Tokyo Stories

 

                                                                                          

Yasujiro Ozu is regarded by film historians and critics as one of the world’s great film directors. Born in 1903, Ozu is not as well known in this country as Akira Kurosawa whose Samurai epics were transformed into hit westerns. Nevertheless, Ozu was a prolific filmmaker whose career began in the silent era and only ended with his death in 1963. More than anyone else he depicted in his films the simple beauty of the lives of ordinary families especially as Japan emerged from the devastation of World War II. 

Ozu’s style was unique. He just seems to set his camera down low as if we were participants sitting low in Japanese style around the table as family members converse or enter or exit each scene. We just watch their comings and goings as the simple plots develop. He was also a master of film composition. Each frame is carefully filled as if it were a painting. There are no tricky or dazzling special effects, just ordinary life. 

Here is a list of some of these films, most of them named after the seasons: Late Spring (1949), Early Summer (1951), Tokyo Story (1953), Early Spring (1956), Floating Weeds (1959), Late Autumn, (1960), End of Summer (1961), and Autumn Afternoon (1962). All deal with every day, ordinary life. 

Perhaps the best example is Tokyo Story, regarded as Ozu’s crowning masterpiece. The film follows an aging couple’s journey to visit their grown children in bustling postwar Tokyo. The couple are from the countryside and find it difficult to adjust to city life, especially when their grown children prove to be too busy with their own careers and children to pay much attention to them. It is only their widowed daughter-in-law, who lost her husband in the war, who seems to have any time and consideration for them. She works in an office and wears Western clothes but still retains the traditional Japanese charm and courtesy. Setsuko Hara, one of the most beautiful and charming actresses in film history, and an Ozu regular, plays the daughter-in-law in this deeply moving film.

Another personal favorite is the 1959 film Floating Weeds, Ozu’s first color film and a remake of one of his early silent films. An aging actor takes his traveling theatrical troupe to a small seaside town to perform traditional Japanese drama to small and barely interested modern audiences. At the same time he reunites with his former lover and their illegitimate grown son to the chagrin of his current mistress, a member of the troupe. It is a beautiful story of human relationships in a changing world. The DVD set contains the 1959 color version as well as the original silent version of this timeless tale.

Most of Ozu’s films were filmed during the period of Japan’s recovery from WWII but Yakashi Yamazaki’s 2006 film, Always Sunset on Third Avenue takes a nostalgic look back at the period. The film was a huge success in Japan and won Japan’s equivalent of the Oscars in 12 of the 14 categories for which it was nominated. 

The Third Avenue of the title is a busy, crowded Tokyo street in a working-class neighborhood that will be very familiar to senior Americans who grew up in places like Brooklyn and Queens back in postwar America. The lives of these people bring back my own memories of days gone by. We see primitive electric refrigerators replacing iceboxes and putting the iceman out of business. We see residents crowding into the home of the first neighbor to buy a small black and white TV to watch wrestling. We see them buying Coca Cola at a neighborhood candy store and drinking it out of the bottle.

The neighbors are also familiar. There is a small auto repair shop run by a war veteran who is optimistic about the future of the automobile industry in Japan. Meanwhile, he and his homemaker wife and young son live above the shop. There is a young writer who ekes out a living by running a candy store and selling lottery tickets. He too has dreams of becoming a famous published author. There is the young woman who runs a small sake bar to pay off her father’s debts. There is even a doctor who like American doctors of the past makes house calls. He lives alone having lost his wife and daughter in a bombing attack during the war.  Just as in America they all have hope in the future now that the war is behind them. The symbol of their hope is the Tokyo Tower. We see it gradually rising to symbolize Japan’s recovery.

The film’s popularity led to two sequels that while not as good, tie up some of the loose ends from the original. I do not know if these films are available on streaming services. I used the DVD but one word of caution about the DVD. The directions to access English subtitles are in Japanese. It looks difficult but just takes a little trial and error to see this beautiful film. Here is a link to a brief video clip of one especially moving scene.

Watching these films it is hard to have anything but respect for the Japanese people, and it is sad to think that we had to engage in such a devasting war with them. On the other hand, Japan’s revival after the War is a tribute not only to them but to America. We had learned the lesson of WWI and rather than trampling our defeated enemy underfoot like Soviet Russia did in Eastern Europe, we worked to ensure the recovery of both Japan and Germany. More than the war itself, the peace that followed the war might have been the greatest achievement of the Greatest Generation.

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