaving to start their own families and have their own lives, Tokyo Twilight uncharacteristically takes on darker social issues as we watch Akiko’s abjection from family life lead her to decide to undergo an abortion and ultimately die before the film’s end. But for all this, Tokyo Twilight still is as compelling in its universality and easy identification as all his other family dramas. The love and the hardship of family life, the deep affection and disaffection of characters toward each other are all part of what give Ozu’s films a universal appeal. Even if one has not grown up in a society in which arranged marriages are the norm, anyone can understand how difficult it is when children grow up and leave home. Even if one has not experienced a catastrophic war and foreign occupation, most people can relate to feelings of displacement and the breaking of affective ties that accompany it.

“Pearls need a place like that to grow naturally” “Whose child am I?” With this angry question, Akiko Sugiyama confronts a mother she never knew about her paternity, which had until this moment in her twenty-one year old life never come under question. Tokyo Twilight is one of Ozu’s darkest films, and Akiko remains one of his most troubled and tragic characters. Not knowing her place within her family, and unable and unwilling to start her own, Akiko cannot survive. Her story and the story of her immediate family takes place in late 1950s Tokyo, only five years after the end of Japan’s postwar occupation led by American forces. In it, Ozu depicts the rise of a new urban middle class side by side with the deterioration of families broken and torn by the war. The film opens in a restaurant-bar called Komatsu, where a fifty-sevenyear-old father, Shukichi Sugiyama (played by Chishu Ryu), has stopped in after work. Another patron sitting at the bar, the only one there aside from Shukichi, seems not to know the proprietor as well as Shukichi, whose easy conversation with her suggests that he is a frequent visitor to the place.

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After realizing Shukichi is being offered special dishes not on the menu, the newcomer mimics Shukichi’s food order and eventually the two begin to chat. The offer of Matoya oysters by the owner gets them talking about the IseShima Peninsula, home of the famous Mikimoto Pearl Island. The stranger, speaking in a Kansai dialect, asks Shukichi if he is in the pearl business. Shukichi identifies himself as a banker before dreamily remarking on the blueness of the Ise-Shima sea. “And it’s deep too,” replies the stranger. “I took a ferry around the whole island. Pearls need a place like that to grow naturally. The late Mr. Mikimoto sure found the right spot.”6 As with pearls, so do children need a clear, clean environment to grow naturally. But what constitutes such an environment for a child, who is responsible for providing it, and at what cost? These are precisely the questions Ozu seeks to explore in Tokyo Twilight, and the reference to cultivating pearls neatly introduces us to the problem of nurturing children. As with all his other examinations of Japanese family life, there are no easy answers, no clear heroes or villains; there are only the vicissitudes of the relationship between the generations. In this case, the difficulties revolve around a family in which adult children who for eighteen years had not seen their mother—a mother who had run off with another man and abandoned her husband and three children—now find that she is living and working nearby with a new husband and a new life. Even before this revelation the children had been struggling to make sense of their lives. Who is responsible for their difficulties? And is it possible that the sufferings of the mother are already greater than those of the children she left behind? Shukichi returns home to find his eldest daughter, Takako, there with her small child. The child is asleep, and after much prodding Shukichi finds that his daughter does not plan to return home to her husband this evening, or any time soon. Her husband, a writer/translator and university professor named Numata, has begun coming home drunk and taking his frustrations out on his wife and daughter. Unwilling to allow herself or her two-year-old daughter Michiko to be subjected to his abuse, Takako has returned to her father’s home, easily transferring her wifely role of housekeeper from husband to father. As we are yet to learn, Shukichi’s own wife abandoned the family during the war, when their children were

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quite young. This maternal absence is the fulcrum for the story of the Sugiyama family in Tokyo Twilight. Even when the mother returns, it is only to remind everyone of her absence. When she leaves again at the end of the film, her departure reinstates an absence that has become almost necessary. That absence is both the cause of the terrible tragedy that is the climax of the film, as well as the possibility of the restoration of some sense of normalcy. The youngest daughter, Akiko, is marked as a delinquent from early on in the film. The first reference to her takes place in the movie’s opening scene, when the proprietress of the restaurant Komatsu, where we first encounter Shukichi, asks him if his daughter will be getting married and leaving this year. “Not yet,” replies Shukichi, “but it will have to happen sooner or later.” The next scene opens in Shukichi’s spacious office in the bank where he works as an auditor. A young assistant knocks on his door to announce a visitor, which turns out to be his sister, Shigeko. Shigeko (Haruko Sugimura, who plays a very similar character also named Shige in Tokyo Story) has come to invite her brother out to lunch. She is a businesswoman who owns her own store. Busy and talkative, she is constantly on the move. Even in the middle of lunch with her brother she decides to get up and use the restaurant’s telephone to call an associate about a loan she has just procured from Shukichi’s bank. On her way back to the table where her brother sits waiting, she stops midway with an exclamation of “Oh, wait,” as if to turn around and go back to the phone, only to change her mind muttering “Never mind” under her breath as she briskly makes her way back to the table. We never learn what Shigeko changed her mind about. Indeed, it doesn’t matter. Shigeko is a very busy woman. Undeniably, that much is clear. Shigeko has invited her older brother to lunch to discuss his daughter Akiko, who she tells him had recently come to her for a loan of the substantial sum of 5,000 yen. Not knowing what it was for, she “naturally” refused to give it, but found it prudent to let Shukichi know. What we learn (though her father does not) is that Akiko has become pregnant by her university-student boyfriend, a young man named Kenji unwilling and seemingly incapable of grasping the gravity of this situation for Akiko, and concerned only about his own future—which apparently does not involve

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this particular configuration of family. The money, it turns out, is to procure an abortion. Already we see suggestions that this pearl may not have been raised in an ideal environment.

Mapping the colonial in postwar Tokyo: “Muroran can’t be as bad as Jiamusi” The history of the Sugiyama family presents the wartime and immediate postwar history of so many Japanese families, although as is common with Ozu’s films, much of this history is implied rather than stated. Akiko’s mother Kikuko abandoned the family during the war to run away with a subordinate of her husband’s who had come around frequently to check in on them while Shukichi was away in colonial Korea. The mother not only left her family and her home in Tokyo, but left Japan altogether for a new life in Japaneseoccupied Manchuria. Akiko and Takako’s Aunt Shigeko, the businesswoman who we met earlier telling the father in a restaurant about Akiko’s request for a loan, appears at the Sugiyama house later on, bringing with her the photographs and resumés of two potential husbands for Akiko. In the process of introducing the marriage prospects, she tells Shukichi and Takako that recently she ran into the children’s mother, Kikuko, in a department store. She relates to them how she persuaded a reluctant Kikuko to sit down with her at a coffee shop to tell her the story of her life since she left. As it turns out, the man she ran away with died in a prison camp in Amur after the war, leaving Kikuko to fend for herself in a series of towns on the Soviet-Manchurian border where she met the man who was now her husband, and with whom she now runs a mahjong parlor in the Gotanda area of Tokyo. It is this very mahjong parlor, in fact, the Kotobuki-so, that is often frequented by Akiko’s friends, and is one of the places she has gone to try to find Kenji to tell him about her pregnancy. Japan’s history of colonial expansion sets the stage for the entire family drama that plays out in Tokyo Twilight. After coming into possession of its

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first formal colonies following victorious wars against China (1894–1895) and Russia (1904–1905), a relatively young and modernizing Japanese state formally annexed the Korean peninsula in 1910, replacing the Korean monarchy with a Japanese colonial administration known as the Korean Government General. Shukichi, we are told, was sent away on business to his bank’s branch in Seoul, renamed Keijo by the Japanese colonial government. The Manchurian Incident of 1931 allowed the Japanese army to expand its influence and control in the northeast part of China, setting the stage for the establishment of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuguo in 1932. Five years later, the China Incident resulting from continued tensions between Japanese forces located on the continent and both Nationalist and Communist Chinese brought Japan into an all-out war with China that would last until Japanese defeat in 1945.7 Ozu sets all of his films in the present time of their production. According to the screenplay, Akiko is twenty-one years old in 1957 but was three years old when her mother left the family for Manchuria; therefore, we can surmise that Kikuko left for the continent in 1939 (the very year Corporal Ozu finished his twenty-two months of military deployment in China).8 The Japanese government encouraged subjects from all parts of the empire to emigrate to Manchuria starting after the Russo-Japanese War, and began a concerted push to have Japanese move there in larger numbers starting in 1936.9 Japanese who emigrated to Manchuria typically were those with few resources, who hoped to find opportunity and a better life in the colonies. If they were not engaged in agricultural production, men might work in construction and women in the service industries. There is no question that leaving her middle-class banker husband in the capital city of the metropole to flee with a lover to Manchuria was a step in the direction of downward mobility for Kikuko. What Ozu does not tell us, but what many among contemporary film audiences in Japan would have known, is the depth of suffering that Kikuko would have experienced in the aftermath of the war. She and other Japanese on the continent would have suffered twofold: first from the violence and trauma of the Russian invasion, and later from the hardships of repatriation,

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which often left them treated as outcastes in their home country.10 By the end of the war, there were approximately 2.2 million Japanese in Manchuria. Most of them were repatriated within the first few years after the war ended, but many remained much longer, often involuntarily. The Cold War geopolitical conditions that existed after Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945, meant that a combination of forces—all of them hostile to the Japanese—competed for control and influence in Manchuria: Communist Chinese, Nationalist Chinese, Soviet Russian, and American. According to anthropologist Mariko Asano Tamanoi, in the several years after war’s end, “About 575,000 Japanese men, mostly demilitarized soldiers, were dragooned by the Soviets and sent to labor camps in Siberia.”11 Japanese audiences would have understood that Kikuko’s lover Yamazaki, who Aunt Shigeko tells us “died in a prison camp in Amur,” was likely one of the unfortunate Japanese colonists who were stuck in hostile territory at war’s end and never made it home. Discovering that some of her patrons at the mahjong parlor knew Akiko, Kikuko passes herself off to them as a former neighbor of the Sugiyama family, asking questions about Akiko. Her disappointments begin upon learning that her son, Takako and Akiko’s brother, had died a few years earlier in a mountain climbing accident. Once the daughters are able to piece together that the woman who runs the mahjong parlor is their mother, each of them goes to her separately, and for different reasons. Each is met by Kikuko with the hopefulness of a mother longing to know that her children are happy and safe, and perhaps that they might be willing to have some sort of relationship with her. But for the daughters this is impossible. The first to confront her to ask if she is, indeed, their mother, is Takako. Relieved to have the truth out in the open, and excited to ask about their lives, Kikuko begins to make tea, asking Takako to sit while she peppers her with questions about her infant daughter Michiko and about Akiko. But Takako is immovable. She has come to see her mother for only one reason: to ask her never to tell the troubled Akiko that she is their mother. When asked why by a crestfallen Kikuko, Takako responds, “It would be pitiable for father, don’t you think?”

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Figure 3.1 and Figure 3.2 Takako (Setsuko Hara) confronts her mother (Isuzu Yamada): “Please do not tell Akiko you are our mother.”

As Takako leaves, Kikuko’s husband comes in. Not realizing anything is the matter, he raises the issue of a job offer they have had in Muroran, a small port city on the northern island of Hokkaido. The husband is keen to take it. “How about it?” he asks. “Muroran can’t be as bad as Jiamusi.” “You go ahead if you want,” replies a still visibly stunned Kikuko. Jiamusi, one of the colonial administrative centers of Japanese-controlled Manchuguo where apparently Kikuko and her current husband first met after the death of Yamazaki, was located on the outer edges of Japan’s wartime empire, just as Muroran now sits on the periphery of the postwar Japanese state. Apparently getting nowhere with his wife, Kikuko’s husband drops the issue, saying, “I could never sleep in the freezing cold of Muroran by myself.” Kikuko is still hopeful of being reincorporated into the lives of her children, and by extension, the broader Japanese national family. She has had a setback with Takako, but she is not ready to abandon Tokyo again just yet.

“I refuse if the girl is from a good family”: Unwanted children and the politics of abortion Having been met with nothing but self-pity and indifference from Kenji, the father of her unborn child, Akiko finds her way to an abortionist. The midwife at the Kasahara Obstetric and Gynecological Clinic nods

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approvingly at Akiko’s decision to abort, before asking, “Where is your bar? Shinjuku? Shibuya?” Assuming Akiko is a prostitute or in some way involved in sex work in one of these entertainment districts in Tokyo, she announces, “A lot of girls like you come in here. Every now and then a girl from a good family comes in secretively, but if she doesn’t have a really good explanation I turn her away.” Akiko says nothing.12

Figure 3.3 Akiko (Ineko Arima) prepares for her abortion at the Kasahara Clinic.

Just to make sure we have understood Akiko’s spiral into decadence, delinquency, and doom, Ozu at one point shows us in a cutaway scene a man reading a newspaper with the headline, “Anti-prostitution Law Passed.” Here, Ozu plays on current events to signal to his audience that the Sugiyama family, too, has been pulled into a broader national debate about women’s sexuality. In 1956, after years of failed attempts by female legislators and women’s rights groups, the government finally passed a law restricting prostitution. Passed by a conservative Liberal Democratic Party-dominated Diet (Japan’s parliament) concerned with appealing to an only recently enfranchised female voting population, the law represented a diluted version of earlier bills that would have set punishments for male customers as well as brothel owners employing

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prostitutes. Instead of outlawing prostitution outright, the new law sought to “prevent a climate of prostitution” without creating strong penalties for engaging in the practice.13 Akiko’s decision to have an abortion stems from her crisis of identity, and her deep misgivings about where and whether she belongs in the family. Wanting an abortion causes her to need money, which puts her in much the same position as the streetwalkers that the abortionist assumes she is one of. In this way, money ties her to sex and to delinquency. She returns home after her abortion, faint from the procedure and feigning illness to her sister Takako who puts her to bed.

The politics of decadence: Pachinko and mahjong Akiko is referred to as a delinquent over and over again by other characters in Tokyo Twilight. Her father on several occasions out of exasperation refers to her as a “komatta yatsu”—a difficult person, a troubled girl. One of the gang of card players with whom she hangs out, a bartender named Tomita, tells another customer that she is a “zubeko,” a female delinquent. The objective evidence for such an assessment seems strong: she smokes and drinks, comes home late regularly and refuses to tell her father and sister where she has been. She consorts with a crowd who seem to be always gambling on cards or mahjong, she has had premarital sex and become pregnant, and even gets picked up by the police on suspicion of delinquency. It is in her run-in with the police that Akiko appears to reach her lowest point. Despite his best efforts to avoid her, Kenji finally shows up at one of the places Akiko has been looking for him, and he reluctantly agrees to talk with her privately. Akiko could not be more disappointed in the only person from whom she believed she might get help under the circumstances: Kenji: Akiko: Kenji:

This is bad. Can it really be? What do you mean? … . But you … Are you sure?

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Akiko: Kenji: Akiko: Kenji: Akiko:

You think I’m lying to you? No, but … This is really bad. I’m the one in trouble … I wonder if it’s mine? (Talking this whole time as if to himself.) (Upset) What do you mean? Who else’s would it be?

Kenji barely looks at Akiko during this conversation, and seems to be concerned only for himself. Not knowing what else to do, he asks Akiko to meet him at Café Etoile at 9:30 p.m., after he has finished a meeting with one of his professors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kenji never shows up. The next scene finds Akiko waiting for him well past their arranged meeting time. At Café Etoile in the middle of the night, a bolero featuring a muted trumpet is playing from a phonograph, giving an exotic, mysterious and decadent flavor to the scene. A middle-aged man who appears to have missed the last train sips tea. At another table sit a young man and woman having a tense conversation: Man: Woman: Man: Woman:

So, what happened? … Say something. …

At yet another table a man who looks like he might be a journalist comes in and gestures to a woman smoking a cigarette. She gets up and pays at the counter and leaves with him. Then the young man and woman sitting together again: Man: Woman: Man:

And then what did you say? Nothing. Liar!

They look up and see someone who we are soon to discover is a plainclothes policeman standing inside the door of Etoile, and hurriedly get up to pay and leave. He comes in and sits across from Akiko, who is looking dejected and smoking a cigarette, wearing the winter overcoat she has on in nearly every scene. “It’s quite late, isn’t it. What are you doing in a place like this? What are you thinking about? Are you worried about something? Are you waiting

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for someone?” After trying to avoid this stranger’s questions and his gaze for some time, Akiko gets up to try to leave, at which point the man takes his police identification from his breast pocket and shows it to her. “I see you around sometimes. Where do you live?” As if to emphasize the lateness of the night, and the seediness of the café, we see a shot of a male customer asleep against the wall. The next shot is of the inside of the police station where Akiko has been brought.

Figure 3.4 Akiko (Ineko Arima) waits for Kenji at Café Etoile.

Akiko is not charged with anything, but her family is called and told to keep a closer watch on her.14 After she is escorted home by her sister Takako, her father confronts her angrily, demanding to know why she was out so late and what caused the police to be suspicious of her. Akiko remains defiantly mute. There is nothing she can explain. Her father, in exasperation, yells at her, “No one in this family should be taken into police custody … . Akiko, why won’t you say anything? You won’t tell me? A person like that can be no child of mine.” As Akiko rushes off to her bedroom, Takako offers an answer: “She is lonely … because from a very young age she grew up without a mother.”

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In contrast to his delinquent daughter, Shukichi appears to be a model citizen and father. He is a successful banker. Though he has had a failed marriage, the failure was no fault of his own it seems, and he has done his best to provide an emotionally and economically stable home for his children. He apologizes to his daughter Takako for pushing her into what has become a difficult marriage to Numata, when it appeared at the time she might love another man. When confronted by his sister Shigeko with news of his former wife’s reappearance in Tokyo, he remains placid, never uttering a harsh word about their mother to his daughters. In fact, by the end of the film he gently prods a recalcitrant Takako to go see her mother off at the train station when he learns she will be leaving Tokyo for Hokkaido. But what does Ozu really tell us about Shukichi? We know little of his feelings from the film’s dialogue, nor of his personal history, nor the role he may have played in the break-up of his marriage. It appears he has done his best to provide a stable home for his children as a single father. Like so many of the Ozu characters played by Chishu Ryu, he appears unflappable, eventempered, perhaps even a bit passive. If Akiko provides all the action in the film (looking for Kenji, confronting him and later her mother, getting picked up by the police, having an abortion, and ultimately running in front of a train), Shukichi appears to be unable to do anything but react to what is going on around him (Takako’s coming back home to get away from her husband, his sister Shigeko encouraging him to consider a husband for Akiko, and of course, the police detaining Akiko). But does Ozu want us to see him simply as a well-meaning father and hapless victim of circumstance? In a short scene during which Shukichi learns that Akiko has succeeded in borrowing money from the wife of a friend of his after having been turned away by her aunt for the same sum, we see him playing pachinko while he waits for his boss to become available for a meeting. Pachinko became broadly popular in Japan during the immediate postwar years, and remains popular today. It is a form of gaming not unlike the American slot machine, but played on machines that more closely resemble a pinball machine. The pachinko parlor, like the mahjong parlor run by Shukichi’s former wife and frequented by his daughter Akiko, attracts a diverse clientele ranging from school-age delinquents to white-collar workers.

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When Shukichi leaves the bank, he tells one of the female assistants to find him in his “regular place” when the boss becomes available. The assistant then giggles with one of her colleagues about how Mr. Sugiyama loves to play pachinko. Once we find Shukichi busy playing his gambling game, we notice that the background music is the same bolero style, instrumentation (muted trumpet, piano, flute, drums, and bass), and tempo of music that was playing at Café Etoile when Akiko got picked up by the police. Perhaps Akiko is more her father’s daughter than he or she believes.

Figure 3.5 Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) takes a break from work to play pachinko.

“I hate you”; “It’s your fault” But what of the mother, Kikuko? By abandoning her family to run off with another man, she created the conditions that allowed Akiko to question her very identity, and set in motion the events that would lead to Akiko’s death and leave Shukichi alone, not only abandoned by his wife, but also grieving the death of not one, but two children. Both of her daughters reject her, and her only option appears to be to leave Tokyo for good. Upon learning from her older sister the truth that the woman who runs the mahjong parlor is indeed their mother and hearing for the first time the

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story of Kikuko’s affair with another man, Akiko echoes her father’s earlier accusation that “You’re no child of mine,” by exclaiming “Then I’m not really father’s child, am I?” She continues, “I am only like mother. I don’t take after father in any way. I only have mother’s dirty blood running through my body.” Her crisis of belonging reaching a climax, Akiko runs to the mahjong parlor to confront her mother and ask, “Who’s child am I?” Hurling her resentment at her mother, she exclaims that she would never have a child, but if she ever did, she would love it as much as she could. Her final words to a stunned Kikuko are, “I hate you, mother.” Akiko’s final act of rejection is toward Kenji, who unwittingly steps into his regular eatery, the restaurant Chinchinken, to find her sitting at a table, having just quickly downed a large cup of saké and awaiting another that she has ordered from Gihei, the owner of the establishment. While Akiko says nothing, Kenji begins defensively telling her that he has been looking everywhere for her. “I’ve been so worried. Really. Look at me. I’m losing weight,” he exclaims, in the same pitiable and self-indulgent tone he had used with her when she first told him of her pregnancy. Her reply is to worldlessly slap an astonished Kenji in the face, stand and slap him twice more, and then run out of the restaurant just as Gihei is bringing out her saké.

Figure 3.6 and Figure 3.7 Akiko (Ineko Arima) confronts Kenji. Her final act is to worldlessly slap him in the face, three times.

We hear the sound of a train whistle and some commotion, and Gihei runs outside. Akiko has been hit by a train.

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Figure 3.8 Father Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and daughter Takako (Setsuko Hara) sit beside Akiko’s bed while listening to the owner of the restaurant Chinchinken explain how she was hit by a train. She dies a short time later.

With two of Kikuko’s children now dead, it remains only for the third to leave her irrevocably. She learns of Akiko’s death through a visit from Takako, who comes to the mahjong parlor still dressed in funeral kimono, appearing long enough to say only “Akiko is dead. It’s your fault.” Without waiting for a reply (for what reply could there be?), she turns to leave.

Figure 3.9 Still in her funeral kimono, Takako (Setsuko Hara) confronts her mother at the mahjong parlor to blame her for Akiko’s death.

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The family Kikuko abandoned nearly two decades earlier has now abandoned her. As she sits drinking saké to try to drown out the news she has just heard, her husband joins her, having wondered where she had got off to. She turns to him and says Tokyo has become distasteful to her. If the offer of work from Mr. Soma still stands, she would be ready and willing to leave with him for Hokkaido. Her husband is pleased. He is sick of fetching curried rice for customers at the mahjong parlor. As for Muroran, “It’s cold there, but if it’s two of us together we’ll be warm.” Kikuko may not have found the love of her children, but her husband’s affection for her is unshakeable.

Figure 3.10 The mother, Kikuko (Isuzu Yamada), upon learning of Akiko’s death, decides with her husband (Nobuo Nakamura) to leave Tokyo for good.

Conclusion The Japanese film critic Donald Richie opens his book on Ozu, one of the first full-length studies of the director in Japanese or English, with the statement, “The Japanese continue, ten years after his death, to think of Yasujiro Ozu as the most Japanese of all their directors.”15 This indication of a culturalist approach to Ozu, which dominated the first couple of decades of Ozu scholarship, has given way to more nuanced understandings of the director within the context of Japanese modernity as well as global film production. But

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as Abé Mark Nornes reminds us, we should not lose sight of how early critics of Ozu like Donald Richie and Paul Schrader, through their methodology, “assert that even though filmmakers may emphasize the particularity of their own cultures, they also express the universal.”16 One of the aspects of Ozu’s films that makes them so relatable to so many audiences is the moral ambiguity of the characters. One might be tempted to read Takako’s decision to return to her husband at the end of the film, proclaiming that she will do her best to make it work because “a child needs both of its parents,” as a valorization of hers and Akiko’s position that their mother was to blame for all the problems in the family. But one might also say that Takako believes that her only chance to not end up cast out of the family, disowned and rejected, possibly by her own daughter, is to reject the choices her mother made. While so many of Ozu’s films are about the predictable flow of births, marriages, and deaths that occur within any family, Tokyo Twilight depicts a family in which the natural order, as chaotic as that may be even in its ideal state, is out of balance. Shigehiko Hasumi has pointed out that this film is about what he calls a “midwinter’s death.” It is not the death, as one might expect, of an elderly parent but rather of a child “of marriageable age.”17 It is also, ultimately, a film that interrogates the limits of belonging within the family. Akiko questions even her blood connection to her father. Kikuko finds that having once left the family, she will not be allowed to return. Takako chooses an abusive husband over life in her father’s home in an attempt to avoid her mother’s fate. And Shukichi is left with only a toy belonging to his granddaughter Michiko to remember the family he once had.

Notes 1

On the effects of censorship on Ozu’s films, see Lars-Martin Sorensen, Censorship of Japanese Films During the US Occupation of Japan: The Cases of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa (Lewiston: The Edward Mellen Press, 2009).

2

The film critic Shigehiko Hasumi, one of the few people to write at any length on the film Tokyo Twilight, notes that the film’s midwinter setting as well as its violence (unremarkable by today’s standards but unusual for Ozu) allow it to

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3

Kiju Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, trans. Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano

4

Carlos Fuentes, “The Discreet Charm of Luis Buñuel,” in Great Film Directors:

(Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2003), 14. A Critical Anthology, ed. Leo Braudy and Morris Dickstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 118. 5

Originally published in Asahi shinbun, Evening edition, August 28, 1962. Quoted in Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, p. 14.

6

Dialogue translations are the author’s. The original script is published as Noda Kogo and Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo boshoku (Tokyo: Shochiku, 1957). It has also been reprinted in Inoue Kazuo, ed., Ozu Yasujiro zenshu, ge (Tokyo: Shinshokan, 2003), 267–303.

7

The history of Japanese imperial expansion is voluminous. On the annexation of Korea, see for example Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998). On Japanese influence in Manchuria, see Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998), and Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). A good overview of the Manchurian Incident and the China Incident in the context of the entirety of the Asia Pacific War can be found in Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War: 1931–1945 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979).

8

On Ozu’s war experiences and his documentation of them, see Tanaka Masasumi, Ozu Yasujiro to Senso (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 2005).

9

Mariko Asano Tamanoi, Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan (Honoloulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 14–16.

10 On the violence of the Soviet charge across the Manchurian border in the final days of the war and beyond, see Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), Chap. 7. For more on the history and conditions of Japanese repatriation from throughout the empire after the war, see Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009).

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11 Mariko Asano Tamanoi, Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan (Honoloulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 62. 12 State control of abortion in Japan made the practice technically illegal under the terms of the Penal Code, but practically permissible in most cases with proper authorization from a physician. Abortion policy developed with the goal of allowing the state to define national population needs. The legal status of abortion in 1957, when Tokyo Twilight was produced, followed the Eugenic Protection Act of 1948. It allows physicians to offer abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy with the determination of medical necessity or “economic reasons”. For an overview of the law, see Hiromi Maruyama, “Abortion in Japan: A Feminist Critique,” Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal 10 (1995): 131–60. In 1996 the Eugenic Protection Act was renamed the Law to Protect the Mother’s Body, which has left the abortion-related articles in the Penal Code as well as most of the provisions of the 1948 law intact, but removed the “eugenic”-related parts of the act that were opposed by disability rights activists. Abortion continues to be generally available through the authority of doctors able to liberally use the “economic reasons” clause. See Masae Kato, Women’s Rights? The Politics of Eugenic Abortion in Modern Japan (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), especially Chapter 6. 13 On the Prostitution Prevention Law of 1956, see Sally A. Hastings, “Disputing Rights: The Debate over Anti-prostitution Legislation in 1950s Japan,” in Gender and the Law in the Japanese Imperium, ed. Susan L. Burns and Barbara J. Brooks (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014); and Sarah Kovner, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), Chaps. 4 and 5. 14 This also would have been recognizable to Japanese audiences as an enforcement of the new Prostitution Prevention Law beginning in 1957, which saw thousands of women suspected of being independent operators targeted by the police for intervention and counseling. Sarah Kovner, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 136–38. 15 Donald Richie, Ozu (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974), xi. 16 Abé Mark Nornes, “The Riddle of the Vase: Ozu Yasujiro’s Late Spring (1949),” in Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, ed. Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer (New York: Routledge, 2007), 81. 17 Hasumi Shigehiko, Kantoku Ozu Yasujiro (Tokyo: Chikuma shobo, 1983), 171.

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Bibliography Duus, Peter. The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998. Fuentes, Carlos. “The Discreet Charm of Luis Buñuel.” In Great Film Directors: A Critical Anthology, ed. Leo Braudy and Morris Dickstein, 113–21. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. Hastings, Sally A. “Disputing Rights: The Debate over Anti-prostitution Legislation in 1950s Japan.” In Gender and the Law in the Japanese Imperium, ed. Susan L. Burns and Barbara J. Brooks, 48–77. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014. Hasumi, Shigehiko. Kantoku Ozu Yasujiro. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1983. Ienaga, Saburo. The Pacific War: 1931–1945. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979. Inoue, Kazuo. Ed. Ozu Yasujiro zenshu, ge. Tokyo: Shinshokan, 2003. Kato, Masae. Women’s Rights? The Politics of Eugenic Abortion in Modern Japan. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. Kovner, Sarah. Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. Maruyama, Hiromi. “Abortion in Japan: A Feminist Critique.” Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal 10 (1995): 131–60. Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak. The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904–1932. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Noda, Kogo and Ozu, Yasujiro. Tokyo boshoku. Tokyo: Shochiku, 1957. Nornes, Abé Mark “The Riddle of the Vase: Ozu Yasujiro’s Late Spring (1949).” In Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, ed. Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer, 78–89. New York: Routledge, 2007. Richie, Donald. Ozu. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974. Sorensen, Lars-Martin. Censorship of Japanese Films During the US Occupation of Japan: The Cases of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa. Lewiston: The Edward Mellen Press, 2009. Tamanoi, Mariko Asano. Memory Maps: The State and Manchuria in Postwar Japan. Honoloulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009. Tanaka, Masasumi. Ozu Yasujiro to senso. Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 2005. Watt, Lori. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.

Tokyo Twilight Yoshida, Kiju. Ozu’s Anti-cinema. Trans. Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2003. Young, Louise. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998.

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A Sensitivity to Things: Mono no aware in Late Spring and Equinox Flower J. M. Hammond

Ozu’s films paradoxically tend to be viewed, correctly or not, as either typically, and traditionally, Japanese, or as the hallmark of an international modernist sensibility. Of this situation, Scott Nygren writes, “the paradox of Ozu’s reception maps an inversion across cultural difference whereby a traditional figure in one context can have radical potential when displaced to another.”1 True, but it is not just a matter of cultural difference but also often of cultural projection. The positioning of Ozu as either “traditional” or “modern” is not so much a distinction between how he is viewed on either side of Japan’s borders but a dichotomy largely enforced from outside of the country, arising from the rigidity of the categories through which EuroAmerica (used here to refer to the “Western world”) views the Other. As Marc DiPaolo indicated in his preface, Louis Giannetti is one notable critic who has portrayed Ozu as traditional, and several essays in the second half of this volume demonstrate ways in which Ozu can be seen as modernist or post-modernist. While some of the work done by these critics is valuable and insightful, there is a danger of taking either of these potentially polarized views of Ozu too far and, consequently, circumscribing our understanding of Ozu instead of enriching it. The former view of Ozu reduces his films to a mere reflection of his cultural heritage and the latter imposes upon them a model of modernism largely defined by EuroAmerica that disregards their cultural specificity. As Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto notes, “ … the two seemingly opposite positions on Ozu are merely two aspects of modernization theory, and Ozu as a traditionalist and Ozu as a modernist are only mirror images of each other.”2 This dichotomy, in restricting any sense of Japaneseness to the

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traditional, denies the possibility of Ozu’s films being modern and Japanese at the same time, or displaying aspects of both the traditional and the modern simultaneously, or, indeed, of questioning, or circumventing, these terms in the process of suggesting alternate readings. It could be suggested that these positions are arrived at from a consideration of quite different aspects of Ozu’s films: the modernist position deriving from his use of space, his editing techniques and his approach to narrative structure; the traditionalist reading based on the content, the mood or atmosphere his works evoke and the values his films are believed to espouse. This again, though, would be another false dichotomy, as it is virtually impossible to separate, for example, the effect or mood of Ozu’s stories from the methods he uses to tell them. Further, when it comes to the social and cultural values addressed in Ozu’s films, there is still an overriding image of the director taking the side of tradition against the changes wrought by modernity, even though the position(s) Ozu takes up cannot be so easily categorized. Any sense of doubt that Ozu expresses in his films can be seen as directed not only at the modern but also toward the traditional and any kind of total belief system. What has all too often been read as a tension of absolutes in Ozu’s films can often be more beneficially considered as a supreme ambivalence and a refusal to be tied down to the false dichotomy the terms “traditional” and “modern” suggest. Ozu’s cinema rises above these absolutes and engages with a sensitivity to things as he finds them. The question of marriage is a case in point. While he could be said to have made the same kind of film over and over, what is of interest is not the limited range of his concerns—frequently the story revolves around the marriage of the daughter—but the way in which this basic scenario unfolds across the hypertext of his films and the ramifications of these permutations and variations. Traditional arranged marriages are depicted as both successful (the Hirayama couple in Equinox Flower) and disastrous (Setsuko Hara in Tokyo Twilight); while there is hope for marriages based on true love (the daughter in Equinox Flower), they are no guarantees of happiness (the daughter in Late Autumn who frequently argues with her husband); and while the divorced Aya in Late Spring might seem happy, not marrying at all is shown to be devastating for the daughter of the retired school teacher in

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An Autumn Afternoon. Across this range of films, Ozu takes each situation on its own merit, regardless of whether the decision to marry, or to not marry, could be conceived as traditional or modern, conservative or radical; and often it is not possible to judge these decisions in these terms at all. Rather, Ozu displays a sensitivity to human relationships through his exploration of the nuances and complications of intra-family tensions that these situations highlight. A major recurring theme in Ozu’s cinema is loss, whether through death or through marriage. Late Spring (Banshun, 1949) ends with the father in the evening after the wedding of his daughter, with whom he has enjoyed an almost unnaturally close relationship, now left on his own at the home he no longer shares with her. The film cuts from the solitary father to a shot of waves crashing on the shore. This archetypal Ozu image creates a mood that has been given the name mono no aware—a term translated variously as a “sympathetic sadness,” “the pity of things” or “a sensitivity to things.” In Ozu’s other films, smoke rising from a kettle mosquito coil or from a train or a factory chimney also evoke this same kind of mood. “The end effect of an Ozu film is a kind of resigned sadness,” writes Donald Richie, “a calm and knowing serenity which maintains despite the uncertainty of life and the things of this world.”3

Figure 4.1 An archetypal Ozu image of loss and resignation, inviting the description mono no aware. Hirayama Shukichi (Ryu Chishu) in Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953) after the death of his wife.

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Actually this “uncertainty of life” actually accompanies a few predetermined certainties—the inevitabilities of death, of separation—and the uncertainty pointed out here by Richie often revolves around the basic questions of when and how. And in facing these inevitabilities, Ozu, and his characters, demonstrate a keen sensitivity to loss that often (but by no means always) accepts these instances of separation as part of the natural order. Richie picks up on such recurring lines of character dialogue as “that’s how things are” and “it’s all right like that” that attest to how these moments of resigned sadness can also be articulated verbally as well as visually. In Ozu, his seminal monograph on the director, Richie suggests that mono no aware is a quality to be found in Japanese culture and in the Japanese people themselves. His account of mono no aware, which runs through several pages, flows seamlessly into, among other mundane things, the “unusual appreciation of the weather” displayed by Ozu’s characters. In An Autumn Afternoon the son and his wife have finished their small quarrel over the golf clubs and she turns with, “Oh, what a nice day” … and he joins her, and they look out of the window for a time.4

Whether, in this part of book, we are still discussing mono no aware or have moved on to another topic is not clear. Not only with Richie (and he is more careful than many), but in the use of the term generally, it often remains ambiguous as to whether mono no aware should be considered a feeling that is only made manifest in particularly poignant moments or whether it is something that permeates every waking hour. In relation to Ozu’s films, then, it is equally possible to claim mono no aware as a fundamental way of relating to the world or to dismiss it as a general, catchall phrase for anything resembling a sense of melancholy, or pathos, or even considered reflection. Examining the ending of Ozu’s most famous work, Scott Nygren observes that: … as in nearly every Ozu film, nature in Tokyo Story is woven together with images of modernization, beginning with the sound of the motorized boat in the harbor and the image of a passing train that cuts through the middle of the traditional landscape. The seasons, through parallelism, can be extended to the continuing transformation of the modern world and the inevitable loss of one’s own childhood world of libidinal transparency.5

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This account comes close to associating mono no aware with a sense of nostalgia, touching upon one of the contradictions that surrounds the term. The extent to which mono no aware is truly conceived as an acceptance of change as part of the cycle of life rather than a mild form of mourning for what is being lost is near impossible to delineate. As the father in Late Spring loses the will even to peel his apple and his head drops to his chest in sadness, he is a long way from reaching any serene acceptance of the inevitable. Here, if any sense of mono no aware can be detected, it would be in the waves crashing on the shore, washing away mankind’s personal tribulations into the “cycle of life.” However, it is the viewer of the film who is prodded into an understanding that this is the way things are—and the way they should be— irrespective of the character’s own acceptance, or not, of the fact. Not only is this application of mono no aware to Ozu somewhat vague, but there is also something missing—at least when compared to conceptions of the term that precede Ozu. For mono no aware has long been considered not only a mood or an atmosphere but an aesthetic. Closely entwined with its sense of sadness is its essential twin element of a sense of beauty. While it is often said, for example, that the sadness that accompanies the end of the cherry blossom season can be attributed to the awareness of the short life of the beautiful flower, it is, conversely, more accurate to say that the celebrated beauty of the blossom is actually predicated on the brevity of its flowering. This is highlighted by the difference between the plum blossom and the cherry blossom. The former is no less handsome in formal terms, but, in remaining in bloom for some considerable time, it lacks the ephemerality of the latter, whose beauty is therefore more highly prized. Such images as the cherry blossom—no matter how firmly entrenched in Japanese culture—are rare in Ozu’s films, and he would, no doubt, consider recourse to them too hackneyed and too self-consciously aesthetic. But he nonetheless retains a similar sensitivity to things—a sense of mono no aware, if you will, but one tuned to a slightly different frequency. An image that occurs in a number of Ozu’s films is that of the daughter’s empty room and the father left behind on his own after she has been married off. Such an image occurs in Late Spring where the widowed father, Somiya, has finally managed, after some trickery, to get his daughter to agree to marry. She is shown at one point sitting before her mirror in her room

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getting prepared on the day of the wedding, and the same scene is shown later after she has left. As is common in Ozu’s films, the daughter’s husband is not shown and the wedding itself is elided, the ellipses shifting the focus from the happiness of the big day to the sadness left in its wake. The space of her room is now empty, but it is not just a general emptiness— the room is specifically empty of the presence of the daughter, and this emptiness suggests an emotional effect on the father. A heightened sense of place occurs in Ozu’s films, what has been described as “ … a sort of sense reverberation,”6 a sensitivity to space or the vibration of particular places that have an emotional resonance on the characters. In this way, Ozu’s celebrated empty spaces are not really empty at all, the impact of this scene arising from the camera lingering on the mirror and the chair. This approach to mise-en-scene intersects to some extent with the tropes of European melodrama, where inanimate objects are invested with heightened emotional significance and psychic resonance. As Thomas Elsaesser writes, “the setting of the family melodrama almost by definition is the middle-class home, filled with objects.”7 Thomas Elsaesser uses as an example a scene from the film Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944) in which the heroine, after waving her husband goodbye, returns home to find that every object she sees or touches, whether pipe, wedding picture, slippers, or shaving-brush, “reminds her of her husband, until she cannot take the strain and falls on her bed sobbing.” Ozu does not directly show such emotional effects on his characters, here leaving it to the imagination of the viewers to connect their own feelings with those of the father, in his absence, but in a similar manner, he does show a heightened sensitivity to everyday objects. In eschewing the grand vista or gorgeous spectacle, and lingering briefly on a simple steaming kettle or washing hanging on a line to dry, Ozu’s almost banal filmic choices could be seen as corresponding with, for example, the preference in the tea ceremony for tea bowls rustic and imperfect over those lavishly decorated. Or closer still, this is perhaps the aesthetics of a haiku. While we should be careful not to take such comparisons too far, it could be said (and has been by Donald Richie and others) that Ozu’s eye is close to that of a writer of haiku in that it hones in not on the splendid and the obviously beautiful elements but on the unremarkable and the prosaic—the moments and the objects we so often overlook. And it is in such moments that

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something extraordinarily powerful can sometimes be revealed. For Richie, the beauty of Ozu’s world is one of art and aesthetics but yet “its major beauty is the natural beauty of human nature.”8 Ozu witnesses this human nature, with all its imperfections and shortcomings, from a detached distance, one that allows him to observe, for example, the varying patterns by which the marriage question plays out across a range of films, as mentioned earlier, without judging or moralizing his characters. When Thomas Hoover looks back on certain works in which “all personal emotion was drained away, leaving images objective and devoid of any commentary, even implied,”9 he comes close to describing this detached aspect of Ozu’s films, but is in fact referring to the poems of the great haiku master Matsuo Basho who is said to have introduced such detachment, learned from his engagement with Zen, to the haiku form. At the same time, however, such a sense of detachment has also been identified as one hallmark of a modernist sensibility, an artistic response to and—according to Ernst van Alphen’s study of writers such as Samuel Beckett, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Gertrude Stein—a “defense strategy against modernity”.10 Here “contemplation is offered as a welcome remedy to the fleeting moments of modernity.”11 Seen in this light, Ozu finds himself in the company of some unlikely bedfellows, and the contradictions found from reading his films deepen. Hoover perceives a sense of transience in Matsuo Basho’s haiku, yet it is “not the transience of falling cherry blossoms but the fleeting instant of Zen enlightenment,”12 the kind of sudden spark of insight that many commentators have cited as occurring in Ozu’s films. In its concern for the modest, the everyday, and the accidental, it could be suggested that Ozu’s art, in addition to a correspondence with some aspects of mono no aware, may also have some things in common with art forms connected with, or derived from, Zen, but these two threads are quite distinct and should not be confused. It is at this point, however, that discussions can run into dangerous territory. Paul Schrader is just one of the most notable critics who have attempted to attribute a tendency toward mono no aware in Ozu’s films to a Zen tradition: … taken as a whole Ozu’s techniques are so similar to traditional Zen methods that the influence is unmistakable, and one must consequently

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assume that Ozu’s personality, like that of the traditional artist, is only valuable to the extent that it expresses his thesis. His personality, like those of his characters, merges with an enveloping sense of mono no aware, and – the ultimate achievement of Zen art – finally becomes undistinguishable from it.13

Here, mono no aware has moved beyond informing certain heightened moments in Ozu’s films and has infused both the director and his characters—and all in the name of Zen, despite there being no evidence that mono no aware is fundamentally Zen in conception.14 Focusing on this perceived tendency toward a transcendence of human concerns, such accounts of Ozu’s cinema can be in danger of reducing it to a kind of exercise in gravitas and profundity. But this overlooks the earthy humor that inescapably binds Ozu’s concerns to the human, all too human. Often, Ozu will undercut moments of solemnity with a touch of irony, preventing his films from taking themselves too seriously. Late Autumn offers one such instance, during a sequence showing a memorial service that otherwise could come across as little more than a dignified and solemn occasion. However Ozu deconstructs the scene from within, cutting away from the floor cushion waiting for the late arrival of one of the guests, to show him, soon enough, entering through the adjacent reception room. Taking his place with the others, he wryly comments he should have come even later and missed more of the lengthy and tedious ceremony. And after the service is over, the guests continue to joke at how long the priest droned on for; there is little reverence for Buddhist tradition in this Ozu. The director’s sense of irony, which can encompass bawdy innuendos and gags based on bodily functions, provides a counterbalance to the image of him as a Zen master and a wizard of mono no aware. This constructed image rests mainly on the director’s black and white films. Yet, Hasumi Shigehiko describes Ozu as a “broad-daylight” director and notes, “there is no ambiguity in Ozu’s films to blur the outlines of things.”15 This is particularly the case with Ozu’s color films from 1958 onward, as these, in particular, pose something of a problem to readings of Ozu’s art as infused with a traditional sense of mono no aware. Ozu’s evenly lit interiors are usually antithetical to the shadowy, vague imagery usually associated with the term, and as Hasumi argues

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“nothing about the light in Ozu’s scenes would lead someone to that kind of Japanese aesthetic sense.” Yet, within the director’s modern visual sensibility, which becomes increasingly sharp, clear and determined, there is something that recalls the original conception of mono no aware as “a sensitivity toward things.” Ozu customarily populated his images with his favorite objects, and apparently encouraged others on set to bring their own in as well. We see in Ozu’s later color films this sensitivity to objects taken to an almost heightened state as these objects command an unnatural degree of attention within the frame. Ozu does not cast aside the potential for objects to carry the kind of psychic resonance shown in Late Spring, and his An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no Aji, 1962) is a kind of companion piece in color. But these melodramatic possibilities are often accompanied by an increased attention, and aesthetic delight, in the smooth surfaces and bright colors of modern consumer culture. In Equinox Flower (Higanbana, 1958) alone, a shiny black lacquer table and white vase compete with a conspicuously mobile red teapot for attention in the highly textured play of visual elements. It is an extremely modern display, but in its stylized presentation perhaps not a complete break from older Japanese art forms that have long privileged visual impact over naturalism.16 Scott Nygren notes that connection of Ozu’s postwar color films to Zen is part of the ongoing process of displacement in Japanese culture. If the tea ceremony is Zen entered into secularized esthetics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ozu’s red metal teapot … is one step further away, displacing aesthetics into mass production and industrial design. Ozu’s teapot is to Zen what European photography is to mediaeval iconography.17

The refrigerators, golf clubs and red teapots of Ozu’s postwar color films remind us that this is modern Japan even as elements of the “pre-modern” or “traditional” are woven into its fabric. The transistor radio in the Hirayamas’ sitting room in Equinox Flower may have been made in one of the factories that was rapidly making the country an economic success and putting it on the map as a modern nation, but Mrs. Hirayama uses it to listen to an age-old nagauta performance, enjoying its unique rhythm, cadence, and expression.18

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In Equinox Flower, Kiyoko’s husband Wataru considers it time to arrange for their daughter Setsuko to marry but is thwarted by her choosing her own husband without consulting him and his wife. Earlier, Hirayama had made a wedding speech for his friend’s daughter in which he sounds liberal toward modern attitudes, approving of the young couple’s “love match” and contrasting it with the path of arranged marriage he followed. It soon becomes clear, however, that this is not the case when it concerns his own family. Hirayama keeps up his opposition to the “love match” throughout the film even though he has nothing in particular against the prospective husband. The absurdity of his position becomes evident to his friends, and perhaps even himself, when he admits the boyfriend is a decent enough match, just not Hirayama’s own choice. He refuses to attend his daughter’s wedding but relents at the last minute, since the couple was going ahead with it anyway. Afterwards, he is persuaded to visit them in their new Hiroshima home when he happens to be in the southwestern part of the country. The scene where he visits his daughter and son-in-law by train at the end of the film shows a final acceptance of the situation of the marriage he adamantly opposed from the start. Throughout the film, including its various subplots, it is the young who have to guide the older generation, showing them the way things works now. And here, if any sense of mono no aware can be said to be in the air, Ozu has turned it on its head. Where the term has been said to suggest a lack of will to struggle against the world, and therefore an inherently conservative position,19 it does so because of its “acceptance” of the natural order. But if change (death, marriage, separation) is an integral part of the natural order, then accepting the ways of the world is to accept change. Accepting change is potentially radical, as it also implies a “willingness to accept loss as part of a social reconfiguration.”20 Learning to figure out his position in a new world, the father accepts the change to the status quo and takes what is, for him, a radical step. Swallowing his pride and allowing himself to go along with the new ways of the world, he starts his train journey. Finally, it seems as if he will be fine, now that he has chosen to truly live in the present instead of opting to wallow in the past. Ozu’s reformulating of the inner dynamic of mono no aware in this way remakes it for a new age, transforming the mood of melancholic resignation it is

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Figure 4.2 Wataru Hirayama (Saburi Shin) takes a train to visit his newly married daughter and her husband in Equinox Flower (Higanbana, 1958). Here mono no aware takes a new direction, an acceptance of change in the spirit of radical renewal, not resignation.

associated with into a more positive acceptance of change, even as the “radicality implicit in Ozu” is yet to be widely recognized.21 At the same time, through his heightened play of objects and colors, he can also be seen as returning mono no aware closer to its original meaning of “a sensitivity to things.” In this context, Ozu’s sensitivity is not simply for nostalgic images of nature or of Japan’s past but a sensitivity to the aesthetics of the vibrant and modern visual culture of his day.

Figure 4.3 An “empty shot” from Late Autumn (Akiboyoshi, 1962) that is not empty at all. The richness of materials, textures, and surfaces problematizes any reading of the shot as pointing to a Zen “nothingness.”

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Notes 1

Scott Nygren, Time Frames: Japanese Cinema and the Unfolding of History

2

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, “Melodrama, Post-Modernism and Japanese Cinema,” in

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 148. Melodrama and Asian Cinema, ed. Wimal Dissanayake (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 115. 3

Donald Richie, Japanese Movies (Japan: Japan Travel Bureau, 1961), 74.

4

Donald Richie, Ozu (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974), 56.

5

Scott Nygren, Time Frames, 152–53.

6

Richard Neil Tucker, Japan: Film Image (London: Vista, 1973), 52.

7

Thomas Elsaesser, Tales of Sound and Fury, Observations on the Family Melodrama (London: BFI, 1987), 61–2.

8

Donald Richie, Ozu, 36.

9

Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture (New York: Random House, 1977), Kindle edition, Location 3385

10 Peter Verstraten, “A Modernist ‘Attempt at Cinema’: The ‘Impurity’ of Pierrot le Fou”. In Modernism Today, eds. Sjef Houppermans, Peter Liebregts, Jan Baetens, Otto Boele. (Amsterdam, New York, Rodopi, 2013), 220. 11 Peter Verstraten, “A Modernist ‘Attempt at Cinema’: The ‘Impurity’ of Pierrot le Fou”. In Modernism Today, eds. Sjef Houppermans, Peter Liebregts, Jan Baetens, Otto Boele. (Amsterdam, New York, Rodopi, 2013), 220. 12 Thomas Hoover, Zen Culture (New York: Random House, 1977), Kindle edition, Location 3387. 13 Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1972), 38. 14 This is not the place to explore the historical roots of mono no aware in detail, so the interested reader is actually advised to trace it back to Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto, prior to Buddhism’s arrival in the country. 15 Shigehiko Hasumi, (1977) “Sunny Skies,” in Ozu’s Tokyo Story, ed. David Desser (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 118–29. 16 Kabuki and Noh are just some of the arts that foreground their mechanisms of presentation. 17 Scott Nygren, Time Frames, 148. 18 The song form is nagauta. They can be sung on their own but are often also incorporated into Kabuki performances.

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19 David Desser, Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), 20. 20 Nygren, Time Frames, 152. 21 Nygren, Time Frames, 153.

Bibliography Desser, David. Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1988. ——— (Ed.) Ozu’s Tokyo Story. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury, Observations on the Family Melodrama” Monogram no. 4: 1972, 2–15; reprinted in Christine Gledhill, (ed.) Home Is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, 43–69. London: BFI, 1987. Nygren, Scott. Time Frames: Japanese Cinema and the Unfolding of History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Richie, Donald. Japanese Movies. Japan: Japan Travel Bureau, 1961. ——— Ozu. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974. Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1972. Tucker, Richard Neil. Japan: Film Image. London: Studio Vista, 1973. Verstraten, Peter, “A Modernist ‘Attempt at Cinema’: The ‘Impurity’ of Pierrot le Fou”. In Modernism Today, edited by Sjef Houppermans, Peter Liebregts, Jan Baetens, Otto Boele. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2013. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, “Melodrama, Post-Modernism and Japanese Cinema,” in Melodrama and Asian Cinema, ed. Wimal Dissanayake. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Part Two

Ozu’s International Reception and Influences

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Too Slow to Handle? Ozu, Malick, and the Art-House Family Drama Isolde Vanhee

Is Ozu slow? This question was the title of a lecture film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum gave on Yasujiro Ozu in 1998. Building on the quantitative analysis of Ozu’s films by David Bordwell, Rosenbaum once more defended the director against the recurrent reproach of making “slow films.” The persistent discussion on the alleged slowness of Ozu has gained new significance through the heated debate that followed the editorial Nick James wrote in Sight & Sound in April 2010. James criticized the way in which the label of slow cinema has become—instead of an insult—an automatic indicator of high quality at film festivals worldwide. It is as if slowness alone has become an indisputable sign of artistic mastery (2010, 5). Most film critics consider the “aesthetic of slow” they perceive in the work of a growing number of filmmakers in the last two decades as a defiant opposition to the quickening of pace in mainstream American cinema. Matthew Flanagan for instance applauds slow or contemplative cinema for restoring the ability of the shot to represent a sense of phenomenological reality, to retreat from a culture of speed, and to emphasize the ordinary (2008). Is Yasujiro Ozu the master of contemplative cinema because of the slow pacing, the long shots, the pictorial qualities, the famous pillow shots, and the scarcity of narrative in his films? It is a fact that different generations of filmmakers that create genuinely slow films have held Ozu in high esteem, from Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky to Abbas Kiarostami, Béla Tarr, and Terrence Malick. Through their films and their praise, his style has been passed on to younger generations. Can the discussions about Ozu’s filmmaking style shed new light on the current debate regarding the merits

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of slow cinema? And why is Ozu’s preference for the family drama rarely mentioned in these discussions?

Nothing happens. Nothing moves. Nothing changes. All sources agree that Yasujiro Ozu has created a highly idiosyncratic cinematic style. Control, concentration, scarcity, severity, restraint, and repetition. All of these traits mark the distinctive style of this Japanese master. Filmmakers and film critics worldwide embrace the Ozu style. His mature, postwar films are especially singled out as sublime, original, and timeless masterpieces. Nevertheless, Ozu remains something of a cult director, appreciated in the main by the cinephile in-crowd. Multiplex audiences may well perceive Ozu’s films as tedious, naïve, and obsolete. It is often said that nothing happens in an Ozu film. In his seminal book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, David Bordwell insists that this cliché “sounds fairly hollow when one looks at the intensity of story events depicted” (1988, 54). Many spectators may agree with Bordwell, but for many others, Ozu scores exceptionally low on the spectacle meter. Ozu’s films tell stories about ordinary people living their ordinary lives. We observe their postures, their gestures, and their expressions. We listen to them marvel about times gone by, but we never see a flashback depicting those days. We overhear their talks about places, but we rarely get to accompany them outdoors. We watch them go to sleep, but never enter their dreams. In the first half of an Ozu film, we merely get acquainted with the characters, their family, their friends, the spaces they inhabit, the streets they live in, and the nearby train station.1 Gradually—very gradually—we become aware of a change being at hand, most often a marriage or death in the family. In the end, the facts of these family stories can be synthesized in a few sentences. Apart from early exceptions like The Only Son (Hitori musuko, 1936) and There Was a Father (Chichi ariki, 1942), which offer a complete life cycle, Ozu’s films focus on several characters across a short time span. We are offered the perspective of different generations: aging parents, grown-up sons and daughters, and small children, all within a single

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film. Throughout Ozu’s films, characters tend to reappear in different family constellations, faced with the same choices, situations, and surroundings. To use a Yogism: “It’s a déjà vu all over again.” When an important event like a marriage is finally realized, Ozu skips the ceremony and only shows the aftermath. He systematically avoids climactic scenes and serves his audience slices of everyday family life. Moreover, he seems to intentionally deny the spectator every bit of excitement. At one point in Early Summer (Bakushu, 1951), Noriko is about the take a quick peek at the man she turned down for marriage without ever meeting him. As Noriko steps into the restaurant where he is having dinner, Ozu cuts forward to a dinner scene back home. Then there are those famous “pillow shots.”2 What are we to make of those? Bordwell claims that the lengthy transitional images between scenes remain within the spatio-temporal world of the fiction. He compares them to placement shots and cutaways in Hollywood cinema (Bordwell 1988, 104–105). These images of empty streets, train stations, or flowers are indeed connected to the story. Even then, the duration of these shots, the lack of dramatic action and the unclear meaning of it, all slow down the progress of the narrative. The depiction of ordinary life, the parallels within and in between films, the prolonged expositions, and the limited amount of time depicted, the skipping of major events, and the stretched transition between scenes— all this may prompt spectators to experience these films as being utterly boring. On top of all that, far more than narrative structure, subject matter, and character building, Ozu’s stylistic choices create stasis and may be highly frustrating to contemporary audiences. For Ozu, the pure image has a sanctified status. He spends a very long time setting the stage. He meticulously arranges actors, props, and actions in front of a static camera. As a result, the frozen frame disciplines the actor and their movements. The camera will not pan to keep them within the frame.3 Ozu is a master of matches-on-action, whereby a character walks out of one frame and into another, from one balanced, elegantly designed and coherent composition into another. At the beginning of Early Summer, the camera follows Isamu around the house. Isamu moves from the children’s room into the living room

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to have breakfast but is told to wash his face first. On his way to the bathroom, Isamu passes by the kitchen and finally finds his way back into the living room. Ozu uses a static camera instead of pans and travellings to record the movements of the child. Defying Hollywood’s continuity editing and the “180 degree rule” in particular, Isamu is shown entering the different spaces and hallways from the left, the right, the back, and the front alternately.

Figure 5.1 Scene from Early Summer (Bakushu, 1951, Yasujiro Ozu). Through static cameras and balanced compositions, Ozu renders the daily rituals of the Japanese family cinematic. From left to right: Isamu Mamiya (Isao Shirosawa), Noriko Mamiya (Setsuko Hara), and Minoru Mamiya (Zen Murase) around the table, with Koichi Mamiya (Chishu Ryu) at the back.

The steady cadence of the editing matches the unfolding of events. Each shot must run its time. Along with the meticulous mise-en-scène and the passive cinematography, the editing ensures total engagement with the image. Ozu claimed to avoid dissolves and fades because “they spoiled the clarity of the image” (Bordwell 1988, 76). The characteristic low camera position is the perfect position for attentive watching and listening. Ozu forces the viewer to scan the surface, to notice the visual analogies between shots in terms of lines and shapes and—eventually—also colors. Not only are we forced to linger on the image in order to makes us see more, but according to Donald Richie, “tempo slowed comes to make us feel more” (1977, xiv).

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From time to time, Ozu did try to speed things up a bit. His films are in fact full of subtle surprises and little gags. In The Munekata Sisters (Munekata kyodai, 1950), the character of Mariko offers some comic relief by making funny faces and sticking out her tongue repeatedly. In general, Ozu insists upon extensive rehearsals to rule out excessive emotions and ensure total composure. However, characters do have sudden emotional outbursts and may even have a complete change of heart. The same arrangement of orderly principles and liberating deviations is found in his stylistic strategies.4 For instance, his use of music is often playful, lighthearted, and at odds with the depicted events. We keep wondering whether the music box in Late Spring (Banshun, 1951) is a diegetic sound or not. Ozu’s films may also seem quiet at first; in fact they are quite lively and noisy. Trains whistle, doorbells ring, people chatter. Also, Ozu consciously and vividly uses repetitions and differences as a means of cinematic expression (Yoshida 1998, 22). Again in The Munekata Sisters, we watch Setsuko and Mariko move around the house from fixed camera positions. At the least so it seems. Upon closer examination, these positions may slightly differ and many alternative viewpoints of the house are introduced throughout the film. Ultimately, Ozu seems to mock his self-imposed rules. An unexpected cut may surprise the viewer, as may the close-up of a strangely out-of-place prop or a playful camera movement. The spectator has to pay attention if they are to detect these little deviances. One has to be aware of the complex patterning and the constant rearranging of the same elements in order to notice and appreciate the smallest modification.

A worldwide tendency toward slowness An idiosyncratic visual style like Ozu’s is more likely to be encountered outside Hollywood these days. Not surprisingly, most directors who have been labeled slow by film critics and film audiences, do not cook up largescale Hollywood productions. Hirokazu Koreeda, Jia Zhangke, Cristi Puiu, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Costa, Carlos Reygadas, Aleksandr Sokurov, Lisandro Alonso, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan are some of the most notable makers of slow

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films currently active. Some of them explicitly name Ozu as their inspiration. American indie director Kelly Reichardt admits that while shooting her films she often asks herself, “What would Ozu have done with this scene?” Ozu has been an inspiration for directors looking for an alternative to Hollywood ever since the 1970s. Ozu’s admirers are not always aware of his passionate love for that same Hollywood and the fact that early on in his career, Ozu copied the morality tales of American films in his silent films (Yoshida 1998, 185).5 Ozu kept on fusing Japanese traditions with American influences. Most notably, Ernst Lubitsch, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd were important points of reference for the young Ozu (Bordwell 1988, 152).6 That being said, one might observe that the classical Hollywood cinema Ozu was imitating is considerably slower when compared to the rollercoaster experience many Hollywood action films provide nowadays. Several observations can be made about the contemporary tendency toward slowness. First, slow cinema is a global phenomenon with a long tradition stretching back to early cinema, to legendary filmmakers worldwide, and to André Bazin’s famous plea to use the long take. Just as Ozu constructed his style from a complex amalgam of sources, a filmmaker creating contemporary slowness can take his inspiration from film history, national traditions, literary sources, painterly affinities, or again, the desire to juxtapose Hollywood spectacles. The more Hollywood spectacles accelerate, the more art house cinema seems eager to slow it down. Secondly, Nick James has a point. Art cinema—and slow or contemplative cinema in particular—risks becoming as formulaic as Hollywood is. If a filmmaker wants to be associated with art cinema nowadays, he or she simply needs to tend toward narrative ambiguity, develop a self-conscious style, and not shy away from formal experiment. Nick James suggests that in recent years, slowness has become the ultimate mark of art cinema and that certain slow films—and Berlin Golden Bear winner Honey (Bal, 2010, Semih Kaplanoglu) in particular—are “passive-aggressive in that they demand great swathes of our precious time to achieve quite fleeting and slender aesthetic and political effects.” James puts forward that slow films possibly offer an easy life for critics and programmers. Festivals commission many of these

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productions, so “the bargain the newer variety of slow films seem to impose on the viewer is simple: it’s up to you to draw on your stoic patience and the fascination in your gaze, in case you miss a masterpiece” (James 2010, 5). Young filmmakers might be quick to adopt a slow style without mastering it and fully realizing its potential. In the end, a slow film can be a total waste of time, whereas a Hollywood blockbuster can in fact be a high quality, virtuosic, and entertaining masterpiece, formula or no formula. Thirdly—and perhaps most importantly—is the observation of the sheer variation in slow styles. Slow cinema does not necessarily coincide with measured editing, a static camera, and a lack of story. In other words, Ozu’s style as such is no blueprint for slowness. There are numerous ways to slow the cinematic pace down. A slow film style can result from different formal and narrative strategies and serve different objectives. Contemporary slow directors have created their own esthetic system and as a consequence, framed their own cinematic universe. What connects them to Ozu is the desire to draw attention to each single image and to impose cinematic restrictions upon themselves in order to make this happen. For Laura Mulvey, the process of delaying a film inevitably highlights its esthetics, the illusion of movement, and the hidden presence of the filmstrip on which the illusion depends (2006, 185). Moreover, exposing cinema as a succession of still frames restores to the moving image “the heavy presence of passing time and of the mortality that Bazin and Barthes associated with the still photograph” (Mulvey 2006, 66). In 2010 and 2011, the slowness debate had centered on award winning films such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, 2010), Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (A torinoi lo, 2011), and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011). The sense of stasis in these films is aligned with a narrative dealing with mortality or even life on earth coming to an end. Golden Palm winner Uncle Boonmee seems at first glance far removed from an Ozu film with its dreamy look, magic realism, and exotic evocations of the Thai jungle. Nonetheless, in this story about death and reincarnation, Thai director Weerasethakul deals with the rituals and transforming moments that govern family life in Buddhist culture. Similarly, Ozu is preoccupied with the morals and beliefs of Japanese Zen culture and their hold on families and

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generations. Stylistically, Silver Bear Winner The Turin Horse is much closer to Ozu than Uncle Boonmee in the recurring camera positions that capture the repetitive daily actions of a father and a daughter. Moreover, much like Ozu, the Hungarian director Béla Tarr evolved from a naturalist and socially engaged cinema toward a more abstract, transcendent mode of filmmaking. On the other hand, in Béla Tarr’s film, there is little dialogue, all light is muted, and no more than thirty long takes are used. Finally, compared to Ozu, both Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Béla Tarr are ultra slow in their wish for the spectator to be soaked in the image and sound. Ozu’s camera lingers in rooms and corridors but eventually moves on much quicker to a new scene, a new situation. A stylistic comparison between the reclusive American director Terrence Malick and Yasujiro Ozu makes for an especially interesting case. Ozu and Malick have clearly arrived at a very different esthetic system. Ozu uses static shots whereas Malick likes fluid camera movements. Ozu lights the background and foreground uniformly. Malick wants to use only natural lighting. Ozu’s shots of nature are earthly and serene while Malick’s shots of nature are spectacular and turbulent. In an Ozu film, characters rarely touch each other. With Malick, they embrace, caress, and even hit each other. Ozu makes the viewer contemplate the characters from a distance, whereas with Malick we observe them more closely by his use of point-of-view shots, the expression of their inner thoughts through the voice-over, and the camera circling around them. Despite their differences, Ozu and Malick are strangely alike in their dogmatic approach to style. They share a sense of repetitive stasis and a similar overall attitude toward their characters which is a strange mixture of detached observation and gentle compassion. So far, we have discussed Ozu and contemporary slow cinema primarily in terms of style. The discussions surrounding slow films seldom center on the subject matter, the morals, or the politics of these films. Evidently, a multitude of themes is being covered in slow cinema. Nevertheless, the most beloved genre of slow cinema is without a doubt the family drama. A whole pack of films can be named that fit into this context. Not all of these films are fullfledged family dramas, but the family is always central to the narrative. In addition to The Tree of Life, Uncle Boonmee, and The Turin Horse, other titles

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can be mentioned from just 2010 and 2011. These include among others: Another Year (2010, Mike Leigh), Aurora (2010, Cristi Puiu), Honey (Bal, 2010, Semih Kaplanoglu), Poetry (Shi, 2010, Shang-Dong Lee), Elena (2011, Andrei Zvyagintsev), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011, Nuri Bilge Ceylan), and Meek’s Cutoff (2011, Kelly Reichardt).

Taking the family-centered plot seriously Ozu explored a variety of genres in the 1930s but ended up settling into the home drama, the shomingeki. For this reason, Donald Richie concludes that “Ozu had but one major subject, the Japanese family, and but one major theme, its dissolution” (1977, 1). David Bordwell disagrees and claims that not all of Ozu’s films center on families, but nevertheless he acknowledges “that Ozu’s pre-1941 films use family relations as one, usually a privileged, arena of social conflict; and that after 1941, more often than not, character relationships (at work, in the neighborhood) are usually plotted with reference to family relationships” (1988, 36).7 All of which seems a rather elaborate way of saying that the Japanese family is Ozu’s major subject. It is fair to say that Ozu’s admirers are mesmerized by his style yet tend to minimize the impact of the family-centered plot. In Western film theory and criticism, the family drama is considered a less sophisticated and challenging genre than the Western or the film noir. Today, John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and many of his other Westerns are considered classic masterpieces, whereas his family drama How Green Was My Valley (1941) is primarily remembered for beating Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) in the Oscar race for best picture in 1941. There have been more or less successful attempts—mostly from gender studies—to upgrade the genre of family melodrama, but in the end, the family narrative remains associated with ideological traditionalism, feminist concerns, and popular soap operas (Leibman 1995, 219). Steve Neale rightly observes that the identification of the melodrama with family and feminism is largely a construction of the 1970s (2000, 185). In 1977, Laura Mulvey wrote that “while the western and gangster film celebrate the ups and downs endured by the man of action,

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the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, like the tragedies of Euripides, probing the pent-up emotion, bitterness, and disillusion well known to women, act as a corrective” (1977, 76). Arguably, the most inspiring ode to the Hollywood family melodrama was written by Thomas Elsaesser in 1972 in his influential article “Tales of Sound and Fury.” He elevates the melodramas made by Douglas Sirk, Nicholas Ray, and Vincente Minelli by stressing their hyperbolic style, Freudian subtext, and critical perspective on society. The Cahiers du Cinéma also valued Sirk’s mise-en-scène and his command of cinematic language but dismissed his stories as “trash” (Mulvey, 2006, 145). A similar treatment has been applied to Ozu since he was discovered by Western audiences in the 1970s.

Figure 5.2 Scene from Written on the Wind (1956, Douglas Sirk). By framing family members in doorways, windows and mirrors, Douglas Sirk highlights their isolation from the rest of the family. From left to right: Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), Lucy Moore Hadley (Lauren Bacall), and Marylee Hadley (Dorothy Malone).

Oddly, not much has been written about the obvious affinities between Yasujiro Ozu and Douglas Sirk, especially in view of the parallels in their attention to family relations and their rocky reception history. Sirk, like Ozu, uses repetition, patterning, and symmetry to tell his stories. Moreover, there are numerous similarities in their mise-en-scène: the costumes that are both

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true to real-life clothing and revealing about one’s character, the repeated camera positions, the frames within the frame, the affinity to theatrical space and the use of recurring stars. However, there remain clear differences in temperament and outcome between the demonstrative Hollywood melodramas and the composed Japanese home dramas.8 Both Sirk and Ozu were considered conservative in the 1950s, largely because of their subject matter. To young filmmakers of the 1950s, Ozu was too old to appropriately portray the sociopolitical dynamics of postwar Japanese society. Within Hollywood, Sirk was considered a director who delivered well-crafted genre products for adult audiences. Based on extensive archival research, Barbara Klinger claims that Sirk’s reputation radically changed through the decades with all kinds of often contradictory labels being attached to his films. These ranged from conservative to transgressive, from adult to gay, from nostalgic to innovative (Klinger 1994, 157–158). Such changes in appreciation and interpretation are often particularly revealing about ongoing social upheavals and ideological struggles that affect family life. The questions remain. Why did Ozu remain so stubbornly focused on the family and why have so many creators of today’s slow films chosen that very same subject?

A personal history of family, home, and nation Unlike movies about warfare, gangsters, and ghosts, family dramas portray everyday life. As a result, filmmakers can easily draw upon personal experiences. The fact that Ozu did not marry and lived with his mother almost his entire adult life can partly explain his obvious sympathy with characters that are reluctant to get married. Contemporary filmmakers often draw more explicitly upon personal memories. When Malick portrays a family in The Tree of Life, he depicts his own youth, his hometown, and even refers to the death of his brother. However, no matter how obviously a film takes its inspiration from personal cues, its meaning cannot be reduced to mere autobiographical facts. In Ozu’s case, he worked closely

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with screenwriter Kogo Noda and adapted extensively from Japanese sources in literature, theater, and film and was influenced by Hollywood morality tales. Even more important to the creation of his families than these representational sources is the close observation of Japanese life in all its repetitions and variations. Ozu may portray ordinary reality, but his films are fictions created through image and sound. “Even if my films appear to all be the same, I am always trying to express something new, and I have a new interest in each film. I am like a painter who keeps painting the rose over and over again” (Yoshida 1998, 14). The Japanese family is the rose that Ozu relentlessly re-envisions. Ozu once complained that Japanese lifestyles were not appropriate for motion pictures because of the interruptions and delays due to sliding doors, the need to constantly take off shoes and sit down on the floor. He asserted that “the Japanese life-style should become more cinematic” (Yoshida 1998, 20). Thus, Ozu adjusted Japanese behavior to fit in front of the camera and simultaneously adjusted his style to capture Japanese family life. The result is the Ozu universe, an imaginary world where Japanese life is indeed rendered more cinematic. This cinematic world of Ozu may seem remarkably calm compared to the tumultuous times he actually lived in. According to Kiju Yoshida, Ozu never surrendered to the zeitgeist (1998, 61), but that does not mean that his films are cut off from society. Ozu’s eye has always been firmly fixed on contemporary life (Bordwell 1988, 18). Ozu was very much concerned with present-day life throughout his career, from unemployment in the 1930s, the war in the 1940s, and to American consumerist culture in the 1950s (Bordwell 1988, 153). All these changes had a profound impact on Japanese family life.9 The cult of the family was an explicit feature of wartime ideology. Therefore, central among the postwar occupation reforms in Japan was “an attack on the patriarchal family by ending the legal authority of the main family over the branches and giving women the right to vote. Economic changes also created smaller households on the Anglo-American model” (Bordwell 1988, 36–37). Ozu was aware of this. Regarding Tokyo Story, he remarked, “I depicted the changing relationship between parents and children, and how the family system collapsed in Japan” (Yoshida 1998, 123).

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For Japanese audiences after the war, Ozu came to represent an ethical and esthetic nostalgia. On his deathbed in the hospital, Ozu supposedly said to Shiro Kido, the head of the Kamata Studio, “Well, Mr. President, after all—the home drama.” For Bordwell, this uttering proves that “Ozu’s awareness of this nostalgia for prewar Japan in its ironic recollection of the lachrymose bedside scene which climaxed the typical Kamata film” (1988, 26). In contemporary slow cinema, nostalgia for the past has become a popular way of criticizing the present. Since the family is cross-culturally a central ideological construct, family pictures are often pervaded with nostalgic feelings. The 1950s are the privileged time treated with nostalgia in the United States, especially in relation to the ideal of the All-American family. Terrence Malick taps into that nostalgia with The Tree of Life and shows us a suburban 1950s household but at once accompanies this nostalgic portrayal with images of the formation of the universe and even a glimpse of afterlife. In Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, settler families are heading west looking for land but end up walking around in circles as they are being ill advised by their deceitful guide who was supposed to lead them through the desert. Both Malick and Reichardt use a slice of American history, the nostalgia for traditional family life, and spiritual metaphors to evoke a contemporary sense of loss.

Figure 5.3 Scene from The Tree of Life (2011, Terrence Malick). Through the circular movements of the camera, the director stays close to his troubled 1950s American family. From left to right: Young Jack O’Brien (Hunter McCracken), Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt), R. L. O’Brien (Laramie Eppler), Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain), and Steve O’Brien (Tye Sheridan).

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Unlike Ozu, contemporary slow cinema often places their stories in the past to express nostalgia for times gone by. In an Ozu film, characters are nostalgic for the fleeting present, since they are aware of the unavoidable changes that the family will suffer in the future. Whether or not the Japanese are unusually sensitive to impermanence, the notion that the present is evanescent has been a central concept in virtually all Japanese art of the twentieth century. Ozu refers to this evanescence in his comments on Early Summer: “I wished to portray the cycle of life or mutability rather than the action itself” (Bordwell 1988, 45).

The family and beyond The family is the perfect subject matter to blend personal fascinations with reflections on society, to tie a forgotten past and fleeting present together, and to turn real-life into cinematic artifice. For filmmakers today, this may be enough of a reason to eagerly dramatize family life. Moreover, family dramas can generally be made on a lower budget, which augments their appeal. Unlike other narratives, this is a situation where film critics tend to look for hidden meanings beyond the family surface. Their assumptions can help tie Ozu’s distinctive style and his major theme together. In his 1972 book, director and film critic Paul Schrader claims that Ozu expresses the transcendent in his films through the use of style. The stasis of his films bestows transcendent meaning upon the daily rituals of family members. Schrader links this style of Ozu to the “mu,” the basic principle of Zen art. This is the concept of negation, emptiness, and the void (Schrader 1972, 27). Richie has adopted this view from Schrader when he states that in his later films, Ozu “achieves the transcendental from a base in the mundane, in the bourgeois family—undisturbed by social upheavals, undismayed by financial misfortunes” (Richie 1977, 6). Zen art and culture are obviously part of Ozu’s films, but the meticulous representation of family life seems to be more than “a prelude to the moment of redemption, when ordinary reality is transcended” to use the words of Schrader (1972, 42). In an Ozu film, characters are much too concerned with emotional relationships and their

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place in society to be mere vessels for the transcendent. Ozu’s style may direct viewers to the transcendent, but it is primarily designed to render Japanese lives cinematic. For David Bordwell, Ozu has not developed a transcendental style but rather a so-called parametric style. Along with a poeticizing of ordinary life, Ozu has relentlessly explored the resources of cinema (Bordwell 1988, 161). He is not aiming for transcendence; he is an experimental filmmaker devoted to the particular problems of his medium (Bordwell 1988, 166). His shots look like pictures—landscape photographs, still-life pictures, and portraits (Bordwell 1988, 88). Furthermore, this leads to a conclusion that Ozu “makes the average household into the sort of museum Mondrian might design. He treats the ordinary human body as a compact set of symmetrical surfaces and gently shifting shapes” (Bordwell 1988, 159). Bordwell makes a strong case for Ozu’s search for a cinema of the absolute image. However, unlike other experimental filmmakers—or the paintings of Mondrian for that matter—Ozu does not use his stories as pretexts for esthetic experiment. Ozu does not arrive at pure autonomy of form, color, and proportion. Robin Wood insists that Ozu’s films are not reducible to exercises in style but that narrative is his priority (1992, 61). According to Wood, the purpose and function of the Ozu style is “not to distract our attention from the characters and the narrative by displacing it on to something else: it is to define a very particular way of regarding them” (1992, 67). With great directors, there is always an inseparable and vital relationship between the image and the story it is telling. With Ozu, the coming-of-age rituals, the emotional frictions between generations, and the portrayals of child’s play are equally as important as the arrangement of characters and props in front of the camera. “Cinema is drama, not accident.” That is what Ozu allegedly whispered twice to director Yoshida on his deathbed (1998, 2). What Ozu precisely meant by this remains open to discussion. The word drama may point to the artifice of cinema, being a staged drama rather than an accidental chain of events. According to Yoshida, for Ozu, films had to depict the drama of human life and not random, accidental events, no matter how sensational they are. He turned human lives into

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dramas “only by being restrained and strictly organized through the motif of repetition and difference” (1998, 151). Slow family dramas often attract attention to the pace, the repetitiveness and the details of ordinary life. The eternal return of all things, the cycle of life seems to be endlessly fascinating to Ozu. This cycle of life is present in nature but also in the constant formations and dissolutions of families. There is no irony in these films to suggest an esthetic play or proof of transcendent meaning. Throughout his films, Ozu explores how strongly the family life cycle is determined by natural laws and how heavily it is governed by cultural rules.10 According to Kiju Yoshida, Ozu’s filmmaking was based on his passive and self-renouncing attitude toward the world. Ozu tried to accept the world as it is and succumb to its ways (1998, 24). He was aware of the danger of frustrating his audience, because his films forced them to confront their antidramatic lives instead of being entertained. For Yoshida, Ozu was inclined to existentialism but he does not specify what he means by this (1998, 29). Existentialism is a broad term that refers to a variety of philosophical thoughts and artistic practices. Postwar artists as different as Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, and Jean-Luc Godard have been called existentialists. Not surprisingly, Terrence Malick is also considered a filmmaker who raises existentialist questions about life on earth. In spite of the obvious differences mentioned earlier, Malick and Ozu are united in their attempt to redefine the transcendent in a secular life and in their concentration on family and human behavior. Through recurrent daily acts, the family members in their films attach meaning to the spaces they inhabit and turn these spaces into a home. Malick and Ozu are both fascinated by the oppositions that govern the family home and human existence: man versus woman, individual versus collective, nature versus nurture. Families are human institutions that are supposed to govern, balance, and reconcile these oppositions. In an Ozu film, families are more or less successful in this balancing act despite external pressures and internal frictions. Family members ultimately find and accept their roles in life. After the death of a family member, the rest of the family moves on. Noriko in Tokyo Story admits that she does not think of her dead husband all that much. Ozu uses

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style to tie his characters closer to each other and their environments. In a Malick film, characters are struggling with their lives, confronting each other and questioning God, resulting in emotional agony, despair, and aggressive outbursts. A sense of rootlessness accompanies them throughout the film. In the final images of The Tree of Life, the central character Jack is shown wandering around the city. He appears to be disturbed by the sight of the clouds, the people, and skyscrapers surrounding him. Malick’s views on humanity, nature, and the cycle of life result in a louder, more grandiose, and energetic version of slow filmmaking. Ozu and Malick may share the same fascination for the cycle of life, but their personal temperament, their cultural background, and their attitudes toward life are very different. In the end, Malick seems less confident about the eternal continuity of the cycle of life.

The future of slow cinema: Is this the end? It is clear that there are very different views regarding both the intentions of Yasujiro Ozu and the ultimate effects of his films. Is Ozu the most or least Japanese of Japanese directors? Is he experimental or traditional? Is Ozu expressing existentialist ideas or is he practicing Zen Buddhism? Authors cannot even agree upon a simple question as why Noriko in Late Spring does not want to get married. Wood stresses the solidarity between the unmarried women and even hints at a lesbian relationship. Kiju Yoshida is convinced that the father and the daughter are entangled in a forbidden love affair (Yoshida 1998, 74). The ultimate meaning of Ozu’s films is left up to the beholder. He expects his viewer to fill the silences, the frozen moments, and the empty spaces. A spectator unwilling to engage in this dialogue will very likely experience these films as profoundly unexciting. Those who do connect with the characters are in for a surprise. Ozu’s characters are remarkably hard to pin down on traditionalism versus liberalism. Casual remarks, small gestures, and innocent jokes may change our perspective of a character and a situation within seconds. Ozu treats all his characters with respect, which makes it

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even more difficult to make up our minds whether we sympathize with their decisions and actions or not. In order to grasp the complexity of these characters, Ozu makes us observe them with utter care. All formal strategies point us in the direction of attentive observation, contemplation, and reflection. A final question remains: is slowness simply a matter of personal taste or can audiences worldwide learn to appreciate the slowness of Ozu and grasp the potential pleasures of watching his films or any other slow films? David Bordwell suggests that audiences must cultivate “a range and depth of viewing skills seldom asked in cinema” in order to appreciate Ozu (1988, 178). However, the problem of slow cinema finding an audience may be more fundamental than the mere lack of viewing skills, since it seems to demand another attitude toward life. Bordwell insists that the skills that Ozu would have us cultivate are “exactly those which we need in order to lead finely-textured and responsible social lives” (1988, 179). Unfortunately, he is quite vague about how a better understanding of Ozu’s formal system will help us socially. Once more, Bordwell does not recognize the importance of the family-centered plot in this respect. By minimizing the importance of the family plot, he fails to address the potential of ideological discussions and the complex ways worldwide audiences might bring their own personalities and experiences to the family table. Jacques Tati—to cite another director with a highly idiosyncratic style— was aware of the need for being trained in the art of watching. He saw his films—and Playtime (1967) in particular—as une école du regard, a school of the gaze. Children are expected to be able to read, to write, and to count. By developing their skills to look and listen attentively, we might teach them something far more important: to reconnect with the real world around them outside the domain of image. The acceleration of life itself has taught us to multitask, to be alert, and to be mobile. Speed has transformed our ways of living in the twentieth century. Accordingly, we have all become accustomed to representations of real life that are fast, surprising, and entertaining. Ozu and contemporary slow cinema frustrate these expectations. In order to appreciate Ozu, audiences have to be willing to observe the Japanese lifestyle, to enter the rhythm that underpins his films, and to confront the drama of our human lives, namely it’s absurd, trivial, and ever-so-fleeting nature.

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This is significantly scarier than it was fifty years ago. In the twentyfirst century, people are part of global capitalist culture and have become detached from nature as well as from culture. Not surprisingly, slow cinema seems more pessimistic about future life than Ozu ever was. “Owarika”: Is this the end? It is a question posed by a character about the death of a loved one in Ozu’s Tokyo Story, The End of Summer, and The Munekata Sisters (Richie 1977, 15). After the death of a family member, the rest of the family moves on. However, in Still Walking (2008, Hirokazu Koreeda), the tragic death of the eldest son haunts a family for over fifteen years. The creation of cinematic stasis is congruent with the emotional numbness that has taken hold of the family. The majority of the slow films mentioned in this essay deal with stories about death, mortality, or even the apocalypse. On his deathbed, the protagonist in Uncle Boonmee meditates on his past lives with the help of family members, ghosts, and spirits of the forest where he lives. When at the end of Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse, the horse stops eating, the well runs dry, and darkness falls upon the earth, we immediately realize that father and daughter are not simply facing death but rather the entire end of life on earth. The death of a human in slow cinema is no longer part of the cycle of life, but has become a foreshadowing of a planet falling apart and the end of human existence. The popularity of the apocalypse as theme is not limited to blockbuster action films. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, slow cinema is haunted by the apocalyptic idea that the cycle of life may soon come to a full stop, to a complete stasis, with or without our cooperation. Slow cinema does not confront the viewer with a fleeting yet eternal present but rather with the fear of a non-existing future. However, audiences can choose to forget about the bleak outcome of these movies and remember the images of hope and wonder they have seen along the way. Moreover and although it is still early to tell—some of the most notable slow filmmakers like Hirokazu Koreeda and Jia Zhangke seem to turn away from the slow esthetic in their latest films. We will have to wait and see if this means that the utopian space that the family seems to occupy in the hearts and minds of these directors can no longer be just a thing of the past but can become part of a more hopeful vision of the future.

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Notes 1

This pattern of a leisurely exposition was established in Toda Family

2

Noel Burch denoted the transitional images in between scenes pillow-shots

(Bordwell 1988, 56). (168–169). 3

Ozu rarely uses pans and he practically stopped moving his camera altogether when he started doing color films.

4

Bordwell has extensively commented on Ozu’s dynamic interaction between

5

The influence of American films is very clear in Days of Youth (1929), Walk

rigor and playfulness (70). Cheerfully (1930) and I Flunked, But … (1930). 6

Ozu’s mixture of classical Hollywood cinema principles and Japanese elements makes sense, in that his films draw upon the mass culture of his time.

7

On several occasions, Bordwell tries to minimize Richie’s claim that the family is Ozu’s main subject: “In his postwar work, the shrinking Japanese family finds its representation in families lacking a parent or in vast extended families that break up. However, the ideal of community can be expressed outside the family as well as in the college students’ gang, the salaryman’s batsu, or the close-knit neighborhood and these too can become objects of nostalgia in the late films.” (Bordwell 1988, 43)

8

Sirk’s family drama is rougher, overtly melodramatic and less concealing,

9

The “ie” was the family line transmitted through the eldest son and dominating

building to an emotional climax. all branch families. This patriarchal concept of the family was the ideological model in the 1900s. 10 Robin Wood observes that Ozu does not confront the viewer with Japanese “otherness,” but with problems faced by people living in a patriarchal capitalist culture. All we need to know about Japan in order to understand the characters’ emotions, we can deduce from the films (61).

Bibliography Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. London: BFI Publishing, 1988. Burch, Noel. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in Japanese Cinema. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1979.

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Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama.” In Film Theory and Criticism. Introductory Readings, edited by Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Buardy, 512–535, 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Flanagan, Matthew. “Towards an Aesthetic of Slow in Contemporary Cinema”, 16:9, 2008. Accessed October 23, 2011. http://www.16-9.dk. James, Nick. “Passive Aggressive.” Sight & Sound, April 2010. Klinger, Barbara. Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Leibman, Nina. Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995. Mulvey, Laura. “Notes on Sirk and Melodrama.” In Home Is Where the Heart Is. Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, edited by Christine Gledhill, 75–79. London: British Film Institute, 1987. ———. Death 24× a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Neale, Steve. Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge, 2000. Patterson, John. “As Yasujiro Ozu Reaches Late Autumn He’s Become Master of Slow Cinema.” The Guardian [London] January 23. Accessed October 23, 2010. http:// www.theguardian.com. Porril, Ward. “Conversations at the Cinematheque: Kelly Reichardt for Wendy & Lucy/ Old Joy.” Aero Theatre. March 17. Accessed October 30, 2011. https://www .facebook.com Richie, Donald. Ozu: His Life and Films. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1977. Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Is Ozu Slow?” Senses of Cinema. March 5. Accessed October 30, 2011. http://sensesofcinema.com/, 2000. Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1972. Wood, Robin. “The Noriko Trilogy. Three Films of Ozu with Setsuoko Hara.” Cineaction, vol. no. 26–27 (Winter 1992): 60–81. Yoshida, Kiju. Ozu’s Anti-Cinema. Trans. Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1998.

6

Good Morning: The Limits of Cinema and the Issue of Order Suzanne Beth

Good Morning (Ohayo), directed by Yasujirō Ozu in 1959, belongs to his “late” films, those produced at the end of his career. However, this film’s humor, and particularly its scatological running gags, seems like a backward glance at the nansensu influence of his cinema, which dates back to his first steps at Shochiku. The depiction of children also recalls the director’s silent period, and especially the two brothers of I Was Born, But … (Umarete wa mita keredo, 1932); in fact, Good Morning is a remake of this film. They share a key episode in the form of strikes undertaken by the kids: a hunger strike in the earlier film and a speaking strike in the later one. Though the film seems like a light and almost childish comedy, Ozu considered it of special importance and he strongly wished that “people came and saw this film.”1 How can we understand this paradox? As the speaking strike demonstrates, Good Morning deals with verbal communication and its troubles. The film revolves around gossip and misunderstandings spreading among the housewives of a small neighborhood, as well as daily small talk, whose relevance is challenged by the rebellious children. The film intertwines this explicit question of the possibility of speaking with its other central figure: television. The children’s desire for television is indeed the cause of the main discord, bringing disorder into the neighborhood’s communications. In Good Morning, television is thus at the center of the problems between order and disorder and especially about how moving images can be put into order. In an indirect manner, the film then questions the risks related to the

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establishment of a fake order, which only conceals the disorder to which it relates. Although it shows extraordinary formal coherence, Ozu’s cinema has a distaste for this kind of fake and literal order. According to Kijū Yoshida, Ozu’s filmmaking indeed “continuously seek[s] order, even though he knew that his quest would end in vain,” the issue of order being deprived of any easy resolution.2 Ozu’s films, in fact, show a tension between the chaos brought from the fragmentation of cinematographic takes and the capacity of the montage to put them into order. How is this tension set in Good Morning? Of course, the film itself is obviously put in a very careful order, as it usually is in Ozu’s films. This order is, however, altered in several ways, expressing Ozu’s distrust of moving images with predetermined meanings, which only instrumentalize cinema’s power as well as his own effort at maintaining heterogeneity at the core of his filmmaking. This heterogeneity can especially be perceived in the “incredible freedom of decoupage” of Good Morning, which echoes Ozu’s idiosyncratic conception of continuity.3 The film, thus, contrasts two systems of recording moving images: on the one hand, that of television and the predetermined order of communication and information typically by creating readymade images, and, on the other hand, that of his own practice. Though the possible order is not absolute, this does not mean that we should give up the search for order. In this context, one understands better the film’s amazingly creative play on language. According to Ozu, indeed, “one can babble endlessly about insignificant things, but when reaching the essential it is very difficult to say anything.”4 As Good Morning attests, he does not intend to discredit daily talk, whose emptiness is precisely what makes it valuable. Rather, the film offers a reflection on the power and powerlessness of speech, and especially on the explanation and argumentation of speech, as far as cinema is concerned. The resolution of the family conflict surrounding the purchase of a television indeed raises the issue of its manner, or, said otherwise, of the kind of sequence that enables it. As Donald Richie notes, the television appears simply, without any explanation or narrative complication.5 Thus, the distance taken by Ozu toward a cinema trying to conceal its inherent

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disorder meets his distrust of narrative causality. Renouncing deliberately the explanatory power of a well-conceived plot, Ozu’s filmmaking leans on an order that is effective but weakly secured. The first part of this paper gives a foundation of theoretical understanding about the types of order and disorder media are dealing with. The second part focuses on Ozu’s film as “drifting at the ephemeral confines of disorder and order.”6 The third part is finally dedicated to the logic according to which conflict and film find their resolution.

The temptations of a fake order I Was Born, But … and Good Morning could have shared a common advertising slogan: “Beware the media through which scandal arrives!” This should be nuanced, of course, because it is not so much about scandal as about discord. These media trigger the conflict at the core of both films: cinema in 1932 and television in 1959. This means that Ozu gives them a similar, although not identical, function in the films. I will consider how they are related in the treatment of the boys’ revolt, their consequences on their family, and finally their effect on the community. The boys of 1932 are humiliated by moving images showing the precarious and submissive social position of their father. As it is expressed in the ensuing confrontation, they begin to doubt that their father is “someone important.” This revelation deeply disturbs the order of their world and leads them to rebel against their father’s authority and the social organization to which he complies. This short-but-intense revolt takes the shape of a hunger strike. The revolt of the boys of 1959 leads to a speaking strike, which lasts for a few days. The purpose is to protest against two intertwined issues: on the one hand, the brothers demand the purchase of a television set while, on the other hand, they protest against the grownups’ daily small talk; for example, “Good morning” and “How are you?” When reproached by his father for complaining, Minoru, the eldest, stresses that such unimportant babbling is “talking nonsense.” Another character remarks though that such speech is

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like the “lubricants of society,” helping to connect people. And in fact, the speaking strike by the brothers sows the seeds of discord within the entire neighborhood, already quite upset by gossip and misunderstandings.

Figure 6.1 The two brothers, Minoru (left) and Isamu (right), shot from a low point of view, which cannot be that of their parents. From Good Morning (Ohayo, 1959).

Figure 6.2 The standing parents, facing their angry sons, shot from a completely different point of view.

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In I Was Born, But … and Good Morning, the audiovisual techniques are approached through the disorder they generate. Indeed, Kiju Yoshida considers Ozu’s point of view on the cinematographic medium as creating a sense of confusion. He understands it from the hypothesis of the “first time” when Ozu would have looked at the world through the lens of a camera, thus giving some importance to the fact that, when Ozu shot his first film in 1927, he had already been a cinephile for a long time, especially keen on American movies. According to Yoshida, at this point, “a movie camera must have resembled a useless tool and illicit machine that would have merely confused the actual conditions of the world,” which exists without us looking at it and that such is its genuine way of being.7 This new medium used two techniques for ordering: framing and editing. For Kiju Yoshida, framing, conceiving of a shot, means “adding to, playing with, raping, and destroying the actual state of the world.”8 The destruction in question regards the predetermined point of view that cinema, through framing, can impose and force on the world, which is contrary to the natural eye of the human which can focus, readjust, and move about. But what’s more, meaning does not come by forcing a frame upon a situation which denies the world of its natural way of being in order to control the impact of a scene. The natural order of the world is thus simply destroyed, and the new media glorifies ways of creating a false order. Indeed, to create meaning, images must be edited and shots linked to one another, which is “showing the actual world as if it were still alive when it was already horribly damaged, severed, and dead.”9 Editing then runs the risk of turning the film into a message of propaganda or fake pathos forcing its audience to accept violent reordering. It tells the audience how to feel, what to feel, and when to feel. These epistemological considerations, as expressed by Kiju Yoshida through Ozu’s films, point to two related dangers of cinematographic technique: the introduction of disorder into the world’s freedom to exist according to its own mode, and the consecutive desire to restore an order, which is then arbitrary. In a different way of seeing how media orders life, Yoshida’s remarks echoes French philosopher Bernard Stiegler and his warnings about the dangers related to the industrial production of

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moving images. Stiegler does not make a difference between Hollywood cinema and television because both conform to industrial demand by means of production and diffusion. Central to his reflection is the risk of “synchronization” shown by both media. Synchronization is a conception of identity that denies the disparity introduced in an entity by the lapsing of time and especially aging. Synchronization operated by “program industries” jeopardizes the changes brought by time, that is to say the “contradiction of the self with itself, and which is the very temporality of this self, which Deleuze called its ‘crack.’”10 “Program industries,” and especially television broadcasting, where everyone becomes a programed spectator at the same time, are basically schedules that can be described as “homogeneous and standardized apparatus of tertiary retentions.”11 They risk inducing a very large synchronization, both on spatial and temporal levels, especially contesting the existence of communities that are paradoxically based on the experience of their inadequacy to themselves, which is only contradicted at times when they actually experience unison or, in Stiegler’s words, are indeed synchronized. Such programs create a very large synchronization, both on spatial and temporal levels, jeopardizing the existence of communities. Indeed, their actual heterogeneity should only be contradicted at times when they actually experience unison, synchronization only punctuating diachrony, and not erasing it.12 The disquieting order established through synchronization by program industries then threatens community as much as disorder from the techniques of the media does. The core concern of Good Morning is to create images that do not conform to the established conventions of filming found in television. Indeed, as Stiegler explicitly states, this unification of the world is done through industry, which is, in the form of program industry, notably developed in Hollywood. It is then not easy to separate “cinema” from Stiegler’s critique of television. Good Morning contains many references to the United States, which had occupied Japan until 1952. One notes the Americanization of the young couple who owns a television set and whose way of life is ostensibly Westernized. And then, some of the local housewives seem to doubt the morals of the couple, which lead them to move away. However, such an overall desire

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to identify the confusion within the neighborhood with Western influence or technique is lacking in Ozu’s film. The way humor characterizes the use of English demonstrates this, especially when it helps the boys to get off lightly, “of course madam!” or gracefully with “I love you!” Love between the English professor and the children’s aunt literally travels along in English, through the translations he is doing for her boss. Paradox then appears as a force in itself in Good Morning, and we have to understand better how Ozu “opposed the conventional ways of cinematic expression, but simultaneously and endlessly loved cinema. He brilliantly lived with this contradiction.”13

Cinema on the borders of disorder and order Following Ozu’s cinematographic practice, let us see how cinema can face its disorder instead of covering it with a false order as television tends to do. In “Think Television as Cinema,” Gilles Delavaud states that early commentators of television noticed that continuity was the most distinct feature of the new medium. This means that television is foreign to the dialectics of continuity and discontinuity which are the basis of filmmaking and that has especially led to the institutionalization of what is commonly called “classic editing,” where “conceiving of the links between shots have primarily the function of masking discontinuity in favor of a greater perceptive continuity.”14 This desire for continuity shared by television and “classic editing” is directly questioned in Ozu’s cinema. Ozu’s ambivalence toward the establishment of a greater perceptive continuity is stressed by many authors and can be felt in two major ways: on the one hand because priority is given to each shot composition instead of preserving composition from one shot to another within a given sequence, even if it means moving objects between two shots, thus modifying the characteristics of the space where one action is taking place.15 On the other hand, and this is especially noteworthy, it is felt as well in the way that Ozu uses shot/counter-shot conversations between two characters. The “classic” way to secure continuity in such dialogue scenes rests primarily upon the so-called “180 degree rule” which determines camera position

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between the two characters in a way equivalent to a panoramic shot. Many conversation scenes in Ozu’s films do not conform to this convention of the classic edit, which means that such scenes do not give the impression that the speakers’ looks meet. According to François Truffaut, this peculiar setting of shots/counter-shots produces a disquieting effect on their spectators, who “experience, in following a character’s look, the fear of not meeting the other speaker’s eyes. Said another way, after each shot or counter-shot, one believes that the interlocutor has gone.”16 Furthermore, Alain Bergala stresses as well the unsettling effect that these dialogues have when they are cut between two shots instead of sewn together smoothly.17 Good Morning features a certain number of these dialogues with the Ozu style shot/counter-shot, especially showing the neighborhood housewives trying to put order in their affairs and just confusing them more. However, a particularly important scene is the argument between father and son. This scene captures the shift in the dispute between the opposing parents and children, where the topic moves from television toward the speaking strike. Even though it is very carefully built, particularly following the “one shot/one line of speech” principle usually followed by Ozu, the sequence features a certain heterogeneity. It is indeed not easy to infer a unified meaning from the way in which speech is connected to the different camera positions. The father—whose first words for his angry son are “Shut up!”—expresses the core issue of the clash. He will not give in, and will not logically argue about television, even though we learn afterward that he has an opinion about it. However, the sequence finds its shape because the boy stands up. This all takes place within a full shot of the room, just after a shot/counter-shot talk between the mother, standing by her husband who has just come back home, with Minoru sitting on the floor. In a way already quite noteworthy, the camera’s position during this first confrontation does not suggest authority or domination. In spite of the gap between the parents’ and children’s postures, it does not show any high- or low-angle shot. The couple is framed in a front, medium shot. Their son fills up his shot, from a 3/4 position, on the floor. This means that the position of the camera is modified each time the speaker changes. And, in the end, this alternation is even more disturbing

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than Minoru’s protest or the obvious powerlessness of his mother. The cinematographic technique at stake (the shot/counter-shot) takes precedence over narrative confrontation. After the father has stepped in without being heard, he catches his son’s hand, forcing him to rise. Two full shots follow, resetting the situation. Before resuming a verbal confrontation, Minoru stands in front of his father, with both of them shot in full. The father faces the camera while the boy who is closer has his back to it. This layout gives the feeling that both characters are the same height. As usual, Isamu has followed his brother’s lead and supports him with his small presence, leaning on a fusuma. The confrontation resumes between father and son in the shot/counter-shot fashion, beginning with a shot of the mother who is back in the field. Shot from the waist and alone in the frame, she seems to be talking to a point slightly beside the camera. Similar shots follow, showing the father, then their son, which confirm the idea that they have the same height: they occupy the same part of the screen. The effect is that the space in which they stand loses its sense of reality for the spectators. This brings confusion to this second half of the dispute, which is when the theme of speech explicitly emerges. In this way a convention is not simply used for its effects, but exposed for what it is, an institutionalized practice. Ozu “exposes the fiction of an editing technique that should increase the impression that two people’s looks are meeting.”18 Therefore, when the sequence possesses a great intensity, it may feel like Ozu is playing with the conventions of cinema or “joking” as Yoshida puts it. Instead, Ozu is opening a free space between conformity and transgression, thus revealing how conventions “standardize and control human emotions.”19 Thus, such scenes unravel cinema’s capacity to record such readymade images. The dialogues in Ozu cinema are aimed at our capacity to be touched by cinematographic phenomena themselves, which especially appear as cinematographic enigmas or riddles, and not only by plot episodes or dramatic effects. The narrative tension of the Good Morning argument scene is partly governed by this ability, that Shigehiko Hasumi calls the spectators’ “cinematographic sensibility,” in a way that should honor it, for it takes seriously the possibility of being a spectator of cinema. And indeed, one

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effect of this inadequacy is to produce a very light and refreshing humor. The connection between the two parts of the aforementioned scene corresponds with Minoru’s line stating bravely: “I do what I want, I’m free!” However, the scene ends up with his radical conformation to his father’s demand that he keep quiet, producing a slight irony supporting the general feeling of discord. Ozu’s cinema creates no easy consolation in front of the disorder of the world. Such is the main point of the mise en abyme from I Was Born, But … , which questions the moviegoers’ position. The 1932 boys must face disappointment or disillusionment, to which their father adds that they are doomed to experience such things their entire lives. In Ozu’s cinema, a certain kind of disappointment is a fundamental reality to be learned by spectators because they are neither the center of the projection nor the source of the projected images. According to Alain Bergala, although the point of view of Ozu’s films is strong, it does not imply that a spectator is “all the more well managed that he would assume to be its center” because his or her position is not built that way.20 This position would be unifying inasmuch as it would display a mise en scène set from the point of view of a human subject, but here the point of view cannot be naturalized. It does not correspond to the fiction of a human look. This can especially be read in the way in which parents and sons are shot at the beginning of the scene, as described above, when the former are standing and the later sitting. The camera position completely changes between each shot. Thus for Alain Bergala, Ozu’s filmmaking makes us reconsider the very notion of point of view. This implies that the gaze of the spectators is pulled to the periphery, instead of identifying with, or being excluded from, the center. One’s vision or focus does not unify the images; instead, one is constantly decentered and remains so. Spectators are confronted with their powerlessness or the limits of their ability to view things in order. By studying Ozu’s cinema, one becomes sensitive to the powerlessness that cinema possesses or, said otherwise, the inevitable limits of its capacity. According to Shigehiko Hasumi, Ozu’s filmmaking reveals these limits rather than trying to hide them. As he explains, cinema is a limited practice because there are things that it simply is not able to show, and especially, and quite paradoxically, the act of looking.21 This impossibility of showing a “look” in

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itself is usually overcome by having two shots succeeding each other. The first one features the eyes while the next one shows the object looked at in quick succession suggesting interaction between the two. On the contrary, in Ozu’s films, conversation scenes create “a space in which eyes face eyes.”22 This relationship to cinema’s limits then points to the moment when it reaches its own powerlessness. This leads us to consider the cinematographic practice from the point of view of action. Indeed, according to Giorgio Agamben, the real potency, or genuine capacity, is not one that identifies only to itself but that one is carrying its reverse, namely incapacity. This is not something that would make it “more” powerful or efficient, but instead becomes a question of ethics: “Fleeing from our own impotence, or rather trying to adopt it as a weapon, we construct the malevolent power that oppresses those who show us their weakness”23 Agamben’s contention, inasmuch as it meets Ozu’s filmmaking, leads us to imagine the possibility of a more liberating cinema, instead of a cinema created from “a message transmitted through violence.”

Arriving at a non-narrative resolution According to Ozu’s film, Good Morning, what can cinema do and what are its limits? According to Kiju Yoshida, Ozu knew that it was not “a blessed new creation.”24 Indeed, I Was Born, But … stresses the medium’s ambivalence, and it is interesting to look into the way in which this ambivalence is overcome by examining the film’s resolution. Obviously, the father has a good idea of what grounds his sons’ revolt. As he tells his wife, “I understand too well what they feel. But is there any other way?” She then asks him, “Do you think that they fully understood it?” Her character seems to suggest that the explanation he gave her could help their sons to get over their anger. However, this explanation is left between the adults, for the children’s crisis is worked out in another way. Its resolution cannot be found by an explanation. It must happen otherwise, especially through cinematographic means. The penultimate scene of I Was Born, But … happens on the morning following the argument. In it, the resolution occurs with the father and

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his sons sitting next to each other while looking in the same direction. As opposed to the dialogue scenes filmed in shots/counter-shots, in this situation the issue of knowing whether the characters’ looks meet is not relevant. This indicates that the tension at the core of the film is eased, by matching moments of communion between the characters with an acknowledgment of the conclusion in the film’s unreeling. Since they can sit next to each other looking in the same direction, it means that the sons have made peace with their father and not the other way around. The resolution is foremost cinematographic, and narrative appeasement is subordinated to it. Here is expressed Ozu’s joint distrust of argumentation and narrative causality. Good Morning is entirely inhabited by this distrust of narrative causality, transmitted through the innumerable plays with language that are as much a source of exchanges and of misunderstandings. Among all the registers at stake, the scene showing the old midwife praying on the river bank comes to mind. It is indeed made of three shots of strikingly contrasted framing: the first one is a long and very “busy” shot, within which the lady, almost seen from behind, is a detail; the second one is a medium shot showing her standing profile, clearly outlined against the green of the grass and the blue of the sky; and the third one is a close up on her face from her shoulders, praying. This structure makes it a strong sequence, even though its narrative function is more or less nil, creating a paradox impossible to synthesize. And, indeed, prayer is a paradoxical speech, which is not transitive, as a request would be. It does not really belong to the register of communication. The importance given to this sequence, which seems at first unjustified, confirms the idea that the resolution of the film, and of the family conflict, cannot be identified as an explanation or an argument. As Donald Richie remarks, stressing the surprising way in which the television finally appears, “so much has been made of them that one half expects plot complications involving these objects. Not at all. In the next scene there they are, their arrival unexplained.”25 As far as Good Morning and its central conflict are concerned, one should focus on the boys’ father, since he is the character through whom the television arrives. A scene shows him and one of his neighbors at the local bar. During the conversation, the father has the chance to tell what he thinks of television.

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He is quite opposed to buying one because he has read that it provokes a “collective mind-numbing syndrome” on people. However, a few scenes later, he buys a television, even though no one has really contradicted his opinion. It seems that this purchase was decided as a celebration of their neighbor’s new job. However, the parents of the brothers could have bought another electric appliance, like their neighbor’s washing machine. Why buy a television set? We might have to accept the idea that it is simply a contradiction of the character, expressing Ozu’s distaste to control characters with plot demands or dramatic effects. From this comes “a rightness based upon the Ozu character being given an amount of freedom almost unknown to cinema characters. Since he had no work to do, no story to act out, no plot to advance, he could be contradictory, illogical—and always faithful to himself.”26 Therefore, the resolution of the conflict and the film can remain unexplained. The father’s incoherence, or at least impossibility to synthesize or pin down, evokes the film’s form. It especially points to the “parallelisms” mentioned by Donald Richie, who describes them as “a minor motif running parallel to the main theme or story and, to an extent, both presaging and sustaining it,” even if their connection is not clarified. In Good Morning, the “speech” (and its troubles) and the “TV” themes are obviously related—for instance because the boys’ speaking strike leads to an unfortunate misunderstanding between their mother and her neighbors—but their link is difficult to clarify and remains elusive.27 It seems that this resistance to explicitness is what matters most, especially avoiding the temptation of finding a metaphorical or symbolic meaning. However, this resistance to explicitness is the most thorough answer that a film can transmit on the question of communication, and especially verbal communication. As Ozu himself explains it, Good Morning was conceived according to the idea that “we can talk forever about insignificant things, but when we reach the essential it is very difficult to say anything.”28 And this is what the English teacher’s sister finally tells her brother: “sometimes one must say important things.” And of course, we can only agree with her. Yet, a few scenes later, the English teacher and the young lady he loves are found standing on the platform of a train station. In the playful manner characteristic of Good Morning, characters are shown communicating using “empty expressions”

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that are supposedly purposeless. But this way, they stand next to each other. If one can call this scene of communion a “reply” to his sister’s remark, it would foremost mean that, as long as cinema is concerned, it is not possible to say important things—or, in other words, that it is not in its power. An authentic cinematic experience must be experienced by its audience’s cinematographic sensibility. Good Morning is indifferent to the power of explanation, and all the more to narrative causality. As is well known, Ozu took a long time before actually shooting a talkie.29 According to Kiju Yoshida, Ozu’s bond to silent cinema mirrored his concern about talkies imposing predetermined meanings and standardized emotions since it is easy for characters to express their emotions through words. On the contrary, Ozu’s silent films are able to display “the act of speaking.”30 So, Ozu may have waited to find a way to regenerate his filmmaking in light of such constraints of talkies. Ozu’s films then show the act of speaking as a capacity—a potentiality— separate from any content of speech. The role played by humor in the film, and especially the two running gags of the boys’ farts and Isamu’s “I love you,” proves crucial in this regard since their comical effect precisely relies on their meaninglessness, on the gap they reveal between speech as an act and as content spoken. Giorgio Agamben calls such moments of cinema “gestures,” whose function is to simply display our ability to speak as a pure means, a means without an end: “the gesture is essentially always a gesture of not being able to figure something out in language; it is always a gag,” in every sense of the term, thus hindering speech as well as revealing a willingness to speak.31 Gilles Deleuze analyzes Ozu’s cinema in terms of an actual but weakly secured order. The “still life” shots so intimately associated with Ozu’s filmmaking are pure and direct images of time giving “to what changes the immutable shape in which change occurs.”32 In his films, time is not meant to be used and exhausted but to host a renewed life where boys search for their way of growing up. Faithful to its overall tone, Good Morning offers some of these “purely optic situations” in a mischievous mode, with the film ending on a shot showing a boy’s underpants drying in the sun.

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Figure 6.3 The last shot of Good Morning, a “still life” so characteristic of Ozu’s filmmaking, showing the belly aching boy’s underpants drying in the sun.

Conclusion At the heart of Good Morning, the thematic point of view remains the issue of order and disorder, concerned with television and language. However, this is foremost tackled as the mediatic question of the ordering of the images of the film itself. As is usual for Ozu, the film is very carefully conceived and put in order. This order is, however, altered in several ways, and especially by its changing tone due to humor, and mainly to two running gags, the kids’ farts and Isamu’s “I love you.” Their comic effect depends in great part on their repetition, which is a strong force within Ozu’s filmography, as it is indicated by Good Morning’s references to I Was Born But … Furthermore, repetition is both a way of ordering and an inevitable source of discrepancies and disparity since it cannot be pure reproduction. Good Morning then strives to differentiate itself from the order featured by television, which is regulated by a radical control of its effects at the heart of the film. Most of the time, televised images are images reproducing readymade emotions and discussions that have always already been filmed. This may explain why televised images are finally quite

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absent from the film. Good Morning does not illustrate such wrongs or dangers but strives to have us actually experience them conversely, with the Ozu effect of images liberating themselves.

Notes 1 2

Yasujirō Ozu, “Pour parler de mes films,” Positif 203 (1978): 24. Kijū Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, translated by Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies—The University of Michigan, 2003), 46.

3

Hubert Niogret, “Introducing Yasujiro Ozu, ou pour la première fois à l’écran,” Positif 203 (1978): 12.

4

Ozu, “Pour parler de mes films,” 24.

5

Donald Richie, Ozu (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1974), 58.

6

Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 246.

7

Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 24.

8

Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 24.

9

Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 24.

10 Bernard Stiegler, La technique et le temps 3—Le temps du cinéma et la question du mal-être (Paris: Galilée, 2001), 81. 11 Stiegler, La technique et le temps, 188. 12 National celebrations are example of such synchronization that must remain punctual. 13 Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 35. 14 Gilles Delavaud, “Penser la télévision avec le cinéma,” Cinémas 17, nos. 2–3 (2007): 75. 15 See Noël Burch, To the Distant Observer. Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979); Alain Bergala, “L’homme qui se lève,” Cahiers du cinéma 311 (1980): 25–29; David Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press and British Film Institute, 1988); Hasumi Shigehiko, Yasujirô Ozu (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1998). 16 Truffaut quoted in Hasumi, Yasujirô Ozu, 152. 17 Bergala, “L’homme qui se lève,” 27.

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18 Hasumi, Yasujirô Ozu, 154. 19 Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 29. 20 Bergala, “L’homme qui se lève,” 28. 21 Hasumi, Yasujirô Ozu, 150. 22 Hasumi, Yasujirô Ozu, 150. 23 Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 31. 24 Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 24. 25 The “objects” are plural because Richie also refers to the golf clubs in An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji, 1962). Donald Richie, Ozu (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1974), 58. 26 Richie, Ozu, 23. 27 Richie, Ozu, 38. 28 Ozu, “Pour parler de mes films,” 24. 29 Ozu’s first talkie, The Only Son (Hitori musuko) was shot in 1936, whereas the first Japanese film fully using sound, Gosho Heinosuke’s The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (Madamu to nyōbō), was released in 1931. 30 Basile Doganis, Le silence dans le cinéma d’Ozu (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), 70. 31 Giorgio Agamben, Means Without Ends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2000), 59. 32 Gilles Deleuze, Cinéma 2—L’image-mouvement (Paris: Minuit, 1985), 27.

Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio. Means Without Ends. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. ———. The Coming Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Bergala, Alain. “L’homme qui se lève.” Cahiers du cinéma 311 (1980): 25–29. Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press and British Film Institute, 1988. Bourget, Eithne. “Les rites de la communication et du silence. Sur Ohayô.” Positif 205 (1978): 37–39. Burch, Noël. To the Distant Observer. Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979. Delavaud, Gilles. “Penser la télévision avec le cinéma.” Cinémas 17, no. 2–3 (2007): 73–95.

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Deleuze, Gilles. Cinéma 2—L’image-mouvement. Paris: Minuit, 1985. Doganis, Basile. Le silence dans le cinéma d’Ozu. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005. Hasumi, Shigehiko. Yasujirô Ozu. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1998. Niogret, Hubert. “Introducing Yasujiro Ozu, ou pour la première fois à l’écran.” Positif 203 (1978): 2–12. Ozu, Yasujirō. “Pour parler de mes films.” Positif 203 (1978): 17–25. Richie, Donald. Ozu. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1974. Stiegler, Bernard. La technique et le temps 3—Le temps du cinéma et la question du mal-être. Paris: Galilée, 2001. Tobin, Yann. “Pourquoi l’eau de mer est-elle salée? Sur Gosses de Tokyo.” Positif 237 (1980): 32–35. Yoshida, Kijū. Ozu’s Anti-cinema. translated by Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2003.

7

In Yoko’s Room: Hou, Ozu, and the Poetics of Space Tom Paulus

On the occasion of Ozu’s centenary year in 2003, the Shochiku Company planned various projects and events in Japan and throughout the rest of the world. Taiwanese filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou joined the Ozu centennial symposium in Tokyo on December 12, the anniversary of Ozu’s death. Hou had brought his new feature Café Lumière: An Homage to Yasujiro Ozu, a project commissioned by Shochiku and shot on location in Tokyo. At the symposium, Hou explained that during production of the film he had tried to think how Ozu himself would have shot a film in today’s Japan. Ozu’s legacy had been Hou’s guide throughout shooting, since this was the first time Hou had shot a film in a foreign country and in a foreign language. One year earlier, at a presentation of the project in Tokyo reported in Variety, Hou had commented on the central topic of the film—the importance of leisure time and conversation to “find one’s center and the root of our being”—and asserted his intention to shoot with Ozu’s distinct visuals in mind. Hou also emphasized, as he had done on numerous occasions, Ozu’s influence on his work.1 Like many of Ozu’s films, Café Lumière is concerned with generational divides and the disintegration of the bourgeois family. Hou’s film, specifically, is centered on the pregnancy of the unmarried central character, Yoko, a young woman close in spirit to Akiko in Ozu’s Tokyo Twilight (1957). Despite these thematic similarities to Ozu, critical reaction to the finished film did not fail to point out that—on a stylistic level—Hou’s film is worlds removed from Ozu’s “distinct visuals.”

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Given that Hou is what David Bordwell calls a “stubborn stylist”—a filmmaker who does not adapt to reigning norms but pursues “a signature style across the vagaries of fashion and technology”2—the fact that Café Lumière ended up adhering closer to Hou’s preferred patterns of staging and cutting rather than to Ozu’s comes as little surprise. James Udden reiterates that although “[t]hematically, Café Lumière represents an updating of Ozu, [ … ] stylistically not at all.”3 For instance, where Ozu went from having some camera mobility in films produced early in his career to a completely static camera at the end, Hou has taken nearly the opposite trajectory. More than half the shots in Café Lumière employ pronounced camera movement. Nor does Hou use Ozu’s pronounced low camera position. Instead, Hou frames most of his shots at a long shot or medium long-shot distance. Hou prefers long lenses where Ozu relied solely on the standard 50mm lens. We could add that Hou’s lighting—often from a single, natural source—is on the whole much more shadowy and rich than Ozu’s bright, high-key scheme. But the most striking contrast in style between the filmmakers concerns editing. Hou’s is fundamentally a long-take cinema—approaching close to 66 seconds per shot in Café Lumière—where Ozu never exceeded twenty seconds and in his later films stuck to a norm of about seven seconds. Also absent from Hou’s cutting is the kind of graphic matching that typified Ozu’s style.4 These differences are less surprising when one considers that Hou apparently only discovered Ozu in the late eighties, after he had made his crucial contributions to the New Taiwanese Cinema: The Boys from Fengkuei (1983), A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1985), and Dust in the Wind (1986). In these films, Hou first explored the long-take style that would become the prime stylistic element of his cinema, which at that time still seemed more indebted to an Italian Neorealism akin to Visconti and to a (South) Asian neorealism best exemplified by Satyajit Ray.5 Later in his career, Hou was ready to essay certain aspects of Ozu ‘s style, like the lowered camera position, interior framings, and ninety-degree cutting patterns between static framings. This occurred by the time he completed his famous “Taiwan Trilogy”: City of Sadness (1989), The Puppetmaster (Xi meng rensheng, 1993), and Good Men, Good Women (1995). In Good Men, Good Women, there is even a direct tribute to Ozu: the television in the main character’s apartment can be seen playing Late Spring (1949).

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What Hou does take from Ozu is an aesthetics constructed around what David Bordwell calls a strategy of “sparseness and restraint.” This strategy constitutes a refusal to follow conventional narrative options— without abandoning story altogether—to make room for alternative, stylebased, and distinctly serial explorations of cinematic space.6 In a 1993 documentary commissioned by Shochiku to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Ozu’s death, Hou explained that objectivity is what he finds most characteristic of Ozu’s films. Hou described Ozu as a mathematician, “a meticulous observer of everyday life.” This characterization of Ozu as a mathematician seems to imply an interest in quantity, space, structure, patterns and change rather than automatism. Hou’s interest in Ozu’s precise observation of everyday life is a appropriate starting point for understanding the connection between Hou and Ozu. This focus helpfully separates the “spirit” of Ozu from the “letter,” as James Udden suggests and reveals deep connections between the way in which both Hou and Ozu “found a way to render the quotidian in indelible terms.”7 The mundane has become a central concern of contemporary art cinema, which—according to Yvette Biró—has resulted in “boring monotony” [see Vanhee in this volume]. She favors “wryness and critical edge” and advocates for irregularity as a way to spruce up the cinema of the everyday. Biró points to minimal stylists like Haneke, Jarmusch, and Kaurismaki as filmmakers who are able to return us to the “disruptive forces of humdrum existence.”8 Although Hou Hsiao-hsien is certainly a minimalist, he is not a “wry” or “disruptive” filmmaker. Instead, like Ozu, Hou succeeds in bringing out the lyrical qualities of the everyday, particularly in “leisure time” or “downtime” scenes of eating and drinking or smoking. In Café Lumière (the Taiwanese title translates as “Coffee Time”), about a third of the scenes feature or are constructed around eating and drinking, including those most dramatically salient.9 Hou’s work typifies what Andrew Klevan calls an “undramatic achievement,” eschewing the overtly dramatic or melodramatic idiom of narrative film for a more leisurely look at the concrete and uneventful.10 Klevan points to the importance of style as a means to render the mundane more salient but prefers an un-emphatic, “low-key” style that seems to efface itself the better to “reveal” the ordinary. This perspective echoes

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Bazinian (or Cavellian, as the case is with Klevan) ontological realism. Klevan even warns against a more visually assertive presentation that will “transform the ordinary.”11 The one intrusive strategy he allows for the undramatic filmmaker is patterning. Klevan praises the films of Ozu as exemplary in that regard, in that they “show how the cinema does not need to be sequentially eventful because the film can construct patterns out of apparently innocuous moments or scenes, allow these patterns to accrue significance across the course of a narrative, and thus slowly uncover the interest which may lie in the routine of domestic relationships.”12 Biró similarly considers Ozu in relation to patterns of repetition, taking note of the “refined play, the subtle significance of uniformity and variegation.”13 With Ozu, repetition is never just more of the same, Biró explains, but rather a way toward variation. This is why she prefers to recast the use of repetition in Ozu as “reprise” or “retake,” in the sense that “something new is added at every turn: the repeated versions offer the experience of the same yet something else.”14 Although she briefly addresses the tonal qualities and esthetic consistency of these tema con variazione, Biró takes the added value to be of a distinctly temporal or thematic nature: through variation and patterning, we become conscious of the lapse of time, “as well as some form of increase born in the transition (transcendence).”15 In this sense, the objects that Ozu employs as motifs become indicators of permanence, while at the same time, the world in which the stories are set (pre- and postwar Japan) is clearly subject to historical change. In Hou’s movies, motifs related primarily to place and setting create a similar sense of what Jean Ma describes as “melancholy,” an acute sense of loss tied to Taiwan’s post-colonial history.16 David Bordwell outlined one way to understand Ozu’s mathematically constructed films, by pointing to the abstract patterns the filmmaker imposes upon a causal narrative base.17 The large-scale structures that Bordwell described take the shape of cycles and parallels. The cycle, understood as the overall plot structure or the fundamental “myth” of Ozu’s films, coincides with the cycle of life narrative, the conditions of permanence and change that Biró suggests. This narrative paradigm, mainly dramatized through families uniting and separating, growing and dying, clearly covers thematic territory also mapped out in Café Lumière and Hou’s other important films.

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Parallels emerge at the level of the story and its organization by the plot. For instance, Ozu’s stories were often constructed around “motifs,” and each film’s narration can make some of these motifs manifest by means of repeated and varied stylistic figures, introducing a parallelism at the level of style. Here, a comparison between Ozu’s work and Café Lumière is more complicated. Is parallelism manifest in Hou’s film only in terms of motifs belonging to the cycle, or is the stylistic organization of Café Lumière affected by—or even created by—the deployment of repeated motifs? An additional question that emerges from comparing Hou’s style to Ozu’s is whether parallelism exists at a level that is not directly related to the plot. I will argue that while parallelism exists in Café Lumière at the level of action and characterization, it is mainly employed at a macrostructural level, “independent of what is represented, and a matter of abstract formal geometry.”18 I will suggest that such macrostructural patterns emerge most clearly from the reiteration of specific locales and settings in the film and that such abstract mathematical considerations connect Hou and Ozu in revealing ways.

Figure 7.1 Shot out onto the window and balcony in Café Lumière, the only visible source of light is framed almost straight-on as a medium-long shot.

If we discount the mobile locations of subway and train cars featured prominently in the film, there are three settings in Café Lumière that we encounter more than once: Yoko’s apartment, Hajime’s second-hand bookstore, and the café Erica.

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Yoko’s apartment is the first location depicted in the movie; after a brief pre-titles “transitional” shot of a passing train—its stressed diagonal recalling Ozu—the main character, a young girl living in Tokyo, is introduced. The leisurely way exposition is set up in this opening scene is typical of both Hou and Ozu. Important plot points are indirectly and elliptically recounted and placed digressively at the same level as details of everyday behavior. The scene is a long take, shot out onto the window and balcony and framed nigh straighton as a medium-long shot. Despite the clutter, the frame is balanced—an impression enforced by the fixed camera position. The camera moves only to accommodate Yoko’s movements where she twice ducks to the space left of the frame: first to pick up the phone and then to pick up a present for her neighbor who is at the door. Strikingly, after these reframing movements, the camera returns to its initial position. Even more noticeable is that this mostly happens “incrementally,” the camera making barely perceptible adjustments before moving back to its place. The camera’s hesitation between stasis and motion is part of the formal system that Hou sets up in this opening scene. This system suggests a revision of the strict adherence between chosen framing and repeated setting or locale that is perhaps the primary logic of patterning in Hou’s movies, and at the same time enables a dialectic rapprochement with the intrinsic elements of Ozu’s style. Three more scenes in Yoko’s apartment support this line of thinking.

Figure 7.2 In Café Lumière lowered and angled more to a three-quarter view, the shot is moved slightly to the left.

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When the story returns to Yoko’s domestic space much later in the film (apartment scene 2, AS 2), Hou draws attention not only to the similarity in framing from the earlier scene but also to a change in the camera’s position: a permutation has been initiated. An insert shot is taken of the book that Yoko is reading, Maurice Sendak’s Outside Over There, providing an important motif. This is followed by a medium shot which shows her sitting at a low table. Close examination of this new framing reveals that not only has the camera been placed closer compared to AS 1, but it has also been lowered and angled more to a three-quarter view. Most importantly, the camera has been moved slightly to the left, which, combined with the angle, shows a part of the apartment caught only fleetingly in the first scene (when Yoko was reaching for the phone and the neighbor’s present). Although camera movement is still primarily tied to the actor’s movements (tilting up when Yoko closes a window), an unmotivated lateral movement is initiated at the start of the shot and proceeds so carefully that it is all but imperceptible to the casual viewer. The gradual revelation of the right side of the doorway in front of the camera betrays the shift in the camera’s field of view. This extremely subtle shift back to the right side of the space, familiar from AS 1, is another indication that Hou wants to draw attention to the changes between the two scenes.

Figure 7.3 In Café Lumière within an empty frame, the camera is still angled somewhat to the left, although the overall orientation stays on the window.

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The apartment is further explored during a third segment (AS 3).19 The most obvious difference this time is that the scene starts on an empty frame. The camera is still angled somewhat to the left, although the overall orientation stays on the window that is now draped with the tartan shawl that was seen hanging loose earlier. Camera height has been altered again, this time to a higher position than in AS 1 revealing a red hanging lamp. Relative to both AS 1 and AS 2, the camera is placed further to the left, now revealing the left border of the doorway to an adjacent room. As in AS 1 and AS 2, the camera is clearly positioned outside this doorway, creating frame borders on the right (AS 1), left (AS 2) and, eventually, on both sides (AS 3).20 Camera movement does not seem as focused on figure movement, although there is a tilt down with Yoko as she stores milk and some unseen groceries in the fridge. In fact, the camera seems uncertain where to go, panning left and right, tilting up and down, and by its movement variegating between the different set-ups we have seen so far. Oddly, even before it starts to pan, the camera seems to be gently swaying, moving rhythmically to the accompaniment of piano music (by modernist composer Jiang Wen-Ye, the topic of Yoko’s dissertation) that has bled over from the previous scene. All these adjustments are hardly noticeable. The fourth view of the apartment (AS 4) comes after a jump cut from AS 3,21 with the discontinuity somewhat disguised by the sound of a ringing phone. As in AS 3 the scene begins with an empty frame. Although the angle of view is again essentially the same as in the previous scenes, the camera has now been angled slightly to the right. The camera height is lower than in AS 3, much higher than in AS 2 and slightly higher than in AS 1. The distance of the camera is the closest it has been, its position slightly to the right of AS 2 and AS 3, but still to the left of AS 1. The camera continues to sway, and when there is a reframing movement (pan and tilt) to Yoko sitting down at the low table to go through her mail, the framing becomes quasi identical to that of AS 2, albeit with the camera a little higher. When Yoko walks off screen, the camera tilts back up to approximately its initial position. While there will be more of Yoko’s apartment to explore, Hou’s pattern of variegated angles and camera positions can already be traced. This pattern can be schematized as follows, with AS 1 providing the base values:

Position

Scale

Height

Doorway border

Movement

Frame at start

AS 1 Perpendicular

Centered

MLS

Eye-level

Right

Tilt, pan

Yoko

AS 2 Angled more to To the left the left

MS

Lower

Left

Tilt, pan

Yoko (after insert)

AS 3 Angled more to To the left of both the left AS 1 and AS 2

MLS

Higher than AS 1 and AS 2

Right and left

Tilt pan, swaying

Empty

AS 4 Angled more to To the right of AS the right 2 and AS 3, to the left of AS 1

MS

Lower than AS 3, higher Right than AS 2, higher than AS 1.

Tilt, pan, swaying Empty

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The purely formal, artistic permutations Hou introduces in these scenes bring into play the variables that are operative within the self-imposed constrictions of his sparse style. Like Ozu, Hou eschews conventional patterns of classical continuity to explore the impact of minute shifts between a restricted number of variables, in this case primarily those related to camera movement and camera placement. Critics have remarked upon the intricate structure of Hou’s films by pointing out repeated locales and iterated compositions,22 but they have passed over the minute differences between two similar sets of framings. James Udden, for instance, noticed the large numbers of scenes set in a hospital corridor in City of Sadness, all framed along the same axis, but tied this pattern of repetition to Biró’s thematic notion of historical change.23 What he failed to note was that few of these framings are exactly identical. Instead, the adjustments suggest a series of minute shifts that perhaps is more visible from the reiterated framings of the Lin restaurant in the same movie. These shifts do not invite any clear reading that fits the cyclical pattern of transience or historical change. Rather, they seem to exist for themselves, suggesting a permutational exploration of film form that could be described as an instance of cinematic structuralism. David Bordwell proposed a more fitting term, however, that emphasizes the fact that these variations occur in a narrative film, albeit that the narrative in this case is extremely style-centered. What Bordwell calls “parametric narration,” denotes a narrative structuring in which the subject and its expected handling through the story is made subservient to the workings of the film’s style, not only in singular moments of stylistic flourish, but systemically throughout the film.24 In other words, parametric narration creates macro-structural patterns and symmetries that, while still pertaining to a causal narrative base, exceed their narrative function and self-consciously reflect on the film’s stylistic organization. Because plot patterning in parametric narration is resolutely minimal, the spectator can pick up on minute variations in a consciously spare and rigid style. Bordwell associates the degree of subtlety with what psychologists call “just-noticeable differences, … a barely perceptible threshold between identical repetition and slight variation.”25 To track how minimal these changes and variations really are, just count the number of times modifiers like “slight,” or “quasi,” can be used to describe scenes from Café Lumière.

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Can the attentive viewer be assumed to pick up on these formal, artistic changes simply because there is very little going on at the level of narrative? This is where repetition and consistency come into play. In these four scenes, for instance, the consistent angling of the scenographic space toward the window (marked by the either draped or undraped tartan shawl) alerts the viewer to a pattern that cannot be directly connected to any narrative motif. Also, the fact that this central locale is viewed from a restrictive vantage point, lacking a clear establishing context, gives a sense of spatial fragmentation, despite the temporal continuity of the long take. While the consistent angle should help orient the viewer, it actually has the opposite effect. By limiting his framing options and at the same time foregrounding parameters like camera distance and height, Hou risks upsetting the viewer’s spatial perception. Like Ozu, Hou does give us spatial cues or “anchors” that maintain their relative position from shot to shot: one way to read the minute shifts in spatial representation is to focus attention on the cluttered props—the electric fan, the stuffed toy, the art nouveau table lamp, the bookcase. Yet the spatial confusion remains, mainly because of what Hou prefers not to show us.26 Given that Hou’s camera remains oriented on the window and only explores its 180-degree perimeter even when the actors leave this zone, viewer curiosity is piqued regarding the unseen spaces in the apartment. Already in the opening scene, offscreen space is activated when a neighbor calling from beyond the right barrier of the frame is heard. Yoko exits in that direction, and Hou holds on the empty frame. As Noël Burch explains in his Theory of Film Practice, offscreen space (“those spatial segments contiguous to the four frame borders”) is defined and activated primarily by entrances into and exits from the frame.27 Moreover, it is precisely the empty frame that “focuses our attention on what is occurring off screen, thereby making us aware of off-screen space.” Burch mentions Ozu as the first to vary the relative length of time in which the screen was left empty, sometimes leaving it empty after an exit, giving viewers a clear sense of a certain definite area of off-screen space, but also before an entrance, “when we cannot always foresee which side of the screen someone will suddenly enter from or even if anyone will enter at all.”28 This is what happens in AS 3, a scene that starts on an empty frame: the viewer assumes Yoko is going to enter because keys jingle,

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bottles clink and bags rustle on the soundtrack. When she does finally enter, it is from behind the camera, a zone of offscreen space Burch adds to those contiguous to the frame borders. None of these instances, including Yoko’s partly offscreen telephone conversation in AS 4, are necessarily confusing, but they do make explicit both the movie’s minimalism and a sense of play that both Bordwell and Thompson find so typical of Ozu.29 To illustrate, consider another important space in Café Lumière—the more traditionally Japanese home of Yoko’s parents. The scenography of this space is clearly the most Ozu-like of the entire movie, if only because the architecture belongs to the era in which Ozu’s films were made. Like Ozu, Hou employs the sliding doors that divide the Japanese house into rooms as primary framing elements, leaving them open to create a grid-like space of rigid shapes that is at the same time perspectival. The overall geometric effect is heightened by the straight-on angle and considerable distance of the fixed camera, and by the horizontals of the elevated floor and the low Japanese table, which in turn are accentuated by the lowered camera position. Hou shifts our attention from foreground to background, by creating an interior framing on the mother preparing a meal in the kitchen, while in a French window closer to the camera a car arrives along with its diegetic sound. When Yoko, accompanied by her father, announces her arrival from off-screen and the viewer hears their footsteps on the gravel, their entrance from the right of the frame is anticipated. But surprisingly, they enter from frame left, through a doorway that remains unseen. Moreover, after shouting, “Welcome!” and briefly looking over her shoulder to cue the actual screen direction, the mother vacates her interior frame by moving behind a screen door on the left. This leaves an empty frame for about five seconds. When Yoko finally enters, mother reappears at virtually the same moment. This game of “peek-a-boo” is continued when actors move into small slits of space (which Hou calls “zones”) and they block each other out. Hou introduces one of Ozu’s favorite games when he complements the earlier play with screen direction by a 180-degree shift presented as a “flipped” match on action.30 This discontinuous cut completely reverses the vantage point on the room, keeping the mother in the kitchen offscreen for the rest of the scene.

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Figure 7.4 and Figure 7.5 In Café Lumière, a 180-degree shift is presented as a “flipped” match on the action.

All the variables or parameters of filmic form that Hou plays with in this scene can be traced back to Ozu: the open-door framings and objects protruding in the foreground;31 the precisely timed shot length (with the first shot of the sequence lasting 88 seconds and the second shot lasting 81 seconds); the use of silence (with long stretches of silence often only broken by the sound of chirping cicadas, with a reference to one of the primary sonic motifs in Tokyo Story?); and primarily, the play with offscreen space and screen direction, creating what Burch would call “a sense of disorientation to the diegetic space.”32 As pointed out earlier, this is not real disorientation in the sense that Burch means it. In the case of the 180-degree cut, although the viewing position has been reversed, the clear view of the car outside still orients the audience. Instead, this is an instance of play at the level of form, what Bordwell calls a “ludic” exploration of selected parameters that involve the audience in a self-conscious display of the constructed nature of cinematic space.33 There is no narrative-compositional motivation for the way Hou undermines expectations about the entrance of Yoko and her father, or for the way the frame is kept completely empty by the synchronous blocking of the characters, or for the way even the house cat, Mew, seems to deconstruct spatial laws or conventions by disappearing behind one side of a door only to reappear on the other. What is communicated in traditional narrative terms in the scene simply reiterates Japanese social positions and suggests that Yoko and her parents don’t know how to relate, an interpretation readily available that does not need this degree of stylistic embellishment or amplification. Similarly, the parallelism that Hou sets up between our different visits to Yoko’s apartment is too studied, too strict to be merely

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expressing the repetitions of the quotidian. Of course, in this case there is a clear transtextual reason for the formal play. So the question becomes: do such elements of parametric play appear here because of the homage to Ozu? To answer this question, consider the timing of Hou’s homage, made at the height of what could be called the director’s third period, after the Neorealist-inflected New Cinema films (made between 1983 and 1987) and the Taiwanese history films belonging to the aforementioned “Taiwan Trilogy.” On the subject of his first explicit chamber piece, Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Hou explained that his cinematic minimalism was closely tied to spatial constraints: For all true creation, you need rules and limits, and a predetermined space paradoxically permits you a much wider field for creation. The closed settings that I employ leave me few choices, and curiously create a lot of obstacles, but so much the more can I exercise my freedom to deepen what counts the most, the heart of the subject.34

These closed settings, sparsely but minutely laid out, are typical of all Hou’s work but are especially prominent in his later films. Where in the earlier films, as Gary Xu suggests, Hou often “juxtaposed a space that is wide open and infinitely extending with an inner space of enclosure and self-suffiency”35; from Flowers of Shanghai onward,36 Hou seems to focus more and more on intimate chamber drama. Although still engaged with Taiwanese history, and boasting rapturous moments of characters drifting (riding trains or their bikes), these movies seem to find value primarily in enclosure. In the movies that surround his homage to Ozu, Hou has made the architecture of the interior and the definition of cinematic space the most central part of his poetics: the sealed and isolated inner space of the brothel in Flowers of Shanghai; the sharply delineated zones of Vicky and Hoa-Hoa’s flat in Millennium Mambo (Qianxi Manbo, 2001); the 180-degree perimeter of Suzanne’s cluttered Parisian apartment in Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (2007); and the variations on all three that can be found in the explicitly serial Three Times (2005). All these movies closely resemble Ozu’s, not only in their attention toward the quotidian, but also, and more strategically, in their enclosure of the mundane in a formalistically explored domestic or

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work space. It is this type of space that I have focused on to the exclusion of the many outdoor scenes in Café Lumière (that form the basis of Genevieve Yue’s suggestion that this movie is all about being underway).37 While the discussion so far shows that Ozu and Hou are similar in the way they construct parametric narrational strategies, the question of difference in the stylistic realization of these tactics remains. In addition to shot length—the most obvious area where Ozu and Hou are different—Ozu refuses camera movement whereas Hou uses camera movement in virtually all his shots. Then again, it is important to distinguish between Hou’s earlier films which relied primarily on staging in a fixed frame, and the more recent films, in which camera tilts, pans, arcs, and tracks are used to create ever more elaborately staged sequences. Although the connection to Ozu might appear stronger in the earlier work, Hou’s explicit homage to Ozu starts with Good Men, Good Women—the first of his movies to make extensive use of camera movement. Bordwell points out that camera movement tied to the actor’s movement—reframing in particular—implicitly acknowledges the saliency of the human agent, and this was an option Ozu explicitly denied, locking the actor in the compositional design.38 Hou’s mobile framings, on the other hand, indeed seem to adhere to the movements of the actor, who is encouraged to improvise both lines and gesture. Then again, as we have seen, not every camera movement is motivated by figure movement. The point of a reframing movement is that it remains largely unnoticeable, whereas some of Hou’s reframings in Café Lumière, although often minimal, are highly noticeable because they shift away from the actor. We have also seen how even the most digressive, seemingly random explorative camera movement can always be tied back to the rigorously studied initial framing from which it proceeds. If the camera’s movement sometimes appears hesitant, this uncertainty in my view does not serve primarily to heighten the reality effect of the scene but to create a dialectical tension between the openness of the frame and the intricacy and controlled nature of the staging and framing. I have called this hesitant camera movement “incremental” precisely because it is tied to a specific variation and always adheres to a conscious design. So it seems that, for Hou, camera movement heightens awareness of the frame’s composed nature. Then again, the odd non-movement of the wavering or

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bobbing camera, while still part of the careful variations in framing, connotes a kind of sleepiness that similarly affects viewer and movie and explains why movies like Flowers of Shanghai or Millennium Mambo feel so trippy. Hou’s style can be relaxed to the point of sedation, countering formal rigor with a self-conscious degree of languorous drifting as if to avoid the criticism leveled at Ozu that he was too strict, too academic, too rigid. In the Shochiku documentary, Hou calls Ozu a mathematician, someone who analyzed life in a detached way. I’m not sure whether we should take all of this as a compliment. At that point in his career, Hou was starting to revise his earlier position of detachment, reformulating his original insistence on distant observation to accommodate for character subjectivity, as if uncomfortable with the idea that his point of view, no matter how “objective,” is necessarily that of the movie. But most of the later films,39 although upholding a noticeably closer framing, seem to turn away again from character subjectivity as conveyed through flashbacks, POV shots, and character voice-overs,40 counterbalancing a now exceedingly simplified narrative with a more overt form of narration. During an interview, Hou discussed his new understanding of camera movement in the third phase of his career: I used to think that the camera had to be set at a distance to show emotionless and objective observation. But in Flowers of Shanghai, I realized that objective observation had to depend on subjective maneuvers in presenting characters. I could be cool or emotional towards the characters when shooting. My feelings are not important in terms of objectivity, because there is another pair of eyes simultaneously watching the characters. No matter how close the camera is, there is the same effect of a double gaze. The camera is like a person standing beside me watching the group of characters.41

That double gaze seems to have enabled an unrestricted form of narration that is not primarily focalized through character, yet is at the same time incompatible with the conception of Hou’s cinema as the kind made by a neutral observer. At every juncture, we feel that the narration is being steered in a specific direction, even though elements (like the swaying camera) are constantly added to obfuscate that direction and render the degree of

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narrational omniscience perhaps less severe. If Café Lumière is indeed, as James Udden suggests, the result of a fortuitous mistaken identity,42 the mistaken identity in my view is that between Hou and the Bazinian realist, and the fortuity is that this movie is clearest in suggesting that much of Hou’s art, like Ozu’s, is purely filmic.

Notes 1

“Shochiku, Hou launch ode to Ozu,” Variety (2003), July 29.

2

See the blog entry, “Bergman, Antonioni, and the Stubborn Stylists,” on Bordwell’s Observations on Film Art website. http://www.davidbordwell.net.

3

James Udden, No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien (Hong Kong:

4

When Hou does cut within a scene, this is usually an axial cut along the camera

5

You could argue, which I won’t do here, that the neorealist aspects of postwar

Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 173. axis, either inward or outward. films like Late Spring (1949) and Tokyo Story (1953) is what initially drew Hou to Ozu. 6

Bordwell attributes a sparseness of style led by self-imposed constraints both to Ozu and to Hou. See Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (London: BFI, 1988), and Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2005), 186–238.

7

Udden, No Man an Island, 173.

8

Yvette Biro, Turbulence and Flow in Film: The Rhythmic Design (Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2008), 182.

9

According to Hou, eating scenes are the best way to get his actors to be their most natural selves. Udden, No Man an Island, 111.

10 Andrew Klevan, Disclosure of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in Narrative Film (Wiltshire: Flick Books, 2000). 11 Klevan, Disclosure of the Everyday, 206. 12 Klevan, Disclosure of the Everyday, 2. 13 Biró, Turbulence and Flow in Film, 129. 14 Biró, Turbulence and Flow in Film, 130 15 Biró, Turbulence and Flow in Film, 130.

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16 Jean Ma, Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 11–14. 17 David Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (London: BFI, 1988), 56. 18 Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, 57. 19 I will disregard the scene that immediately follows AS 2, in which Yoko talks on the phone to Hajime at night, because nothing is added or taken away that affects my argument. 20 Shooting through an open screen or doorway, often from a straight-on angle, is perhaps the most consistent element of Hou’s style and can be seen throughout his movies. 21 Because there is no change in locale, and only a slight change in angle and camera distance, I will treat this transition as a jump cut. 22 Udden, No Man an Island, 105. 23 Udden, No Man an Island, 111. 24 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London and New York: Routledge, 1985), 275–310. 25 Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 286. 26 Or tell us; in Hou’s movies the emphasis on offscreen space as selective framing is always tied to offscreen space in terms of selective or elliptical narration. 27 Noël Burch, Theory of Film Practice. Translated by Helen R. Lane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 17. 28 Burch, Theory of Film Practice, 25. 29 See Kristin Thompson’s analysis of “Late Spring in Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 341–352. Chapter 6 of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema focuses on parametric play. Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, 109–142. 30 There is no such play with axial crossings in Hou’s earlier films, leaving us to conclude that, when Hou repeats the play inter-scenically, varying the angle by 180 degrees in the two scenes set at the second-hand bookshop where Hajime works, this should be taken as part of the “homage.” 31 This is the only scene where Hou uses foreground objects. While we could take this as another element flagging the scene as the most Ozu-like, the fact that foreground objects feature so prominently in Hou’s previous film, Millennium Mambo, would lead us to suspect a more integral use in his films. 32 Noël Burch, To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (revised and edited by Annette Michelson). (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 159.

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33 Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, 108. 34 Cited in David Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 2005), 191. 35 In fact, Hou has remarked that he made the landscape shots in City of Sadness in the final phase of production, since he felt the need to counter balance so many interior long takes. Cited in Bordwell, Figures Traced in Light, 227. 36 Gary Xu explains that this movie’s complete indoor enclosure was, again, not part of its initial conception. Because his request to shoot street scenes in Shanghai was refused by the mainland China authorities, Hou had to sacrifice all outdoor scenes and build an indoor set from scratch. Gary G. Xu, “Visualizing Ellipses and (Colonial) Absence,” in: Chinese Films in Focus II, ed. Chris Berry (London: BFI, 2008), 114. 37 Yue “Café Lumière: The Light Outside the Window.” 38 Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, 84. 39 Millennium Mambo with its clumsy voice-over narration from the future is the obvious exception. Udden once again cites Hou’s need to distance himself from his material as a possible explanation. Udden, No Man an Island, 171. 40 The character-based status of these flashbacks has been a heavily debated topic. See, among others, Jean Ma’s discussion of memory structures in City of Sadness in Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010, 19–51. 41 Quoted in Gary Xu “Visualizing Ellipses and (Colonial) Absence,” 119. 42 Udden, No Man an Island, 172.

Bibliography Bazin, André. “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema.” In What Is Cinema? Volume 1. Essays selected and translated by Hugh Gray, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2005. Biro, Yvette. Turbulence and Flow in Film: The Rhythmic Design, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008. Bordwell, David. Blog entry, “Bergman, Antonioni, and the Stubborn Stylists,” on Bordwell’s Observations on Film Art. Website. http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog. ———. Narration in the Fiction Film. London and New York: Routledge, 1985. ———. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. London: BFI, 1988.

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———. Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2005. Burch, Noël. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (revised and edited by Annette Michelson), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979. ———. Theory of Film Practice. Translated by Helen R. Lane. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, 17. Klevan, Andrew. Disclosure of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in Narrative Film. Wiltshire: Flick Books, 2000. Lagese, Cecile. “Bazin and the Politics of Realism in Mainland China.” In Opening Bazin: Postwar Film Theory and its Afterlife, edited by Dudley Andrew, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, 316–324. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Ma, Jean. Melancholy Drift: Marking Time in Chinese Cinema. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010. “Shochiku, Hou Launch Ode to Ozu,” Variety (2003), July 29. Thompson, Kristin. “Analysis of Late Spring in Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis,” 341–352. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Bordwell 1988, 109–142. Udden, James. No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. Xu, Gary. G. “Visualizing Ellipses and (Colonial) Absence.” In Chinese Films in Focus II, edited by Chris Berry. London: BFI, 2008. Yue, Genevieve. “Café Lumière: The Light Outside the Window.” Reverse Shot 23 (2008): http://www.thelmagazine.com/2008/09/reverse-shot-issue-23-hou-hsiao-hsien.

8

The Representation of Time as Death: Authentic Being in Tokyo Story and Last Year at Marienbad Jack Lichten

The experience of existence is predicated on a constant one-way flow of time, and experiencing it continuously, without reversing its course or repeating the same period of duration. Although time is experienced ecstatically, where a certain period feels longer or shorter depending on perspective, time still functions in a constant—similar to a roll of thread, or film, as articulated by Henri Bergson in, among other works, his Introduction to Metaphysics. This understanding of the flow of time, in turn, is necessary to the understanding of death as a part of identifying an authentic self, as articulated by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time. Anticipating the end of one’s life is an inherent part of the formation of an authentic self, and without this constant flow of time, the individual is unable to anticipate it. Film, in its attempt to represent any individual experience, must attempt to portray time in a constant flow, so as to allow this anticipation to occur. To choose to not portray time as a having a start and a finish—a birth and a death—is to choose to not portray the possibility of death. This choice, then, negates life, and characterization. This chapter examines several films by Yasujiro Ozu to demonstrate how they portray the passage of time and the presentation of death as well as how the sensation of these qualities creates an authentic self. Additionally, the film Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961) will provide a case study demonstrating what occurs when these theories are forcefully ignored,

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causing a total breakdown in the formation of any self. These contrasting examples provide clear evidence of the necessity of death as a part of the creation of the self and an awareness of the passage of time into death as a part of authenticity; both are necessary for self-awareness as a being in the world and a being in time. The most prominent dramatization of the relationship between time, death, and the authentic self within Ozu’s work can be found in Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953). The film contains a narrative which functions as a continuous, linear motion; the characters act with a clear sense of the future and perceive themselves in society as a part of this singular direction of time. This insight may not seem so profound on its own; however, it is a noticeable difference when compared with Last Year at Marienbad, where the flow of time is neither continuous nor linear. The one-way flow of time is essential to understanding how the characters interact within their society, as having a singular direction in temporal flow provides the necessary basis for an anticipation of a finality. In Being and Time, this is articulated as anticipatory resoluteness, an essential part of the formation of an authentic self. Tokyo Story, with a main character who is explicitly aware of her own death, is the clearest example of this anticipatory resoluteness; other films directed by Ozu, however, contain variations on a struggle to reach this state, represented in various forms such as in marriage or growing up. What is necessary to achieve this state, however, is the understanding of a one-way flow of time, constant and always in motion, as articulated by Henri Bergson. However, in Last Year at Marienbad, with its unconventional structure resulting in repeated loops of duration, the idea of any sort of future disappears, removing ability for its characters to even conceive of death, much less anticipate it. With the loss of recognition of death comes the loss of characterization, as they no long have a past nor the possibility of a future with which to define themselves. The flow of time as a function of cinematic language is best understood through the description of time as articulated by Henri Bergson. Bergson argues for the flow of time to be perceived as images, where as time passes, items change but contain a constancy that flows between them. Ultimately, according to Bergson, memory is the driving factor in connecting the continuity of images:

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Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or more probably, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity. (Introduction 44–45)

Memory functions as an important connection between past and present, as it allows for events in the past to exist as a function of understanding the present. Memory of the past can influence the perception of the present as well as spur actions taken in the present. In influencing the present in this way, the past shapes the future. And the present is ever on the point of turning into the past. The key to understanding the passage of time occurs in accounting for memory’s role in perceiving the process; without memory, there is no context, and consciousness without context cannot function at all. The connection between memory and understanding time reveals an important aspect of Bergson’s thesis which is key to understanding time in this sense. The first aspect of this relates to the impossibility of understanding time on an analytical level, a problem Bergson discusses at length; his argument, in short, is that the passage of time is not something a person can argue because in doing so, the argument cuts the idea of “time” off from the feeling of the actual passing of time. According to Henry Bergson, this means that in order to understand time, one must simply feel it occurring. But it is even less possible to represent [duration] by concepts, that is by abstract, general, or simple ideas. It is true that no image can reproduce exactly the original feeling I have of the flow of my own conscious life. But it is not even necessary that I should attempt to render it. If a man is incapable of getting for himself the intuition of the constitutive duration of his own being, nothing will ever give it to him … (Introduction, 15–16)

By conceiving of time as an emotional, personal experience, individuals can understand where the progression of time will take them; Bergson is imagining the flow of time as a constant flux, without definitive, arbitrary “states” such as T1, T2, T3 … where instead there is a single T which is in transition between these amorphously defined markers.1 What this leads to

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is that, as T transitions through these states, a realization of these transitions, and the points they represent, becomes necessary for an understanding of being, of existing within society. As explained in the coming sections, this continuous direction toward death leads to a realization and anticipation of finality, which provides a basis of authentic existence. Tokyo Story, Ozu’s signature film, depicts this being-toward-death on film.

Being-towards-death and reflection in Tokyo Story Tokyo Story is a film about an elderly couple, Tomi (Chieko Higashiyama) and Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) visiting their three grown-up children, Koichi (So Yamamura), Shige (Haruko Sugimura), and Keizo (Shiro Osaka), and daughter-in-law, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), all of whom live in Tokyo except for Keizo (who lives in Osaka). Revisiting themes and filmic techniques he employs in several of his other films, Ozu dramatizes the continuous, unavoidable passage of time in Tokyo Story, pointing toward the inevitability of death. This illustration of the concept of life-moving-toward-death is built directly into the film’s structure, as many shots from the film reflect upon this unstoppable passage of time. Looking at shots within Tokyo Story, one finds many images which seem to convey nothing. Nothing happens within them. These shots occur as transitions between scenes and as end pieces to scenes. They sometimes occur as trailing shots, lingering on after the action of the scene has ceased. These transition shots read like philosophical statements by Ozu the auteur; they may be best understood by considering them in the context of Bergson’s definition of duration: I shall have to say, for example, that there is on the one hand a multiplicity of successive states of consciousness, and on the other a unity which binds them together. Duration will be the “synthesis” of this unity and this multiplicity, a mysterious operation which takes place in darkness, and in regard to which, I repeat, one does not see how it would admit of shades or of degrees.2

This synthesis of unity and multiplicity is heavily reliant upon memory, as memory is the multiplicity of states; by remembering past events, we can

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roughly reconstruct an appearance of unity and thus can understand that unity exists. Bergson’s description of the relationship between unity and multiplicity best describes what is occurring in Ozu’s shots of landscapes and objects. Upon first glance, and even with a trained eye, not a whole lot happens; a ship moves across the background of the shot or Tomi plays with her grandson. However, the “nothingness” or insignificance of these shots is entirely the point of them, for they demonstrate the multiplicity inherent to the unity. These shots contain no narrative action nor do they contain any noticeable change to them. However, even in the most still of shots items move, such as the ship floating out of frame. The things within these images change within the shot, even as they continue to be these things. Thus, while they, as existent objects, continue to exist, they are undergoing constant change: unity as seen through multiplicity. This kind of “nothingness” in Ozu’s shots apply equally to those characters, particularly when they are just sitting and doing nothing in particular. The shot of Tomi playing with her grandson articulates another interesting reaction to this duration, a reaction which defines her character in relation to the rest of her family. Before this shot of Tomi and her grandson from afar, there is a medium shot of her speaking to him, but in reality reflecting upon herself. She states, “What are you going to be when you grow up? A doctor like your father? When you become a doctor, I wonder if I’ll still be here.” Here, Tomi reflects upon her memories as a mother and grandmother and considers her life’s impending end. Combined with the surrounding shots of no action, this sequence defines her character. She is not a person in denial, who sees herself living forever. Her interactions with others are all informed by her implicit understanding of her own mortality. In order to understand Tomi’s relationship with the concept of beingtoward-death, the terms with which Martin Heidegger applies this theory need to be properly understood. Heidegger is dealing with a concept called “anticipatory resoluteness” which is a function of being that allows an individual to realize their existence as an authentic one. This is a function of time but not in the same sense as Bergson’s notion of a continuous temporality. Instead, Heidegger’s is ecstatic. While Bergson represents time as a multiplicity, Heidegger’s temporality comes together in full unity. He describes the

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retention of temporal existence in terms of circumspect deliberation, which is how it reaches the self. He states: “[circumspection] belongs to the full ecstatic unity of temporality. It is grounded in a retention of the context of useful things that Da-sein takes care of in awaiting a possibility” (329).3 Unlike the constant flowing of a thread in Bergson’s example, Heidegger claims that the context of a being—its history, and the possibility of its future—come together, and are retained, within the self. Based on this notion of temporality within the self, inauthentic being comes from forgetting parts of these “useful things”—in a word, memories— and the possibility that comes from these memories: Inauthentic understanding temporalizes itself as an awaiting that makes present—an awaiting to whose ecstatic unity a corresponding havingbeen must belong. The authentic coming-toward-itself of anticipatory resoluteness is at the same time a coming back to the ownmost self thrown into its individuation. This ecstasy makes it possible for Da-sein to be able to take over resolutely the being that it already is. In anticipation, Dasein brings itself forth again to its ownmost potentiality-of-being. We call authentic having-been retrieve.4

What is important to note about Heidegger’s philosophy in regards to time is that, while it is distinct from Bergson’s, the two are not incompatible. Bergson relates specifically to how the film constructs the world; in the case of Ozu’s films, Gilles Deleuze provides an example as to how the screening of film presents the flow of time. As he states, “Ozu’s still lifes endure, have a duration, over ten seconds of the vase: this duration of the vase is precisely the representation of that which endures, through the successions of changing states. A bicycle may also endure … The bicycle, the vase and the still lifes are the pure and direct images of time.”5 This description of Ozu’s choice to linger on certain images as still lifes, specifically referencing scenes in his films Late Spring and A Story of Floating Weeds, emphasizes the flow of time; when these images appear on screen, all that occurs within the film is this flow. In contrast to this constancy in the flow of time, Martin Heidegger’s explication of authentic being relates to how the characters within the film relate to themselves and to each other. Tomi integrates her anticipation of her

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own death into herself, defining her existence throughout the course of the film in this regard. By existing with an anticipation of death, she is able to retain her own potentiality-of-being and exist authentically. The knowledge of her death relates to a series of points regarding the spectre of death, and how this informs the discussion of the self, as articulated by Heidegger. Heidegger explains the creation of an authentic self through the recognition of death— not necessarily as a conscious, deliberate process, but one which nonetheless constantly informs the self: The delineation of the existential structure of being-toward-the-end helps us to develop a kind of being of Da-sein in which it can be wholly as Da-sein. The fact that even everyday Da-sein is always already toward its end, that is, is constantly coming to grips with its own death, even though “fleetingly,” shows that this end, which concludes and defines being-whole, is not something which Da-sein ultimately arrives at only in its demise. In Da-sein, existing toward its death, its most extreme not-yet which everything else precedes is always already included. So if one has given an ontologically inappropriate interpretation of the not-yet of Dasein as something outstanding, any formal inference from this to the lack of totality of Da-sein will be incorrect. The phenomenon of the not-yet has been taken from the ahead-of-itself; no more than the structure of care in general, can it serve as a higher court that would rule against a possible, existent wholeness; indeed, this ahead-of-itself first makes possible such a being-toward-the-end. (239)

Tomi carries the knowledge that she is getting close to death and based on this information is able to more accurately look at what may or may not occur before her life finally ends. A recurring comment from her is how, having seen all of their children in the span of a week, she has been able to make their trip to Tokyo and Osaka a success. These comments, combined with Tomi’s occasional bouts of sickness throughout the film, underscore Tomi’s explicit and conscious anticipation of her death, and she is able to plan her life with that in mind. Tomi is still happy to see her family, even as they mistreat and ignore her presence in Tokyo. Even when she comments on their failures as adults, still expresses joy at the lives her children lead. She has raised them,

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helped them become successful, and while they are unable to reciprocate her dedication within this trip, she is able to see, in a physical form, the result of her life’s actions. In this sense, she is living as an authentic being—one whose actions are derived from a resoluteness in her being and the results of her own life. Thus, even at the end of the film, when she does die, Tomi remains quiet and reflective, acting cheerful no matter her physical or emotional condition. Her inner state can be seen in the repeated shots of her and her husband simply sitting. As they understand the inescapable nature of their deaths and that they are dying even as they sit, they are able to relax and simply be rather than always acting toward something. Tomi’s knowledge of her being-toward-death stands in stark contrast to her children, who are not aware of this, even in terms of themselves; they exist only for their own personal gain and only see death as a theoretical “thing” which is a concern but not actually something they have to experience. This feeling is inauthentic; they will die like anyone else, but they cannot see it, even when their mother dies. More specifically, they exist only in the present moment and have no sense of unity in their existence. In contrast to their mother, they are focused only on the present and cannot even take note of death or any possibility. One says that death certainly comes, but not right away. With this “but … ” the they denies that death is certain. “Not right away” is not a purely negative statement, but a self-interpretation of the they with which it refers itself to what is initially accessible to Da-sein to take care of. Everydayness penetrates to the urgency of taking care of things, and divests itself of the fetters of a weary, “inactive thinking about death.”6

In this passage, Martin Heidegger describes “the they,” individuals concerned with immediate, everyday issues; Tomi’s children are, in many ways, examples of “the they.” Because they are too concerned about their own business and material possessions, they are unable or unwilling to take care of their visiting parents. One of the most prominent examples of this occurrence is the reaction Tomi’s daughter, Shige, has to her husband’s purchase of expensive cookies. Shige recoils at the idea, assuming that since her parents like crackers, which

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are much cheaper, her husband should not waste money on more expensive cookies, even if they are more delicious. This example is a recurring trend in her character, as at no point in the film does she concern herself with her parents’ welfare and only concerns herself with her material gain. Her brothers act similarly, only thinking of the impending death of their mother when she is at her sickest and in an uncaring sort of manner; all of the children leave their parents’ town the day of the funeral, rather than stay the night to help their father cope. The way Tomi’s children consider her death functions as an “inactive thinking of death” which Heidegger criticizes as a function of inauthentic being. This is not to suggest that Heidegger’s concept of authentic being is related to specific moments of reflection nor is inauthentic being a concept based in materialism. Rather, Tomi’s children act in a state of inauthentic being because they refuse to acknowledge the state of their mother, the one who has brought them into the world and is making clear signs throughout the film that she herself will soon leave it. They do not treat her death seriously and focus only on their present lives. According to Ozu, had they sacrificed their own personal moments to help their mother, they would have appeared much more sympathetic, in a similar matter to their sister-in-law Noriko. According to Heidegger, they would have achieved authentic being. Due to this lack of understanding in regards to being-toward-death, the very structure of the film turns the shots of the children into shots of action rather than of pure existence. The shots described above occur, with rare exception, before or after shots of the grandparents. These characters are the only ones seen just sitting and reflecting, allowing time to pass without incident. Other characters hurry through their scenes and are always in movement in some way or another. The shots that most define Ozu’s film, of objects and people sitting and reflecting, are only afforded to those who have conceived of the idea of being-toward-death, as they are the only ones capable of simply existing rather than always concerning themselves with their material possessions.

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Figure 8.1 and Figure 8.2 Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, 1953) is a film laden with oblique references to death. One of the more obvious involves the youngest son, Keizo, as he tries to hide from Tomi’s funeral and only finds more graves.

The only sequences which portray their children in this fashion occur for specific reasons. The first of these, a shot of their youngest son Keizo at Tomi’s funeral, occurs because he is specifically reflecting on her death and trying to understand what it means in his life. He does not understand being-toward-death. However, he does know that there is something to be understood, as he realizes how he should react to his mother’s illness and how he should have respected her. He makes a statement several times throughout the film: “No one can serve their parents beyond the grave.” This statement exemplifies his possible realization of his mother’s death and that he cannot avoid it as well. Keizo makes this statement once before, earlier in the film, after the parents visit him in Osaka and his mother falls ill. In his book on Ozu, Yoshida describes the statement as a “banal expression from daily life” that becomes transformed into sorrow and remorse upon Tomi’s funeral.7 This statement, however, represents Keizo’s acknowledgment, in a sense, of his mother’s death and his own anticipation of death. It is a hint that, within Keizo, there is the possibility of death. He ultimately rejects this anticipation, however, as he also states, “I can’t lose her now” in an attempt to avoid the issue. He then leaves his father’s house early to see a baseball game and finish work at his employment, in similar fashion to his older siblings. With this act, he proves he still worries about his place in society, considering the issues of what

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Heidegger calls, “the they,” and does not truly think about his being-towarddeath. Therefore, he does not truly contemplate or achieve authentic being. Tomi’s daughter-in-law, Noriko, is the only other person in the film who has an idea of being-toward-death. Noriko’s husband, and Tomi’s birth son, died in the Second World War. Noriko continues to reflect upon his death. This fact is established about halfway through the film, where Noriko admits that she tries every day to think of her dead husband and feels guilty for days where she does not think of him. This, too, relates to the nature of the being-toward-death, as Noriko, through her husband, has experienced the concept of death firsthand. Unlike Keizo, she has internalized the concept of death into her own understanding of being. Because of this understanding, she is willing to forego her own material well-being to provide care for Tomi. She even understands this, as she appears in one shot where she does nothing but reflect. This occurs after Tomi scolds her for not remarrying. This final shot of Noriko on the verge of tears, represents her knowledge of the being-toward-death. As Tomi mentions, she is sleeping in Noriko’s dead husband’s bed, and this connection between the two is not lost on Noriko. Their night together in Noriko’s apartment reveals their relationship at its most fundamental level, as it establishes the common connection between them, in having a recognition and understanding of their past and future. Thus, even if she had not personally experienced loss in death through her husband, Noriko still anticipates death, and sees it in her mother-in-law. She is able to connect with her past and her future in Tomi and is thus able to achieve authentic being. An important point to make about Tokyo Story is that, in regards to its application of Heidegger’s theory, it is most clear because its dialogue makes much of the talk of death explicit. Tomi makes evident the very real possibility of her death, and this conscious acknowledgment of being-toward-death is not evident within Being and Time. Ozu’s other films, however, use different tropes to reach a similar theory. For example, the Noriko in Late Spring (Banshun, 1949) is in a transition into a state of authentic being, as she sheds her life with her father, who is remarrying. In the end, his remarriage is a ruse, designed to get her to marry before she is too old and left without

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a place in society. The film is, thus, a story of Noriko’s anticipation of her futural self and the impact it will have on her. There are two sequences in the film that best exemplify her transition into a being with direction. The first of these is an example of the conflict evident in Noriko’s position, and her resistance to her own futural possibility. This sequence takes place in the Noh theater, where her gaze is locked on her father’s new fiancée. She cannot stand this woman, and the camera lingers on her staring at her; the camera also, however, cuts back and forth between Noriko and the Noh play. The chanting of the play emphasizes the passage of time, and Noriko’s face carries her frustration with being unable to change her father’s decision. Noriko’s refusal to acknowledge her future self is emphasized by the slow pace of this scene and her intense focus on what she views as the failures in her father’s decision-making. The second sequence is the most famous of the film, where images of a vase in an empty room are inserted between shots of Noriko, occurring during the last trip she takes with her father before her marriage. The image of the vase, as an expression of basic time, provides a transitional piece for Noriko’s realization and acceptance of her own marriage and the well-being of her father. He will be okay without her, she realizes, and although she does not like it, she will accept it. After this sequence, she can move into her own marriage, sad for losing her father but knowing that the both of them will be okay in life. The interplay of vase and Noriko is essential for understanding the relationship between Bergson and Heidegger. With the still shot of the vase, Ozu is emphasizing the constant passage of time. And yet, he is not just emphasizing the passage of time. He combines this awareness of time with the transition occurring within Noriko, whereupon she accepts the direction she has to take in her life, away from her father and toward her fiancé. As Yoshida states, We are born because of our parents’ love. We encounter appropriate partners and get married. We form happy families, get old, and die peacefully. Anyone can imagine such a story, but it is a mere fantasy. Human beings cannot face the actual reality of the world, and they tend to condense and fastforward the flow of their life and dream of a convenient conclusion. On the contrary, the human lives that Ozu-san knew were composed of stagnation,

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delays, and peripheral transitions. There were no plot lines. They were “antistories.” Ozu-san thought that human beings must stand up and live their anti-dramatic lives. (29–30)

Kiju Yoshida emphasizes the necessity for characters to “stand up and live their anti-dramatic lives,” exactly as what occurs when Noriko lies in bed and as the vase appears onscreen. She is connecting the passage of time with the end of her own life, represented in this film by the necessity of marriage in order to remain a part of wider society. She does not explicitly acknowledge this realization in the film, but she does transform her existence within this sequence. The cross-cutting between the vase and her still face, within the context of the trip as a farewell to her father, emphasize the transition in her life from a companion of her father to a companion of her husband—a change she, only at this point, comes to internalize. Yoshida explains that Ozu probably inserted the shot of the vase to prevent viewers from thinking that Noriko and her father’s relationship was sexual. While there is little evidence in the film to suggest their relationship had anything of this quality, this still leaves the use of the vase as a cinematic vehicle through which the two are driven apart.8 In this sense, the moment with the vase is the breaking point in Noriko’s life, which also functions as an ecstatic moment in her life. Here, she transitions from being an unmarried woman into marriage. The acknowledgment of her past and the anticipation of this new future are what drive Noriko into Heidegger’s notion of authentic being and allow her to comfortably accept her future self. This is not to suggest that the ecstatic moments in time represent, as Paul Schrader claims, a moment of transcendence. Rather, they are, like every other shot in Ozu’s films, “ordinary or banal, even death and the dead who are the object of a natural forgetting” (The Time-Image, 14). In both Late Spring and Tokyo Story, the anticipation of one’s future is not a realization of a higher existence. Rather, it is the anticipation of the natural state of being, where death is inevitable and is a recognition of one’s prior existence. Thus, since Noriko in Tokyo Story recognizes her connection to her parents-in-law even though her husband has died, she continues to help them. In a similar vein, Tomi is still connected to Noriko, and she sees the need to see Noriko before she dies.

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The destruction of the self with the loss of duration in Last Year at Marienbad The Alain Resnais’s film Last Year at Marienbad stands in stark contrast to Tokyo Story. It is a film about the destruction of the self that occurs alongside the destruction of linear duration. By removing any sort of continuity of time, the film undoes any kind of self. Characters in Last Year at Marienbad exist as nothing more than faces. By the end of the film, all memory is erased from their minds, leaving the characters wondering what happened, or when they are. Last Year at Marienbad is about the destruction of time, leading to the destruction of a sense of past, future, and death. This destruction, in turn, leads to the destruction of self. This destruction of continuity can be seen in the structure of the film itself. The narrator is a nameless man (Giorgio Albertazzi) who attempts to seduce the female lead (Delphine Seyrig) and convince her to leave her husband (Sacha Pitoëff) for him. His narration, frequently describing the unending, sprawling mansion in which the film takes place, repeats itself several times throughout the film, exactly the same each time. Frequently, his descriptions fade in and out over similar shots of various guests having the same conversations and interactions multiple times. The structure of the shot composition has removed all narrative flow, to make the events the narrator describes appear without duration or any sort of passage of time to them. Even this space, with its lack of definition, carries the same qualities of an “infinite loop” as the sense of time, as seen in both the opening shots of the film and its accompanying narration in Last Year at Marienbad: I walk on, once again, down these corridors, through these halls, these galleries, in this structure of another century, this enormous, luxurious, baroque, lugubrious hotel, where corridors succeed endless corridors— silent deserted corridors overloaded with a dim, cold ornamentation of woodwork, stucco, moldings, marble, black mirrors, dark paintings, columns, heavy hangings, sculptured door frames, series of doorways, galleries, transverse corridors that open in turn on empty salons, rooms overloaded with an ornamentation from another century, silent halls …

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Accompanying this description of the space are images of endless corridors and hallways, many of which appear to be indistinguishable from the other. The importance of these shots is revealed by the endless repetition throughout the film, as both the images of the hallways and the narration above appear in the film with minor variations repeatedly. Thus, as the space becomes one of endless cycles, so does the film’s duration; the same shots and dialogues return over and over again, creating a sense of cycles of time rather than a singular, linear duration. The result of this removal of linear duration from the images of the film is the removal of character from the characters. They are unable to engage with a self, with any sort of being, because they are unable to construct a past or a future from the events of the film; without a past or a future, they are unable to change their character or even formulate one in the first place. These are characters without histories, biographies, or even names. The woman, when confronted with memories of a previous year, when she first met the narrator, cannot acknowledge them because she cannot remember them to share them. Nor could she experience the feelings these forgotten moments might stir within her in the present. On the other hand, the narrator is certain that it did happen last year, although he cannot remember exactly where, citing various European resort-palaces, including the titular Marienbad. As the film continues, he begins mentioning the amount of time he has waited for the woman to join him, stretching that time from minutes to years, suggesting that he, too, does not actually have any idea as to the length of his existence. At first, casual viewing, one might be forgiven for assuming during the opening segments that Last Year at Marienbad is about an affair waiting for the right moment to come to fruition. A film with such a storyline deals with actions that have consequences embedded in temporality. If the affair would happen in this film the way it would happen in our reality, it would be a concrete event that could not be wished away by the narrator. It would change the status quo and point towards temporality, impermanence, and death. But that is not the story that this film is telling. Instead, concrete events and decisions have no consequences and can be wished away by the narrator. Death has no dominion in this film.

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The key moment in determining the complete lack of duration in this film, and its subsequent effect on the characters selves, is a small part of the film where the narrator describes, through the film’s images, the woman being murdered by her husband. This scene commences with the narrator describing his first sexual act with her, where her husband leaves the room to go shooting; instead, the scene switches into the husband shooting her. This switch also changes the decoration of the room completely and involves her changing costume (from black to white). Immediately after she is shot, the narrator, unable to handle this outcome, claims it is false and completely changes the narrative to a story of a rape. Then he changes the narrative to a willing sexual encounter. This segment is the closest any character comes to dealing with death. But the inevitability of death is still impossible to come to terms with for any of these characters. Thus, the narrator simply writes death out of the film. In their narrative, which contains no beginning or end, the characters do not have to face their being-toward-death, because they exist in an endless loop where death no longer exists. By foregoing their being-toward-death, however, they become meaningless beings, objects without selves, as they can no longer define their own existences with a possibility of death to anticipate. Near the end of the film, the narrator states, “once more I advanced along these same corridors, for days, months, years, to meet you,” suggesting that the affair between him and the woman, is, in actuality, never-ending and in a sort of infinite loop without beginning or end.

Figure 8.3 and Figure 8.4 Alain Resnais film Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is characterized by endless repetition. The same images come back and forth again and again. Her husband kills her in two different sequences, as pan shots of the same ornate walls continue uninterrupted.

The narrator continues this monologue with the phrase, “there will be no pause, no rest between these walls.” The idea of no pause or rest directly contrasts with the imagery of Ozu’s films, where both the characters and

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the world itself were given moments throughout the film to rest, where they could simply exist in the continuum of time rather than exist as actions and events. Indeed, as Deleuze states, the very concept of the still life is an essential part of the Ozu esthetic, as it allows the continuum of time to exist on film. Unlike Ozu’s films, however, the narrator of Last Year at Marienbad has no real understanding of the flow of time. He cannot pause or rest; he can only keep moving and can only think in terms of events, such as the murder he makes disappear. He has no knowledge of time and thus he cannot become any kind of being, much less an authentic one. Ultimately, the film does not give him the opportunity to experience real, linear duration; as the story is completely wrapped into itself, with no beginning or end, he cannot attempt to understand being, because he does not understand duration, the fundamental basis for understanding how a being exists in the world and in relation to its death.

Conclusions Henri Bergson, in his Introduction to Metaphysics, laid out the necessary components of understanding the passage of time: it is not a dividable “thing” but rather a continuous flow, and it is something that must be experienced to be understood. The constant flow of the filmstrip best exemplifies this notion; it always moves forward and to stop it destroys the image one is seeing. In this sense, to look at one frame of a film may show a still image, but it cannot capture the scene and cannot truly illustrate what is happening. This approximation of Bergson’s definition of time is then seen in many of Ozu’s works, particularly his later films. In Tokyo Story, when Ozu leaves his camera to linger on an empty scene and nothing occurs except the passage of time, one is able to see Bergson’s meaning of time as indivisible, constant flow. These scenes cannot be appreciated in still frames but must be experienced in viewing for their full effect. Once this flow of time has been established, we can begin to see the impact of an awareness of death: Heidegger’s being-toward-death. When at their best, Tokyo Story’s characters recognize the absoluteness of death—its inescapable nature—and, thus, seek to lead authentic lives. For the characters in Tokyo Story, an authentic life manifests in true devotion to the greater family unit. Those

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characters who do not recognize the necessity of death are then consumed by their material desires and lose sense of the family in favor of personal gain. Their focus on the present has caused them to forget their own past and their connection to their parents. Thus, as Tomi moves through their space, they are unable to connect with her nor anticipate her imminent death. Their failure to do so results in a sense of inauthentic being and stands in strong contrast to Noriko, who recognizes her need to help her mother-in-law, even if she does not consciously know of her imminent death. Similarly, Noriko in Late Spring, in transitioning from a refusal to acknowledge her need to marry to accepting it, implicitly enters a state of authentic being already carried by her father. Her acknowledgment of her place in her society as a woman to be married is a necessity to her authentic being, where her past with her father pushes her toward married life, and toward her future. In contrast, Last Year at Marienbad, with its complete lack of continuity or narrative direction, loses all sense of being, and its characters lose their being as well. With the film rejecting linear time, the film also rejects death. With their rejection of death, the characters cannot create individual characteristics. They are living, existent beings, but without a constant flow of time to create a past or future out of, they lack personality or genuine human emotion. Ultimately, these films emphasize the necessity behind the understanding of death and its relationship with duration in a human lifetime. An inability to experience time, or to experience one’s past, renders one unable to anticipate a future—specifically the prospect of death. Anticipation of death, combined with a recognition of one’s past, renders authentic being. By failing to absorb these notions, however, the human self descends into inauthenticity, or in a more extreme case, a destruction of the self as a whole.

Notes 1

Henri Bergson. Creative Evolution, translated by Arthur Mitchell (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911).

2

Bergson, Introduction, 57.

3

“Da-sein” has been translated, in various ways, as “Being-in-the-world,” “being there,” “experiencing human existence,” and “Being human.”

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Martin Heidegger. Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany : SUNY Press, 1996, 311.

5

Gilles Deleuze. Cinema 2: The Time Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

6

Heidegger, Being and Time, 286.

7

Kiju Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 111.

8

Yoshida, Ozu’s Anti-cinema, 79–80.

Bibliography Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City : Doubleday & Co., 1966. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution, translated by Arthur Mitchell. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911. ———. An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by T. E. Hulme. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1912. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. ———. Cinema 2: The Time Image, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany : SUNY Press, 1996. A Story of Floating Weeds. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1934. Late Spring. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1949. Tokyo Story. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku, 1953. Floating Weeds. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Daiei, 1959. L’Année dernière à Marienbad [Last Year at Marienbad]. Directed by Alain Resnais. Conicor, 1961. Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley : California UP, 1972. Yoshida, Kiju. Ozu’s Anti-cinema, translated by Daisuke Miyao and Kyoko Hirano. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2003.

Afterword: The Samsara of Ozu Cinema— Death and Rebirth in Our Daily Struggles Wayne Stein

At one point in Yasujiro Ozu’s film Late Spring (Banshun, 1949), the father (Chishu Ryu) and daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara) attend a Noh performance: “The Water Iris” (Kakitsubata). The tension increases in the film as the father, a widower, is trying to convince his daughter to move on with her life and marry someone. The theme of the woman in the performance parallels the theme of the daughter in the film. Audiences of Noh often sympathize with the characters, its nuances, and its themes found on the stage. When one attends Noh events, one usually attends for the entire day and watches a cycle of five plays: “a god play, a warrior play, a woman play, a lunatic play, and a demon play” (Ishii 1994, 58).1 Thus, this “cycle of Noh plays, from the blessing of a god to the salvation of a demon and then back to the beginning again, is an overall configuration that accords with the Buddhist doctrine of salvation which aims to achieve its artistic realization by a weaving together of the workings of the human heart under the protective power of the gods and the mercy of Buddha. This doctrine reflects the concept of an unending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth for human beings and nature alike” (Ishii 1994, 59). Asian audiences identify this as the never-ending cycle of samsara, a Buddhist concept of death and rebirth that is often depicted visually as a wheel. The concept registers quite strongly in Asian cinema. Indeed, audiences are captivated by connections of the interactions on the screen with their own struggles of life. While the Noh’s theme parallels the theme of the film’s narrative, the metaphysical cycles of Noh theater also parallel the unique cinematic cycles of Ozu dramas. This closing essay will show how Ozu’s aesthetic choices were

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Figure A.1 A key scene from the Noh drama, “The Water Iris” (Kakitsubata) in Late Spring (Banshun, 1949).

influenced by the metaphysical boundaries mapped out within the laws of samsara. It will explore how: 1. the wheel of samsara, a cosmic map, is but a metaphor of the journey found in the daily human life that Ozu depicts on screen; 2. Noh drama applies such a metaphysical mapping to its aesthetics of art, and how Ozu’s cinema parallels this aesthetics, 3. and the reels of film in Ozu’s dramas represent his own approach to— and perhaps liberation from—the wheel of samsara. Significantly, Buddhism in Asia is less a religion and more a social means of mapping out cultural understandings and expectations. It is a vision of understanding life that one grows up with even when one is not very religious. For some, it offers a path of liberation from the pains, failures, and troubles experienced in daily life. In Ozu’s films, some actors portray characters who must overcome great obstacles—but usually they must simply fight the many small battles that surface daily. Sometimes, just getting out of bed becomes the greatest victory of the day, as the daily demons of the mundane make formidable combatants.

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Turning the wheels of samsara The literal understanding of the Buddhist concept of samsara is to be born, to die, and to be reborn over and over again. In the system of samsara, humans are trapped by karma. Their past deeds influence how they are reborn into different realms after each death. While no realm is permanent, one dies, and is reborn over and over. Even powerful gods die and fall from heaven, only to be reborn as fierce demons in the fires of hell. These demons, in turn, will also die and be reborn. Therefore, the cycle of death and rebirth turns as a constant law of personal energy, national energy, and even global energy. Socially, one can be born and reborn into a class system that is often related to the physical space one lives in. Thus, samsara can be applied to a class system. In feudal Japan, there was a four-tiered system with the samurai at the top. Under them came the peasants and then the artisans. The merchants were on the bottom. In Japan, where Confucian values were of great importance, serving the needs of others is looked upon as a higher calling. The merchants were thought to be self-serving and of the lowest class while farmers and artisans were valued more. People knew their place, were respected, lived, and died in such a system. When Japan modernized, much confusion set in as the newly minted salaryman class seemed out of place in this system. Salarymen were less respected, in part because of this confusion. Indeed, earning a daily living had a negative effect at times on a father or husband. You can see the effect this had on their sons as they start to understand their place in society in such films as I Was Born, But … (Otona no miru ehon—Umarete wa mita keredo 1932). Often, the location where one lives—the city, the suburbs, or the space in between—becomes a sign of one’s place in life. The wheels of samsara turn within the emerging class system as many Japanese are reborn into a Tokyo rebuilt from the destruction of World War II and removed from the old class systems of Japan. Indeed, John Berra’s essay “Tokyo Is a Nice Place,” illustrates the effects of class, space, and social expectations in Ozu cinema. Ozu did well to record a changing way of life, along with its many disappointments.

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The turmoil of postwar Japan had a huge effect on the family. In “Vanished Men, Complex Women,” Mauricio Castro comments on how the “cyclical continuity” between the Noriko trilogy (Late Spring, Early Summer, and Tokyo Story) and Equinox Flower becomes “an archetype of the middle-class Japanese family.” Furthermore, other contributors to this book, including Isolde Vanhee, note the universal power and appeal of Ozu’s family dramas. Though Setsuko Hara plays Noriko in the three films, she is not the same person, and it is not the same family. New forms of capitalism were allowing a new woman like Noriko to be born. Noriko represents a new Japanese woman reborn in a modern era, who is strong, intelligent, and independent. Thus, Ozu’s cinema records the new cycles of gender samsara as women discovered freedoms never before experienced. Notably, Setsuko Hara, who became known as Noriko to Ozu fans, never married in real life. The anime by Satoshi Kon, Millennium Actress (Sennen Joyu, 2001), is loosely based on her life. The main character, Chiyoko, is always in search of love, but never finds a soulmate. Though the deeds of Chiyoko and the advancement of the plot are secondary, the film seems to be a never-ending search for peace, demonstrating the samsara effect, where the ending remains the same as the beginning. By using the same actors in similar roles in various movies, a sense of samara is maintained in Ozu cinema. Mauricio Castro does a great job of recording these recurring roles in a chart featured in his chapter: Recurring Actors in Ozu’s Films by Mauricio Castro Film Actor

Late Spring

Setsuko Hara

Noriko Noriko (Daughter) (Daughter)

Noriko (Daughterin-Law)

Chishu Ryu

Shukichi (Father)

Koichi (Eldest Son)

Shukichi (Father)

Haruko Sugimura

Masa (Aunt)

Tami (Kenkichi’s Mother)

Shige (Daughter)

Kuniko Miyake

Akiko (Widow)

Fumiko (Koichi’s Wife)

Fumiko (Koichi’s Wife)

Shige (Noriko’s Mother)

Tomi (Mother)

Chieko Higashiyama

Early Summer

Tokyo Story

Equinox Flower

Shukichi (Father’s Friend)

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While there were new opportunities for women in the world of postwar Japan, the traditional way of manhood was dying in both Eastern and Western society. In Japan, Akira Kurosawa was looking to the past to glorify the ways of the samurai, making films frequently starring his recurring actor and collaborator Toshio Mifune. In Hollywood, director John Ford was doing much the same thing as Kurosawa by revisiting and rebuilding the myth of the cowboys of the old west with his popular actor and collaborator John Wayne.2 Men on a global level were searching into the past for a mythical narrative of manhood as a way to reconnect to something that was lost in capitalism. What did it mean to be a man in the new economic world? Mauricio Castro notes that Ozu cinema was a record of the problems Japanese men were having with the modern Japanese economy. These men were reborn to a new Japan, into a realm or times of disquieting turmoil and troubles. In the Noh dramas of the past, the male dramas were usually associated with warriors and samurai, who fought battles to demonstrate their worthiness in society. In Ozu cinema, men are also pulled into the vortex of heroic struggles, into the six realms of karmic rebirth, but the struggle is against the problems of daily life. Marc DiPaolo notes in the preface that he was “moved by the father’s heroism” in Tokyo Chorus (Tokyo no korasu, 1931) one moment, and then suddenly “saddened and horrified” the next. The father, as a salaryman, was enjoying his day of bonuses when he noticed another employee who had been fired for an unjust reason. Angered by such treatment, the father protested, argued, and stood up for the man, hoping his coworkers would support him, but no one did. Instead, he lost his own job. Initially, the annual bonus was a day of rejoicing and rebirth. It was a celebration of sorts. Tragically, the day quickly morphed into a funeral-like atmosphere instead. Applying this segment to the theory of samsara reveals that the salaryman has gone from a state of heaven-like euphoria—an almost god-like realm for a salaryman—to a sudden, unexpected death. In an instant, he is reborn into the hell of poverty. Ozu takes us into the (re)cycled life of a salaryman, dying and being reborn. He may seem like less of a man in his defeats and his suffering from the pains of existence, but—perhaps—he is more of a real human being, and that affords him a different form of peace. Perhaps his firing, and the form of death he experiences in his firing, gives him some of the authenticity and death awareness that Jack Lichten describes

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in his essay, “The Representation of Time as Death.” Viewers empathize with this human, feeling what he feels, because his problems are reborn in our hearts. We all have fought similar battles and lived through similar difficult situations. In the samsara of Ozu cinema, events flow within a rhythm of “repetition and recurrence amid change” (Shields 2012, 345). In “A Sensitivity to Things,” J.M. Hammond notes that while Ozu has been criticized for making “the same kind of film over and over,” it is the complexities and nuances of the “permutations and variations” that are important. Jack Lichten discusses the “natural cycle of life” recorded in Ozu cinema. Another way to understand this cycle is to apply it to daily life or the stages of life. Thus, samsara captures the impermanent nature of being alive with its repeating flux and flow of life events. One remarries, changes occupations, or moves to another country. First, one is a child raised by parents, then one become a parent and raises a child. Finally, in old age, one becomes child-like and is cared for by one’s child (or not, as in the case of Tokyo Story). Change is the way of living. Permutations along with some pain are the patterns of struggle that repeat themselves. You do not have to literally die to be reborn. When we wake up, we are reborn daily. Ozu cinema deals with this daily samsara of existence.

The sacredness of the samsara of Noh theater The five dramas (gods, warriors, women, crazies, and demons) of the Noh coincide with six realms found in the mandala of samsara (gods, demigods, human, animal, ghosts, and hell) (LaFleur 1986, 122).3 Dramatically, some overlapping occurs between the types of Noh drama and the realms of samsara. The Samsara of Noh Theater Dramas of Noh

Realms of Samsara

Gods

Gods/Demigods

Warriors (men)

Human

Women

Human

Ghosts/Madness

Animal/Hungry Ghost

Demons

Hell

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The Noh drama “The Water Iris” that Noriko in Late Spring was watching belongs to the third category of women’s drama. What disturbs Noriko is not the drama that occurs on stage but the drama she notices off stage, for she spots the love interest of her father also at the play. That love would be reborn in her father’s heart with this woman hurts her as she herself resists the new possibilities of life for herself. She does not want to marry. Instead, Noriko wants to care for her father; such is the responsibility of a dutiful daughter. Marriage is less about love and more about conventions. Indeed, a woman is expected to marry. Noriko, is in a sense, resisting the birth of her own womanhood. This is what the wheel of samsara is really about, for it does not represent regions of rebirth that occur after dying and being reborn. Instead, samsara represents the various states of mind that one lives in while alive on this planet. We live in our own worlds, partially sharing with others. With each new state of being and growth, we enter into a new world as a new being, reborn as a new person. Noriko objects to being pushed out of the womb of her family home, being forced away from the warmth of her extended childhood, and being pulled away from the side of her father which is quite heavenly and perfectly peaceful. She loves her father, and her father loves her. As she watches the Noh play in Late Spring, she is having birthing pains, sensing the beginning of a new stage of her life. These pains are often expected within the trials of life. The religious elements of Noh dramas merge Shinto, Buddhist, and even Confucian concerns onto the life of the stage. In a samsara sense, “the Noh play moves in the shadowy realm at the edge of life and death” (Ernst 1959, 12). The realms of samsara are merely states of being, less actual a geographic space of existence. Noh theater captures the complexities of the samsara of existence. The narratives are less about the characters on the stage and are more about the inner psychological spirit of our being. Among the dramatic devices used to highlight the inner spirit are the masks worn by actors in the Noh dramas. Furthermore, “the wearing of a mask does not mean the obliterating or hiding of personality, but rather it helps the actor to transcend the particular personality that he is portraying and to achieve a more universal representation” (Ishii 1994, 57). One sees oneself on stage since we are all mirrors of each other in society. The rawness of Noh makes

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the audience participate actively within their own inner worlds. Therefore, the stories of gods, of men, of warriors, of women, of madness, of ghosts, and of demons parallel our own inner struggles, our own illusions, and our own delusions. Often, the narratives are not so important. “Nor do the characters reveal themselves through their actions. In extreme cases a play can even lack a plot or any semblance of the conflict normally seen in European drama” (Ishii 1994, 57). Suzanne Beth, in her essay on Good Morning, also agrees that the narratives in Ozu cinema are not the central concern. A very important concept of Noh is valuing the spectator. In the fifteenth century, the Noh master, Zeami Motoki set forth the idea of monomane, “When the actor becomes a viewer and sees himself through the eyes of others, he perceives something that is beyond the power of the usual physical senses. The detached view that results involves the fusion of the mind of the actor with the audience, of self with others’ selves, and only when this happens can the actor consider himself a true performer” (Ishii 1994, 55). This is the same for Ozu cinema. Indeed, the use of the lower camera angle that becomes synonymous with Ozu cinema has a way of pulling in the audience into the drama of the moment. It is as if one is sitting down watching a Noh drama just as Noriko and her father did in Late Spring. Even more, the camera angle makes one feels like one is sitting down inside the room where the action occurs. Beth notes that the spectator is of great importance in Ozu cinema. This camera angle helps to create a sense of participation that is a crucial way to activate the audience. Finally, the power of the effects of cinema is lessoned to allow the power of the spectator to rise. In a Noh play, two primary actors, the shite and the waki, perform on stage. The shite is the more important actor with the more poetic lines. However, “the shite does not emerge as a three-dimensional complex character, for he is subject to the same artistic reduction as the other elements of the No[h] theatre” (Ernst 1959, 5). This reduction is crucial, for it allows the spectator to rise up and become an important participant in the action. The spectator is activated by the rhythms of the movements of the moments while being less worried about the manipulations of narrative outcomes and character development. In a samsara sense, rebirth in the moment only occurs by being aware of the here and now. Ozu’s cinema, in a Zen sense, focuses on such moments of awareness. Samsara merely represents the daily cycles of survival. One need not be a god, a hero, nor a demon to travel the various

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realms of samsara. One need only wake up to be reborn to the complexities of the day and wait within the weather of the mind to the changes beyond the emotional attachments of the moment. We become Noriko, and we become her father as we are awakened within the dramas of the Ozu family. Ozu’s unparalleled skill at depicting family dramas is all the more impressive when one considers that he never married or had a family of his own. Saturated with Ozu’s energy, we feel welcomed into his cinematic “home.” Around the world, the Ozu family has been welcomed. Basically, Ozu cinema has become for many viewers less about Japanese families and more about the universal struggle found in all families. Such concerns translate into a growing global recognition and growing influence. In this volume, Tom Paulus examines Ozu’s influence in Café Lumière (2003), a film directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien in tribute to Ozu. Paulus notes that, though it is a homage, the director does not imitate Ozu’s style. Indeed, Ozu would not want to be imitated directly. Ozu himself said, “I have formulated my own directing style in my head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others” (quoted in Ebert 2003, 183). He would want others to also find their own path and be reborn creatively within their own style. As Vanhee shows us in her chapter, The Tree of Life (2011) is another example of a recent film by a director, Terrence Malick, who was influenced by Ozu, yet who has developed his own unique style. The world welcomes this global samsara of cinema touched by Ozu.

Approaching the reels of liberation from the wheels of samsara

Figure A.2 In Ron Fricke’s film Samsara (2011), Tibetan monks create a sand mandala.

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The mandala of samsara visually captures the cycles we all experience in our daily lives. If you look at such mandalas, especially, those from Tibet (bhavacakra), Yama, the god of death, is holding with his hands the mandala, for he rules over all realms. The mandala then looks as if it is part of the body of the god. This body actually becomes a metaphor for the human body. We, in a sense, rule over our states of being through the actions we choose. What appears to be a cosmic view becomes a microcosm of a body. Thus, the image becomes a microcosm of the human body and the inner states of mental consciousness. Noticing the upper part of the mandala, its gods and demi-gods parallel the mind and higher realms of thinking, seeing skyward. Looking lower, hell and demons occupy the lower anatomy of the body and the mandala with the functions of procreation while standing and feeling the earth below the feet of Yama. Apply this to Ozu, and we see Ozu holding his script in his hands as he directs the narrative in his films acting like a visual mandala of samsara for all to experience and recognize their own daily struggles. Though the mandala is of Tibetan origins, it does also explicate the basic principles of Mahayaha Buddhism most prevalent in Japan.4 Perspective is everything in Mahayana; indeed, the “aim of Mahayana tradition is to alter man’s view of the world rather than the world itself” (Rupp 1971, 62). Often above the wheel (or the mandala) of samsara, a moon rises in the sky with Buddha looking at it. Buddha points the way to liberation—the path to freedom—away from the map of death and rebirth. Thus, the mandala represents an alchemical process of inner transformation, just as Ozu’s cinema exposes the inner transformations that we have the potential to experience. Buddhism borrows heavily from Hinduism. A critical part of Hindu alchemy and yoga is the idea of chakra, the six energy points found within the body: eye, throat, heart, solar plexus, navel, and lower navel. To some extent, the chakra, parallels the six realms of samsara: god, asura, human, animal, ghost, and demon. (Interestingly, the word chakra means wheel.) Furthermore, it is urgent to rise above the limitations imposed by life and see everything in perspective. Above the head, as a sort of a halo, is the seventh chakra, the soul chakra, which represents a higher self. Therefore, one has to

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exit the body, the personal self, to arrive with the divine self or higher self or truth. This higher place of objectivity “allows us to more clearly perceive the illusions we have accepted as truth, the ‘perpetual wandering’ of samsara in Buddhist terms” (Hartman and Zimberfoff 2003, 12). In one sense, the birth of our higher self represents a separation from our original self. All the pain on earth is caused by our original separation from our higher/divine self, or Buddha nature. Separation from the soul, a sense of disconnection, a lack of “indwelling,” leaves the individual with an immense empty place, although he/she seldom understands what that emptiness really is. The person has an insatiable hunger for being reunited with his soul, being made whole again. But that insatiable hunger almost always is experienced as a desire for something else: for a relationship, for numbing the pain, for excitement or other distractions from the pain, for material wealth and comfort, status and security, for a drink or a smoke or an orgasm, for more pleasure or less pain. (Hartman and Zimberfoff 2003, 13)

That hunger represents our attachments or cravings that cause all our pains. We do not have to actually leave the body to reconnect and be reborn or reattached in our true selves. The mandala is not just a representation of our struggles but also shows the path to freedom. Ozu cinema acts like a yantra, or mandala—a type of visual screen where movies record lives of humans struggling within their own realms within the cycles of samsara. While watching an Ozu yantra, we see our own struggles, our own deaths, and our own rebirths. Ozu’s cinema acts like the reel of samsara, a record for the wheel of life of all humans. It is less an illusion and more a spiritual spiral of real pains, perceptions, and powers. It is our mind revealed, our psychic energy recorded, and our spirit uncovered. In the Mahayana tradition, “samsara is nirvana” because we live in an illusion or a “fog of concepts” (Loy 1986, 356). How can the opposite of samsara, being enslaved to a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth, also mean at the same time liberation or nirvana? Well, that is because liberation is also an illusion. You can never be completely separate from the wheel of existence. So, once you can be separate from the world, you can see the world for what it is. Then you

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can rejoin the world and become interconnected to everything. You become a part of everything instead of apart from everything. In the act of nirvana, you become the nothingness of everythingness. Nirvana becomes not nothingness or emptiness or even an escape. It becomes a re-union with the universes that we have always shared with all beings. With everything. On the headstone of Ozu is the symbol Mu, which means no, not, without, or emptiness. Mu acts like a mantra possessing the power to enlighten, often associated with Zen. Ozu’s cinema, like the sand mandalas that Tibetan monks create, can take a great deal of time to make. However, audiences only watch and appreciate such works within a very short amount of time. Once a sand mandala is made, it is quickly washed away to demonstrate its impermanence as seen in Ron Fricke’s film Samsara (2011). Impermanence remains a key part to the cinema of Ozu. What was once a doomed record of death and rebirth alchemically becomes a new path toward liberation. Samsara is nirvana. Mu is the sound of freedom and nirvana. Ozu’s films not only record the rokudo, the six paths of samsara toward pain; they also possess nirvana, the path to liberation. We can learn through the pain from the actions of Ozu’s cinema as we gain an understanding of the difficulties in everyday life. In Ozu’s cinema, there are no superheroes in a Marvel/DC sense—or super samurai in a Kurosawa sense—to fight the grand evils of the day. We are the “average” humans of the world who wake up daily and do not actually realize that the path toward liberation is not really meaningful, for we are already free when we learn to accept the changes that surround us.5 In his chapter “A Sensitivity to Things,” Hammond showed how Ozu recaptured the original nature of mono no aware by rediscovering “a more positive acceptance of change.” This anthology of critical essays explores the frames of time, spaces, and places that Ozu’s cinema frequents. When watching Ozu cinema, one experiences a sort of aesthetic déjà vu within the framework of a creative visionary where a cinematic samsara unfolds. With each film, Ozu seemed to revisit similar narratives experienced within previous cinematic incarnations. With an ensemble cast of actors returning again and again in similar roles, the audience is reborn into a new cinematic world in a new permutation of previous cinematic lives. Just as Ozu died on his own

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birthday, December 12, his spirit and artistry are reborn and revisited and re-appreciated in critical anthologies like this one. Just as the titles of his films often repeat seasonal names or the similar locations, the cinema of Ozu revisits what it means to be human again and again.

Notes 1

“The presentation of five plays in order was derived from an important aspect of Japanese culture and corresponded to the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) of ancient Chinese cosmology” (Ishii 1994, 58).

2

Later, Clint Eastwood would create a new type of cowboy with angst in the spaghetti Westerns modeled, ironically, in a samsara fashion, on the samurai of Kurosawa, which were partially modeled on the warriors of the West.

3

The categories of Noh do not parallel exactly the six realms of samsara but instead allow for dramatic flexibilities.

4

This Tibetan mandala is a Vajrayana way of seeing Buddhism. Though other forms of Buddhism are more popular in Japan, Vajrayana does exist in the form of Shingon.

5

Liberation is possible through selflessness. “For example, when a human being is greedy, he manifests his animal nature; when he acts out of selfless compassion, he is instantaneously ‘reborn’ in the bodhisattva realm” (Thornhill III, “Yugen after Zeami,” 47).

Bibliography Ebert, Roger. The Great Movies. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. Ernst, Earle. Three Japanese Plays from the Traditional Theatre. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Hartman, David and Diane Zimberoff. “Soul Migrations: Traumatic and Spiritual.” Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies 1 (2006): 3–96. Ishii, Mikiko. “The Noh Theater: Mirror, Mask, and Madness.” Comparative Drama 28 no. 1 (Spring 1994): 43–66. LaFleur, William R. The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1986.

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Loy, David. “The Difference Between Samsara and Nirvana.” Philosophy East and West 33 no. 4 (1983): 355–365. Rupp, George. “The Relationship Between Nirvana and Samsara: An Essay on the Evolution of Buddhist Ethics.” Philosophy East and West 21 (1971): 55–67. Shields, James Mark 342–345 Encyclopedia of Religion and Film. Ed. Eric Michael Mazur. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012. Thornhill III, Arthur H. “Yugen after Zeami.” In Noh and Kyogen in the Contemporary World, ed. James R. Brandon, 36–64. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997.

About the Contributors The Editors Wayne Stein is a Professor at the University of Central Oklahoma who teaches classes on Kurosawa, Japanese horror, and Vietnam War cinema; he has coauthored readers Fresh Takes (McGraw Hill, 2009) and Stratagems: Arguing Issues for Writers (Fountainhead Press, 2009). He has also coauthored LFX (Languaging Force X), a cyberpunk role-playing game for writers and written various chapters in books, encyclopedias on Asian American literature and Asian cinema. Marc DiPaolo is Visiting Associate Professor of English at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. He wrote War, Politics and Superheroes (Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2011), Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film (2007), and the upcoming monograph Fire & Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones. He published the anthology Devised and Directed by Mike Leigh (coedited with Bryan Cardinale-Powell) with Bloomsbury in 2013.

The Authors John Berra is a lecturer in Film and Language Studies at Tsinghua University. He is the editor of the Directory of World Cinema: Japan (2010/12/15); co-editor of World Film Locations: Beijing (2012); and co-editor of World Film Locations: Shanghai (2014). He is also the co-editor of the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture. His academic articles have been published in Asian Cinema, Film International, Geography Compass and Science Fiction Film and Television.

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Suzanne Beth is a Ph.D. candidate in Film Studies at the University of Montreal. Her research deals with epistemological issues raised by the relationship of Ozu’s film practice with the cinematographic technique. She has recently published “Le cinéma d’Ozu et les images animées comme tiers destructeur” (Intermédialités, n 21, 2013). Mauricio F. Castro is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at Purdue University. His dissertation, Casablanca of the Caribbean: Cuban Refugees, Local Power, and Cold War Policy in Miami, 1959–1995, examines the political, economic, and demographic changes stemming out of federal refugee policy in South Florida. Mauricio is a member of the executive board of the Urban History Association. His work has been published in The History Teacher and The Southern Historian. Elyssa Faison is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan (2007), and coeditor of Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan: Sexing Class (2009). She is currently researching a book on memory and the atomic bomb in Japan, the United States, and the South Pacific. J. M. Hammond is a Ph.D. candidate at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, researching modern art in Taisho-era Japan (1912–1926). He has a BA in Visual and Performed Art from the University of Kent and an MA in Film Studies from the University of Exeter. His scholarship has appeared in The Reflexive Photographer (2013), Directory of World Cinema: Japan 3 (2015), and Transactions of the Asiatic Society (Spring 2013). Jack Lichten is a research assistant in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University, where he graduated in 2013 with an MA in Japanese Area Studies; he received a BA from Connecticut College in 2010. He was born and raised in New York and currently lives in Tokyo. Current research interests include immigration and labor policy, organic agriculture, and botanical photography.

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Tom Paulus teaches film history and film aesthetics in the Department of Theater and Film Studies at the University of Antwerp. He has served as coeditor of the blog Photogénie (www.photogenie.be), editor of the media journal AS/Andere Sinema, and curator of film and digital media at the Museum for Contemporary Art. Paulus has coedited (with Rob King) Slapstick Symposium: Essays on Silent Comedy (2010), published widely on the films of John Ford, and has contributed chapters to Revisiting Film Melodrama (2014) and The Philosophy of Michael Mann (2014). Isolde Vanhee lectures on Film, Modernism and Contemporary Art at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. She has a MA in Art History and holds a Ph.D. in Communication Sciences. She is film editor of Rekto:Verso, a board member of Cinema OFFoff, and a member of the Center for Cinema and Media Studies (CIMS). From 2001 to 2005, she was a staff member of the Museum of Contemporary Art (SMAK) in Ghent. In November 2010, she successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the representation of the family in American gangster films. She has published in various magazines on film, painting, and the relationship between cinema and the fine arts.

A Mantra of Liberation Wayne Stein

OH- ZU-YA-SU-JI-RO.1 Let the name of Ozu Yasujiro, with its six syllables, become a sacred mantra of healing or a kotodama, a word spirit of discovery, that samsara is nirvana. Watch a film by Ozu and repeat this sacred mantra of rebirth: OH closes the path of suffering of all beings reborn as gods, where the pain of ruling comes from pride. ZU closes the path of suffering of beings reborn as warriors, where the pain of conflict comes from jealousy. YA closes the path of suffering of beings reborn as humans, where the pain of daily suffering comes from desire. SU closes the path of suffering of beings reborn as animals, where the pain of survival of the fittest of all comes from ignorance. JI closes the path of suffering of beings reborn as hungry ghosts, where pain comes from cravings for all things, comes from greed. RO closes the path of suffering of beings reborn as demons in hell, where the pain of heat and cold come from anger or hatred.

A Mantra of Liberation

OH - ZU OH - ZU OH - ZU OH - ZU OH - ZU OH - ZU MU …

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YA YA YA YA YA YA

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SU SU SU SU SU SU

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JI JI JI JI JI JI

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RO RO RO RO RO RO

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Note 1

This mantra copies the form of six-syllabled mantra of Kannon Bodhisttava: “Om Mani Padme Hum,” http://exoticindiaart.com/product/TM46.

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Index Note: Locators followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. For all Ozu films listed here, the name “Ozu” is not added but is implied. Abbas, Kiarostami 93 abortion 55, 58, 61–3, 66 Agamben, Giorgio 125, 128, 131n. 23, 131n. 31 Allen, G.C. 16 Allinson, Gary D. 14–15 Alonso, Lisandro 97 American cinema 93 American occupation of Japan 4, 30 American occupiers 31, 33 An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji, 1962) 2, 13, 24, 26, 47, 79, 85 Another Year (2010, Leigh) 101 Antonioni, Michelangelo 93 art cinema 98, 135 Asia Pacific War 53 Asian neorealism 134 A Story of Floating Weeds (Ukikusa monogatari, 1934) 7 A Time to Live, a Time to Die (1985, Hou) 134 Aurora (2010, Puiu) 101 Bakushu (Early Summer, 1951) 30, 95, 96 Banshun (Late Spiring 1949, 1951) 30, 79, 97, 163, 173, 174 Bazin, André 98–9, 136 Being and Time (Heidegger) 153–4, 163 being-toward-death 6, 156, 160–3, 168–9 Bergala, Alain 122, 124, 130n. 15, 130n. 17 Bergson, Henri 6, 153–8, 164, 169, 170n. 1, 170n. 2 Berra, John 4, 11, 175, 187 Beth, Suzanne 6, 115, 180, 188 Biro, Yvette 135–6, 142, 149n. 8, 149n. 13, 149n. 14, 149n. 15

Bordwell, David 2, 12–13, 20, 34, 39, 42, 46, 93–6, 98, 101, 104–7, 110, 112n. 1, 112n. 4, 112n. 7, 130n. 15, 134–6, 142, 144–5, 147, 149n. 2, 149n. 6, 150n. 17, 150n. 18, 150n. 24, 150n. 25, 150n. 29, 151n. 33, 151n. 34, 151n. 35, 151n. 38 The Boys from Fengkuei (1983, Hou) 134 Boys’ Day celebration 41 Buddhism 5, 109, 174, 182 Buñuel, Luis 54 Burch, Noel 112n. 2, 130n. 15, 143–5, 150n. 27, 150n. 28, 150n. 32 Café Lumière (2003, Hou) 6, 133–7, 142, 144, 147, 149, 181 Cahiers du cinéma 102 Castro, Mauricio F. 4, 29, 176–7, 188 Ceylan, Nuri Bilge 97 Chaplin, Charlie 98 Chishu, R. 21, 34, 40–1, 47, 55, 66–7, 69, 96, 156, 173, 176 Citizen Kane (1941, Welles) 101 Confucianism 175, 179 Cooper, Gary 39 Costa, Pedro 97 Criterion Collection 1 Days of Youth (Wakaki hi, 1929) 2 death anniversary of Ozu’s death 133, 135 authentic self 154 awareness of 178 in Being and Time 153 Buddhist concept 173 in Early Summer 39

Index in Last Year at Marienbad 170 in Late Spring 79 rebirth and 175 in Still Walking (2008, Hirokazu Koreeda) 111 in The End of Summer 111 in The Only Son 94 in The Tree of Life 103 in Tokyo Story 6, 36, 108, 111, 156–7, 159–65, 167–8 in Tokyo Twilight 71 in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 99, 111 Dekigokoro (Passing Fancy, 1933) 13 Delavaud, Gilles 121, 130n. 14 Deleuze, Gilles 6, 120, 128, 131n. 32, 158, 169, 171n. 5 Desser, David 88n. 15, 89n. 19 DiPaolo, Marc 77, 177, 187 divine self 183 Dixon, Wheeler Winston 11 Doganis, Basile 131n. 30 Dower, John W. 29, 31, 33, 36, 50n. 6 Dust in the Wind (1986) 134 Duus, Peter 72n. 7 Early Summer (Bakushu, 1951) 4, 6, 30, 35–7, 39, 41–2, 47–8, 95–6, 106, 176 Eastern Zen 5 Ebert, Roger 1, 181 Eitai Bridge 22 Elena (2011, Zvyagintsev) 101 Elsaesser, Thomas 82, 88n. 7, 102 empty frame 139–40, 143–4 The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki, 1961) 13, 111 Equinox Flower (Higanbana, 1958). 4, 5, 30, 35, 40–1, 43, 48–9, 77–8, 85–7, 176 Ernst, Earle 98, 179–80 Faison, Elyssa 5, 53, 188 family in American gangster films 189 in Another Year 101 in An Autumn Afternoon 13 in Aurora 101

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beyond 106–9 in Buddhist culture 99 conflict resolution 116, 126 in Early Summer 30, 36–9, 95–6 effect on community 117 in Elena 101 in The End of Summer 13 in Equinox Flower 30, 86 home dramas 11, 101–3 in Honey 101 Hou’s film 133, 181 in I Was Born, But … 13, 27 in Japanese constitution 42 in Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960) 13 in Late Spring 30, 36, 39, 42–3, 179 in Meek’s Cutoff 101 member’s death 111 in The Only Son 13–16, 21, 25, 27, 94 Ozu’s postwar work 32, 176 in Passing Fancy 13, 27 personal history 103–6 in Poetry 101 recurring actors 35 in Since You Went Away 82 in There Was a Father 94 in The Tree of Life 100 in The Turin Horse 100 in Tokyo Story 30, 36, 40, 45, 157, 159, 169–70 in Tokyo Twilight 55–6, 58–61, 62–3, 65, 67, 70–1 in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 100 unity in postwar Japan 46–9 in Upon a Time in Anatolia 101 feminism 101 Flanagan, Matthew 93 Floating Weeds (Ukikusa, 1959) 7, 34, 54, 158 Flowers of Shanghai (1998, Hou) 148 fog of concepts 183 Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey 11 Fuentes, Carlos 54, 72n. 4 Fumimaro, Konoe (prince) 31 Giannetti, Louis D. 49n. 1, 77 Good Men, Good Women (1995, Hou) 134, 147

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Good Morning (Ohayo, 1959) 6, 54, 115–30, 180 Gordon, Beate Sirota 31 Halliwell’s Film Guide 1 Hammond, J. M. 5, 77, 178, 184, 188 Hara, Setsuko 4, 33–5, 43, 47–8, 61, 78, 96, 156, 173, 176 Hartman, David 183 Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi 72n. 10 Hastings, Sally A. 32, 49n. 4, 73n. 13 Hasumi, Shigehiko 71, 73n. 17, 84, 88n. 15, 123–4, 130n. 15, 130n. 16, 131n. 18, 131n. 21, 131n. 22 Heidegger, Martin 6, 153, 157–61, 163–5, 169, 171n. 4, 171n. 6 Hibiya, Junko 17 Higanbana (Equinox Flower, 1958) 30, 85, 87 Higashiyama, Chieko 6 Hinduism 182 Hiroshima 29, 48, 86 Hollywood cinema 6, 95, 98, 120 Honey (Bal, 2010, Semih Kaplanoglu) 98, 101 Hoover, Thomas 83 Hou, Hsiao-Hsien 2, 6, 133–48, 181 How Green Was My Valley (1941, Ford) 101 human values 20 I Was Born, But … (Otona no miru ehon Umarete wa mita keredo, 1932) 1, 4, 6, 13–14, 19, 24–7 Ienaga, Saburo 72n. 7 Inoue, Kazuo 72n. 6 Introduction to Metaphysics (Bergson) 153, 169 Ishii, Mikiko 173, 179–80, 185n. 1 Italian Neorealism 134 James, Nick 93, 98–9, 113, 134–5, 142 Japanese Constitution Article 14 32 Article 15 32 Article 24 31–2 Japanese family 12–13, 30, 32, 35–6, 38, 42, 56, 96, 101, 104, 176 cinematic world and 104

daily rituals 96 environment for a child 56 I Was Born, But … 13 marriage law 42 middle-class 36, 176 occupation-imposed reforms 32 Ozu’s perception 12 postwar period depiction 30 potential violence 38 pre-1941 films 101 screenwriting, Ozu’s 35 Japanese government 29, 31, 59 Japanese identities 4, 30 Japanese society 4–5, 30, 47, 103 Kamei, Fumio 33 Kanto Earthquake 14 Kato, Masae 73n. 12 Kaze no naka no mendori(A Hen in the Wind) 34 Kido, Shiro 34 Kinemo Jumpo magazine 1, 34 Klevan, Andrew 135–6, 149n. 10, 149n. 11, 149n. 12 Klinger, Barbara 103 Kohayagawa-ke no aki (The End of Summer, 1961) 13 Koikari, Mire 44–5 Kon, Satoshi 176 Koreeda, Hirokazu 97, 111 Kovner, Sarah 73n. 13, 73n. 14 Kuniko, M. 35–6, 176 LaFleur, William R. 178 Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961) 153–4 Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960) 13, 54, 78, 84, 87 Late Spring (Banshun, 1949) 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 30, 33, 35–7, 39, 42, 44, 47, 54, 77–9, 81, 85, 97, 109, 134, 158, 163, 165, 170, 173–4, 176, 179–80 Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (2007, Hou) 146 Leibman, Nina 101 Lichten, Jack 6–7, 153, 177–8, 188 Lloyd, Harold 98 Loy, David 183 Lubitsch, Ernst 98

Index Ma, Jean 136, 150n. 16, 151n. 40 MacArthur, Douglas 30–1 Malick, Terrence 2, 5–6, 93, 99–100, 103, 105, 108–9, 181 mandala of samsara 182–4 Mansfield, Stephen 23 mantra of liberation 190–1 marriage arranged marriage issues 42, 47 Article 24 of Japanese Constitution 31 in An Autumn Afternoon 26 in Early Summer 4, 36–7, 39, 95 in Equinox Flower 43, 78, 86 failed 66 in Late Spring 4, 79, 179 legal conception 32 love marriage issues 43, 47 necessity of 165 in The Only Son 17, 94 in There Was a Father (Chichi ariki, 1942) 94 in Tokyo Story 154 war issues and 39 Maruyama, Hiromi 73n. 12 Matsusaka, Yoshihisa Tak 72n. 7 Meek’s Cutoff (2011, Kelly Reichardt) 101, 105 Meiji Civil Code 32 Millennium Actress (Sennen Joyu, 2001, Kon) 176 Millennium Mambo (Qianxi Manbo, 2001, Hou) 146, 148 Minelli, Vincente 102 Miyake, Kuniko 35–6, 176 Mitsuhiro Y. 77 mono no aware 2, 5, 77, 79–81, 83–7, 184 Motoki, Zeami 180 Motoori, N. 5 Mu 184 Mulvey, Laura 99, 101–2 The Munekata Sisters (Menukata koudai, 1950) 97, 111 Nagasaki 29 Nagaya Shinshiroku (Record of a Tenement Gentleman, 1947) 34 Neale, Steve 101

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Nihon no Higeki (The Tragedy of Japan, 1928, Kamei) 33 Niogret, Hubert 130n. 3 nirvana 183–4 Noda, Kogo 72n. 6, 104 Noh play 164, 173, 179–80 Noh theater, samsara of 178–85 Nolte, Sharon H. 32, 49n. 4 Noriko 4 Nornes, Abé Mark 71, 73n. 16 Nygren, Scott 77, 80, 85, 88n. 1, 88n. 5, 88n. 17, 89nn. 20–1 Ohayo (Good Morning, 1959) 115, 118 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011, Ceylan) 101 The Only Son (1936) 4, 12, 13, 17, 19–27 ontological realism 136 Otona no miru ehon – Umarete wa mita keredo (I Was Born, But … , 1932) 34, 175 Outside Over There (Sendak) 139 Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (Bordwell) 94 Ozu centennial symposium 133 Ozu in Cultural Context: Considering Class, Gender and Domestic Spaces 3 Ozu International (essay) 2 Ozu, Yasujiro aesthetic choices 173–4 archetype middle-class families 36 Asian audiences 173 career 2 cinematographic practice 121–2 criticisms of postwar work 4 cyclical nature in movie characters 7 editing technique 123 effects of war and occupation 30–3 everyday life in movies 184 filmography 2, 7 “home dramas” 11 international appeal 3, 7 Japanese audiences 105 meditative dramas 11 modernist position 78 narrative causality 128 neighbourhood, portrayal 17 parametric style 107

196

Index

patterns of repetition 136 “pillow shots” 95 portrayal of masculinity 39 power and powerlessness of speech 116 recurring actors 35 role as a social commentator 29 screenwriting aspect 35 sense of irony 84 sensitivity to things 5, 77–89 silent comedies 11 slow pacing 93 social conscience 2 static transition shots 18 use of sound in The Only Son 22–3 use of space 11–12 war issues 36–9 Western audiences 30, 102 Ozu’s International Reception and Influences 3, 5 parametric narration 142, 147 parent-child relationships 2, 12–13, 17, 19, 21, 25–6 Passing Fancy (Degigokoro, 1933) 4, 13, 16–17, 18, 24–7, 34 Paulus, Tom 6, 133, 181, 189 Phillips, Alastair 15–16, 73n. 16 Playtime (1967) 110 Poetry (Shi, 2010, Lee) 101 postwar Japan 4, 30, 46–7, 53, 136, 176–7 Pride of the Yankees 39 program industries 120 Puiu, Cristi 97, 101 The Puppetmaster (Xi meng rensheng, 1993, Hou) 134 quality of life, 27 Ray, Nicholas 102 Ray, Satyajit 134 Reichardt, Kelly 97–8, 101, 105 Resnais, Alain 6, 153, 168 Reygadas, Carlos 97 Richie, Donald 2, 12, 14–15, 20, 38, 45, 49n. 1, 70–1, 73n. 15, 79–80, 83, 88n. 3, 88n. 4, 88n. 8, 96, 101, 106, 111, 112n. 7, 116, 126–7, 130n. 5, 131n. 25, 131n. 26, 131n. 27

rokyoku 17–18, 27 Rosenbaum, Jonathan 93 Rupp, George 182 Russell, Catherine 11 Ryu, Chishu 21, 34, 40–1, 47, 55, 66–7, 69, 96, 156, 173, 176 Samsara (2011, Frike’s film) 181, 184 Sanma no Aji (An Autumn Afternoon, 1962) 13, 85, 131n. 25 Sato, Barbara 42–3, 45 Sato, Tadao 22, 24 Schrader, Paul 2, 5, 71, 83, 88n. 13, 106, 165 Schwarzer, Mitchell 12 Second World War 3, 29, 39, 163 Sendak, Maurice 139 Setsuko, H. 4, 33–5, 43, 47–8, 61, 78, 96, 156, 173, 176 Shields, James Mark 178 Shinto 179 Shiro Kido 34 shitamachi(downtown) 4 Shochiku Company 34, 115, 133, 135, 148 Sight and Sound 1, 93 Silverberg, Miriam 20, 22 Since You Went Away (1944, Cromwell) 82 Sirk, Douglas 6, 102–3 slow films 93, 98–100, 103, 109–11 Smith, Henry D. 23–4 Sokurov, Aleksandr 97 Sorensen, Lars-Martin 71n. 1 Stein, Wayne 7, 173, 187 Stiegler, Bernard 119–20, 130n. 10, 130n. 11 Still Walking (2008, Hirokazu Koreeda) 111 A Story of Floating Weeds 54 suburban space 13 Sugimura, Haruko 34, 35, 57, 156, 176 Sugiyama, Akiko 53–5, 57–8, 60, 62, 67 Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) 31–3 “Taiwan Trilogy” (Hou) 134 City of Sadness, 1989 The Puppetmaster, 1993 Good Men Good Women 1995 There Was a Father (1942, Chichi ariki)

Index Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama,” (Elsaesser) 102 Tamanoi, Mariko Asano 60, 72n. 9, 73n. 11 Tanaka, Masasumi 72n. 8 Tarr, Béla 5, 93, 99–100, 111 Tarkovsky, Andrei 93 television broadcasting 120 Theory of Film Practice (Burch) 143 There Was a Father 94 Thompson, Kristin 12, 144, 150n. 29 Thornhill III, Arthur H. 185n. 5 Tokyo Chorus (Tokyo no korasu, 1931) 177 Tokyo Is a Nice Place 20, 27, 34, 175 Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953) 1, 4, 6, 12, 30, 35–6, 39–40, 44–5, 47–8, 53, 57, 79–80, 104, 108, 111, 145, 153–69, 176, 178 Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo boshoku, 1957) 5–6, 27, 53–71, 78, 133 Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Schrader) 105 The Tree of Life (2011, Malick) 6, 99–100, 103, 105, 109, 181 Tucker, Richard Neil 88n. 6 The Turin Horse (A torinoi lo, 2011, Tarr) 99–100, 111 Udden, James 134–5, 142, 149n. 3, 149n. 7, 149n. 9, 150n. 22, 150n. 23, 151n. 39, 151n. 42 Ukikusa (Floating Weeds, 1959) 7 Ukikusa monogatari (A Story of Floating Weeds, 1934) 34 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat, 2010, Weerasethakul) 99–100, 111

197

Vanhee, Isolde 5–6, 93, 135, 176, 181, 189 Visconti 134 Vogel, Ezra F. 16 Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo 16, 26 Wakaki hi (Days of Youth, 1929) 2 war tragedies in Equinox Flower 48 in Late Spring 47 in Tokyo Twilight 47, 58–61 “The Water Iris” (Kakitsubata) 173–4, 179 Watt, Lori 72n. 10 Weerasethakul, Apichatpong 5 Westernization 14–15 Weston, Mark 11 wheel of samsara 7, 174–5 Whitney, Courtney 31 Wood, Robin 107, 109, 112n. 10 Written on the Wind (1956, Douglas Sirk) 102 Xu, Gary G. 146, 151n. 36, 151n. 41 Yama 182 Yamanouchi, Shizuo 34 yantra 183 Yoshida, Kiju 6, 53, 72n. 3, 72n. 5, 97–8, 104, 107–9, 116, 119, 123, 125, 128, 130n. 2, 130n. 6, 130n. 8, 130n. 9, 130n. 13, 131n. 19, 131n. 24, 162, 164–5, 171n. 7, 171n. 8 Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro 77, 88n. 2 Young, Louise 72n. 7 Yue, Genevieve 147, 151n. 37 Zen Buddhism 109 Zhangke, Jia 97, 111