ŌBA Hideo

(February 28, 1910–March 10, 1997)

大庭秀雄

Ōba’s reputation in Japan rests largely on one film, the three-part What Is Your Name? (Kimi no na wa, 1953–54), a romantic epic following the trials of a couple who fall in love when they meet on a bridge during an air raid, but must endure a long separation before they are united. Considered the quintessential example of Shochiku’s “Ōfuna flavor” understated melodrama, the film actually lacked the domestic focus and human detail essayed by Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita, and others. Nevertheless, its sentimentality and narrative contrivances were redeemed by its visual flair and the conviction of the acting.

Ōba had been directing melodramas and home dramas at Shochiku since the late thirties. In films such as Woman in the Typhoon Zone (Taifūken no onna, 1948), a taut thriller about a group of pirates who take shelter from an approaching typhoon at an island weather station, his style displayed a clear Hollywood influence. Likewise, the climax of Homecoming (Kikyō, 1950) was a rather Hawksian sequence where the hero and heroine agree to decide whether they will marry or part on the basis of a game of cards. That film, however, used melodramatic conventions intelligently to examine the effect of World War II on Japanese family relations. The war was also the subject of Bells of Nagasaki (Nagasaki no kane, 1950), the first Japanese film to deal directly with the atomic bomb. This told the life story of the Catholic Dr. Takashi Nagai, who contracted leukemia while working as a radiologist and was exposed again in the bombing of Nagasaki. Its Christian themes, and the fact that Nagai’s illness was not solely due to the bomb, enabled Ōba to make the film despite Occupation censorship.

Also in the early fifties, Ōba directed The Pure White Night (Junpaku no yoru, 1951), adapted from an early Mishima novel, and Life Is Beautiful (Inochi uruwashi, 1951), about a family who, living near a place notorious for suicides, repeatedly have to save despairing young people. After the success of What Is Your Name?, he continued to make literary adaptations and melodramas through the fifties and sixties. Enraptured (Onna mai, 1961), chronicling a dancer’s affair with a famous Noh teacher, was prettily photographed in color and contained a superb performance from Mariko Okada. Ōba also remade The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Zangiku monogatari, 1963), originally filmed by Mizoguchi, and Snow Country (Yukiguni, 1965), based on a Kawabata novel adapted previously by Shirō Toyoda. With its story about a student’s love for the widow of a naval officer, Ōba’s last film, Farewell, My Beloved (Wakare, 1969), returned to the war and its destructive effect on interpersonal relations. Though he was basically a minor artist, Ōba’s professionalism reaffirms the abiding strengths of the old Japanese studio system in general and of Shochiku in particular.

1939 Ryōnin no kachi / Worth of a Husband

Ane no himitsu / Older Sister’s Secret

Kangeki no koro / Time of Deep Emotion

Wagako no kekkon / Our Child’s Marriage

1940 Katei no hata / Flag of Home

Utsukushii rinjin / Beautiful Neighbor

Katei kyōshi / Private Tutor

Tanoshiki wagaya / Our Happy Home

Himetaru kokoro / Burdened Heart

Fuyuki-hakase no kazoku / The Family of Dr. Fuyuki

1941 Hana wa itsuwarazu / The Flower Does Not Deceive

Kokoro wa itsuwarazu / The Heart Does Not Deceive

1942 Kaze kaoru niwa / The Wind-Scented Garden

Chikai no minato / Harbor of Vows

Futari sugata / Appearance of a Couple

1943 Musume / Girl

Atatakaki kaze / Warm Wind

1944 Kachidoki ondo / Dance of Triumph

1946 Kigeki wa owarinu / The Comedy Has Finished

Nikoniko taikai / Smiling Competition (co-director)

Jinsei gajō / Picture Album of Life

1947 Saigo no tetsuwan / The Last Strong Arm

1948 Idai naru X / The Great X

Taifūken no onna / Woman in the Typhoon Zone / Typhoon Woman

Shachō to onna ten’in / The Boss and the Lady Shop Assistant

1949 Utsukushiki batsu / Beautiful Punishment

Dassen jōnetsu musume / A Passionate Girl Derailed

1950 Otome no seiten / A Virgin’s Sex Manual

Niizuma no seiten / New Wives’ Sex Manual

Nagasaki no kane / Bells of Nagasaki

Kikyō / Homecoming

1951 Zakuzaku musume / The Crunch Crunch Girl

Junpaku no yoru / The Pure White Night

Inochi uruwashi / Life Is Beautiful

1952 Futatsu no hana / Two Flowers

Jōka / Passion Fire

1953 Aiyoku no sabaki / Judgment of Lust

Kimi no na wa / What Is Your Name? / Always in My Heart

Kimi no na wa: Dainibu / What Is Your Name?: Part 2 / Always in My Heart: Part 2

1954 Kimi no na wa: Daisanbu / What Is Your Name?: Part 3 / Always in My Heart: Part 3

Shinjitsu no aijō o motomete: Izuko e / Seeking True Love: Where?

1955 Anata to tomo ni / With You

Ejima Ikushima / Ejima and Ikushima

1956 Shiroi hashi / The White Bridge

Hareta hi ni / On a Fine Day

1957 Tenshi no jikan / Time of Angels

1958 Kuroi kafun / Black Pollen / True Love

Hana no uzushio / The Invisible Wall (lit. Whirlpool of Flowers)

Me no kabe / The Wall of Eyes

1959 Aru rakujitsu / A Certain Setting Sun

Wakai sugao / Young Naked Face

1960 Shu no kafun / Red Pollen

Rishū / Sadness of Parting

1961 Onna mai / Enraptured (lit. A Woman’s Dance)

Kyō geshō / Kyoto Cosmetics

1962 Ai to kanashimi to / With Love and Sorrow

1963 Ano hito wa ima / That Person Is Now

Zangiku monogatari / The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums

1965 Yukiguni / Snow Country

1966 Yokoborigawa / The River Yokobori

1967 Harubiyori / Springlike Weather

Inazuma / Lightning

1969 Wakare / Farewell, My Beloved / Farewell

ŌBAYASHI Nobuhiko

(b. January 9, 1938)

大林宣彦

An amateur filmmaker from the age of six, Ōbayashi directed experimental shorts on 8mm and 16mm formats until the seventies. The Man Who Was Eaten (Tabeta hito, 1964) was well received at the time, earning festival screenings abroad; more famous today is Complexe (Complexe = Binetsu no ruri, 1966), a dada-influenced, broadly anarchistic film in which Ōbayashi interlinked various small stories. A similar outrageous imagination was visible in his feature debut, House (Hausu, 1977), an incoherent and shoddily made horror spoof notable mainly for such quasi-surreal imagery as a girl being devoured by a piano. Among his other early commercial features were a sentimental San Francisco-set melodrama, Take Me Away (Furimukeba ai, 1978), starring the popular duo of Momoe Yamaguchi and Tomokazu Miura, and The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi (Kindaichi Kōsuke no bōken, 1979), an entry in a long-running detective series.

Fantasy continued to be his preferred genre, however, and during the eighties he made several popular high-concept films. In Exchange Students (Tenkōsei, 1982), the souls of two classmates, boy and girl, swap bodies with humorous consequences, while in Girl of Time (Toki o kakeru shōjo, 1983)—an especially engaging film, acted with deadpan wit by its teenage stars—a schoolgirl begins to anticipate or experience events before they happen. These two films, together with Lonelyheart (Sabishinbō, 1985), formed a trilogy of youth films set in Ōbayashi’s native Ono­michi, a picturesque small town whose cozily old-fashioned charm was an incongruous backdrop to bizarre happenings. Also fantastic in its premise was the Tokyo-set The Disincarnates (Ijintachi tono natsu, 1988), a ghost story about a divorced screenwriter who encounters the spirits of his deceased parents. Despite occasional stylistic crudities, it was often touching, and it unfolded as an intelligently sustained metaphor for the unhealthiness of living in the past.

During the nineties, Ōbayashi directed a second Onomichi trilogy consisting of Chizuko’s Younger Sister (Futari, 1991), Goodbye for Tomorrow (Ashita, 1995), and One Summer’s Day (Ano natsu no hi: Tondero jīchan, 1999). The first of these was another ghost story, in which the return of the dead allows the bereaved to come to terms with their grief. Here, Ōbayashi’s handling of fantastic material seemed less sure-footed than in his eighties films, but he nevertheless persisted with similar supernatural themes in Goodbye for Tomorrow. One Summer’s Day, however, was a drama about the relationship between a boy and his senile grandfather.

Some of Ōbayashi’s more recent films have focused more directly on social realities. I Want to Hear the Wind’s Song (Kaze no uta ga kikitai, 1998) was a story about deaf people triumphing over their disability; Turning Point (Onna zakari, 1994) depicted a woman journalist who encounters difficulties when she tries to write about a former Prime Minister’s anti-abortion stance; while The Motive (Riyū, 2004) used a murder investigation involving more than a hundred characters to create a panorama of twenty-first-century Japanese society. Also notable was Sada (1998), a historical drama about a geisha who strangled her lover and amputated his sexual organ. Reworking the story told by Ōshima in In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korīda, 1976), Ōbayashi eschewed explicit sex for psychological emphasis, recounting the roots of the heroine’s actions in her personal history.

Echoes of Ōbayashi’s training in experimental cinema, and of his subsequent career making commercials, remain in his feature films, which have adapted New Wave distancing devices to the context of popular narrative cinema. He has frequently used artificial backdrops, silent-style intertitles, hard-edged wipes, and switches from black and white to color. These stylistic quirks have generally worked well in his more fantastic films, where they seem to complement the whimsy of the plots. Occasionally, too, Ōbayashi has used this artificiality to make pointed comments: in Beijing Watermelon (Pekinteki suika, 1989), about the relationship between a Japanese grocer and Chinese students, the final studio recreation of a trip to China drew attention to the incident which had prevented location shooting there: the Tiananmen Square massacre. On the other hand, the parodic elements in Sada detracted from the integrity of the story, making the unhappy heroine a subject for mockery. While Ōbayashi’s films are generally lively and interesting, such ceaseless camera tricks tend to make them seem arch; overall, they are ultimately less than meets the eye.

1944 Popai no takarajima / Popeye’s Treasure Island (animated short)

1945 Manuke-sensei / Mr. Blockhead (animated short)

1957 Seishun: Kumo / Youth: Cloud (8mm short)

1958 E no naka no shōjo / The Girl in the Picture (8mm short)

1959 Dandango (8mm short)

Nemuri no kioku / Memory of Sleep (8mm short)

1960 Mokuyōbi / Thursday (8mm short)

Onomichi (8mm short)

1961 Nakasendō / Nakasendo (8mm short)

1962 T-shi no gogo / Mr. T’s Afternoon (8mm short)

1963 Katami / Memento (8mm short)

1964 Tabeta hito / The Man Who Was Eaten (16mm short)

1966 Complexe = Binetsu no ruri / Complexe (lit. Complexe = Lapiz Lazuli in Fever) (16mm short)

Arui wa kanashii jōzetsu: Warutsu ni notte sōretsu no sanpomichi / Or Sad Loquacity: Waltz-Accompanied Funeral Parade Path (16mm short)

1967 Emotion = Densetsu no gogo = Itsu ka mita Dorakyura / Emotion = Legendary Afternoon = One Day I Saw Dracula (16mm short)

1968 Confession = Haruka naru akogare girochin koi no tabi / Confession = Distant Yearning, Guillotine, Loving Journey

(16mm)

1970 Umi no kioku = Sabishinbō: Jo / Memories of the Sea = The Lonely One: Opening (16mm short)

1971 Orere: Orara (16mm short)

Jerumi: In: Rio / Jeremy in Rio (16mm short)

1972 Sutanpīdo kantorī / Stampede Country (16mm short)

Happī dainanosaurusu: Arubamu / Happy Dinanosaurus: Album (16mm short)

1977 Hausu / House

Hitomi no naka no hōmonsha / Visitor in the Eye

1978 Utau reitōshokuhin / Singing Frozen Food (16mm short)

Furimukeba ai / Take Me Away / If She Looks Back, It’s Love (lit.)

Pinku redī: Konsāto / Pink Lady: Concert (16mm short)

1979 Kindaichi Kōsuke no bōken / The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi

1981 Nerawareta gakuen / School in the Crosshairs

1982 Tenkōsei / Exchange Students / Transfer Students / I Am You, You Are Me

1983 Toki o kakeru shōjo / Girl of Time / The Little Girl Who Conquered Time / The Girl Who Transcends Time

1984 Haishi / The Deserted City (16mm)

Shōnen Keniya / Kenya Boy

Tengoku ni ichiban chikai shima / The Island Closest to Heaven

1985 Sabishinbō / Lonelyheart / Miss Lonely

Shimaizaka / Four Sisters / Sister Hills (lit.)

1986 Kare no ōtobai, kanojo no shima / His Motorbike, Her Island

Shigatsu no sakana / April Fish

Noyuki yamayuki umibeyuki / The Young and Wild (lit. To the Fields, To the Mountains, To the Beach)

1987 Hyōryū kyōshitsu / The Drifting Classroom

1988 Nihon junjōden: Okashina futari: Monokuru hoshiki hitobito no mure / The Strange Couple (lit. Chronicle of Japanese Impulsiveness: Strange Couple: Herd of Nearly Crazy People)

Ijintachi tono natsu / The Disincarnates / Summer with Ghosts (lit.)

1989 Pekinteki suika / Beijing Watermelon

1991 Futari / Chizuko’s Younger Sister / Us Two (lit.)

1992 Watashi no kokoro wa papa no mono / My Heart Is Dad’s

Kanojo ga kekkon shinai wake / The Reason She Doesn’t Get Married

Seishun dendekedekedeke / The Rocking Horseman

1993 Haruka, nosutarujī / Nostalgie

Mizu no tabibito: Samurai Kids / Samurai Kids / The Water Traveler

1994 Onna zakari / Turning Point / A Mature Woman

1995 Ashita / Goodbye for Tomorrow (lit. Tomorrow)

1998 Mikeneko Hōmuzu no suiri: Direkutāzu katto / Tortoiseshell Cat Holmes’ Deduction: Director’s Cut (re-edited version of 1996 TV movie)

Sada

Kaze no uta ga kikitai / I Want to Hear the Wind’s Song

Reibyō densetsu: Gekijōban / Legend of the Beautiful Cat: Theatrical Version (re-edited version of 1983 TV movie)

1999 Ano natsu no hi: Tondero jīchan / One Summer’s Day

2000 Yodogawa Nagaharu monogatari: Kobe hen: Sainara / The Story of Nagaharu Yodogawa: Kobe Episode: Bye-bye

2001 Kokubetsu / Valediction

2002 Nagoriyuki / Remaining Snow

2004 Riyū / The Motive

2006 22-sai no wakare: Lycoris: Hamizu hanamizu monogatari / Song of Goodbye (lit. Parting at 22: Lycoris: Story of Unseen Leaves and Flowers)

2007 Tenkōsei: Sayonara anata / Exchange Students: Goodbye You / Switching: Goodbye Me

OGAWA Shinsuke

(June 25, 1936–February 7, 1992)

小川紳介

Ogawa’s fiercely committed documentaries charted the experiences of those overlooked or adversely affected by the postwar phenomena of economic growth and modernization. His earliest films focused on student protest: Sea of Youth (Seinen no umi: Yonin no tsūshin kyōikuseitachi, 1966) was an account of the campaign run by part-time students whose chances of graduation are threatened by a new law requiring them to complete their courses in a limited number of years. Ogawa emphasized their marginalization within the student body and consequent lack of support. His next film, Forest of Pressure (Assatsu no mori: Takasaki keizai daigaku tōsō no kiroku, 1967), charted the protests at Takasaki College of Economics against preferential treatment given to applicants related to leading politicians or industrialists. Report from Haneda (Gennin hōkokusho: Haneda tōsō no kiroku, 1967) chronicled clashes between riot police and students demonstrating at Haneda Airport against Prime Minister Eisaku Satō’s visit to the United States; Ogawa sought to prove police responsibility for a protestor’s death.

The theme of revolt against authority was at the heart of Ogawa’s most important project: the seven-film Sanrizuka sequence, beginning with Summer in Narita (Nihon kaihō sensen: Sanrizuka no natsu, 1968), which followed a campaign by peasant farmers to prevent the appropriation of land chosen as the site for Tokyo’s new international airport at Narita. These films combined extensive footage of the violent confrontations between police and farmers with scenes in which the peasants discuss their motives and strategies. The focus was less on ideological debate than on the practical details of the campaign: for instance, much of the last half hour of People of the Second Fortress (Dainitoride no hitobito, 1971) consisted of scenes in which a protestor describes the construction and use of an underground fortress.

Ogawa next made A Song of the Bottom (Dokkoi! Ningenbushi: Kotobuki jiyū rōdōsha no machi, 1975), an account of the lives of poor casual laborers in Yohohama. Ogawa stressed the consequences of poverty, recording the illnesses and deaths of some of his participants, but also revealed their dignity and vitality, with the result that this was perhaps his most moving film. While making it, Ogawa lived for a year in the same Yokohama suburb as his subjects. A larger project was initiated when farmers complained that the Sanrizuka films betrayed ignorance of rural life; accepting their offer of a field in Yamagata Prefecture, Ogawa set up a farm in collaboration with his production company. The cinematic fruits of this experience were Furuyashiki Village (Nippon-koku: Furuyashiki-mura, 1982) and Magino Village (1000-nen kizami no hidokei: Magino-mura monogatari, 1987). The former, perhaps Ogawa’s finest film, was a richly layered chronicle of village life and culture, loosely structured around the events of one year, but intertwining footage about the practicalities of dealing with a bad harvest with sequences recording the thoughts and memories of the mostly elderly villagers, their individual and collective histories. The latter placed rural customs in a political context through dramatic reconstructions of an Edo-period peasants’ revolt against unjust taxation; it was, however, less humanly engaging than its predecessor. In his last years, Ogawa helped to found the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, and began another film about country life, Red Persimmons (Manzan benigaki, 2001), which was completed by his Chinese pupil, Peng Xiaolian, after his untimely death.

Although Ogawa has often been called a leftist director, it is more accurate to describe him as anti-authoritarian. The Sanrizuka documentaries might be read as eminently conservative in upholding individual property rights against excessive state power; the plight of the students in Sea of Youth stemmed more from misguided government policy than wider economic issues; and the later films were celebrations of tradition. The partisan qualities of Ogawa’s work derived more from what he filmed than from how it was filmed: his handheld camera did not editorialize, but merely moved to cover the action, and obviously rhetorical camerawork, such as the aerial shots of the threatened farmland which conclude Summer in Narita, was rare. More typically, Ogawa’s sympathies were expressed through his selection of material. In David Desser’s words, he “is unabashedly on the side of his subjects so that he literally allows them to speak for themselves,” offering farmers and laborers the chance to address the camera and explain their situations and attitudes. By contrast, the police, government, and construction industry were portrayed in the Sanrizuka films as a faceless enemy and denied the opportunity to put their case. Depending on the viewer’s perspective, this partisanship may be considered a virtue or a vice; Ogawa himself would doubtless have claimed that his work was a corrective to mainstream media outlets which favored the establishment position. He was certainly admirable in his determination to speak for the dispossessed, and to let them speak for themselves.

1966 Seinen no umi: Yonin no tsūshin kyōikusei / Sea of Youth / Sea of Youth: Four Correspondence Course Students (lit.)

1967 Assatsu no mori: Takasaki keizai daigaku tōsō no kiroku / Forest of Pressure / The Oppressed Students / Forest of Oppression: A Record of the Struggle at Takasaki City University of Economics (lit.)

Gennin hōkokusho: Haneda tōsō no kiroku / Report from Haneda / Eyewitness Report: Chronicle of the Haneda Struggle (lit.)

1968 Nihon kaihō sensen: Sanrizuka no natsu / Summer in Narita / Japan Liberation Front: Summer in Sanrizuka (lit.)

1970 Nihon kaihō sensen: Sanrizuka / Winter in Narita / Japan Liberation Front: Sanrizuka: Winter

Sanrizuka: Daisanji kyōsei sokuryō soshi tōsen / Sanrizuka: The Three-Day War in Narita / Sanrizuka: The Third Struggle Against Forced Surveying (lit.)

1971 Sanrizuka: Dainitoride no hitobito / People of the Second Fortress / Sanrizuka: Peasants of the Second Fortress

Sanrizuka: Iwayama ni tettō ga dekita / Sanrizuka: The Construction of Iwayama Tower / The Building of the Iwayama Tower

1973 Sanrizuka: Heta buraku / Sanrizuka: Heta Village

1975 Dokkoi! Ningenbushi: Kotobuki jiyū rōdōsha no machi / A Song of the Bottom / A Song of Common Humanity / Song of the Humans

1976 Kurīn sentā hōmonki / Interview at Clean Center

1977 Sanrizuka: Gogatsu no sora: Sato no kayoiji / Sanrizuka: The Skies of May: The Road to the Village / Narita: The Skies of May

Magino monogatari: Yōsan hen / The Magino Village Story: Raising Silkworms

1978 Magino monogatari sono 2: Tōge: Zaō to Makabe Jin / The Magino Village Story: Pass

1982 Nippon-koku: Furuyashiki-mura / Furuyashiki Village / A Japanese Village: Furuyashikimura

1987 1000-nen kizami no hidokei: Magino-mura monogatari / Magino Village / The Sundial Carved with a Thousand Years of Notches: The Magino Village Story (lit.)

Kyōto oni ichiba: Sennen shiatā / Kyoto Demon Market: The Theater of a Thousand Years (short)

2001 Manzan benigaki / Red Persimmons (co-director; released posthumously)

OGURI Kōhei

(b. October 29, 1945)

小栗康平

Oguri’s short filmography bears witness to his determination to explore chosen themes and evolve a personal style while refusing to submit to commercial pressures. After working as an assistant director on a freelance basis, he obtained private funding for his debut, Muddy River (Doro no kawa, 1981), a sombre and poignant study of childhood in postwar Osaka, and a small masterpiece. Many critics drew comparisons with Ozu, to whose work the predominantly static camera, spare black and white images, and mid-fifties setting seemed a deliberate homage. However, in its focus on working-class rather than bourgeois characters, its way of setting the injustice and cruelty of the adult world against the emotional purity of the young, and its ultimate hard-won faith in human decency, the film more closely evoked the tone of social realist filmmaker Kirio Urayama, whom Oguri had assisted on Gate of Youth (Seishun no mon, 1975). Like Urayama’s best work, Oguri’s film was an affecting personal drama broadened in implication by social concern.

A similar blend of human observation with social commentary was also apparent in the director’s second film, For Kayako (Kayako no tameni, 1984), a downbeat study of the prejudice faced by resident Koreans in Japan. Here, however, the social concern was somewhat compromised by the obsessively pictorial compositions, which aestheticized the protagonist’s situation and heralded the more stylized approach of Oguri’s later work. His third film, Sting of Death (Shi no toge, 1990) nominally revisited the fifties setting of Muddy River and For Kayako, but dramatized the mutual animosity between an adulterous husband and his wife in a deliberately timeless, theatrical fashion. Again Oguri’s images were precisely composed and visibly contrived, but in this case the technique suggestively conveyed the sense that the couple’s recriminations were less an expression of spontaneous anger than a form of elaborate and dangerous gameplaying. Though the film’s bitterness was ultimately monotonous, it achieved moments of piercing intensity, particularly in the haunting use of the couple’s children as silent onlookers to their parents’ strife.

Oguri took this stylization further with The Sleeping Man (Nemuru otoko, 1996) and The Buried Forest (Umoregi, 2005), both magic realist accounts of rural life. In the former, the passive presence of a young man, comatose after an accident in the mountains, was used to illuminate the experiences, emotions, and desires of the other villagers. The latter, which again interwove various small stories in a country town, centered around the discovery, after a storm, of the petrified stumps of ancient trees beneath a nearby forest; Oguri intended this as a metaphor for the traditional Japanese spirit of harmony with nature, now buried beneath the accoutrements of modern life. Both these films were set in Oguri’s native Gunma Prefecture, which financed The Sleeping Man, but this setting seemed almost incidental. Their real concern was with more universal themes: the passing of time, the life cycle, the role of tradition in local communities. It may be argued that Oguri’s decision to address such timeless concerns and his deliberately poetic approach have deprived his more recent work of the specificity which made his debut so humanly moving. Nevertheless, The Sleeping Man remains one of the most purely beautiful films produced in Japan in recent decades, and among modern Japanese directors, Oguri seems almost alone in aspiring to film the transcendent.

1981 Doro no kawa / Muddy River

1984 Kayako no tameni / For Kayako

1990 Shi no toge / Sting of Death

1996 Nemuru otoko / The Sleeping Man

2005 Umoregi / The Buried Forest

OKAMOTO Kihachi

(February 17, 1924–February 19, 2005)

岡本喜八

A specialist in action cinema, Okamoto served as assistant at Toho to Senkichi Taniguchi and Masahiro Makino, whose influence may have contributed to his flair for choreographing violence. His early gangster movies, such as Underworld Boss (Ankokugai no kaoyaku, 1959) and its sequels, apparently owed much to Hollywood models: Chris D. has praised the “hard-boiled, noirish edginess” of Procurers of Hell (Jigoku no kyōen, 1961), which traced the destructive consequences of an attempt to extort money from a wealthy industrialist. Okamoto’s most notable early film was Desperado Outpost (Dokuritsu gurentai, 1959), in which the director, himself a combat veteran, exposed the absurdities of war through a black comic treatment of corruption in a Manchurian base. The later The Human Bullet (Nikudan, 1968), made for ATG, was another absurdist story, considered Okamoto’s masterpiece in some quarters, about a young soldier preparing for a kamikaze mission. Elsewhere, Okamoto treated the war in more serious fashion: Fort Graveyard (Chi to suna, 1965) was a bleak account of the training and futile deaths of a youthful marching band. Japan’s Longest Day (Nihon no ichiban nagai hi, 1967) depicted the conflicts between politicians and the military in the last hours before the country’s surrender at the end of World War II; Joan Mellen has condemned this as “a shameless film” for whitewashing the leading militarists.

Okamoto’s international reputation rests on the sequence of chanbara he directed in the sixties. Apart from Sword of Doom (Daibosatsu Tōge, 1966), a version of the classic kōdan story Daibosatsu Pass, all focused on politically turbulent eras of Japan’s past: in Warring Clans (Sengoku yarō, 1963), the civil wars of the sixteenth century; in Samurai Assassin (Samurai, 1965), Kill! (Kiru, 1968), and The Red Lion (Akage, 1969), the conflicts leading up to and following the Meiji Restoration. Like his accounts of the Pacific War, they varied in approach between the severity of Samurai Assassin and the dark humor of Warring Clans and Kill! This latter work has elicited comparisons with the spaghetti Western, and even Okamoto’s more humorous films, like Sergio Leone’s, tended towards nihilism. In Warring Clans, a group of warriors risk their lives to smuggle weapons through enemy territory, only to discover, after many have died, that their cargo was merely a decoy. The Red Lion suggested that authority of whatever kind will always exploit the poor; it ended with Toshirō Mifune’s hero killed by his treacherous employers, while the local peasants chant “Eijanaika” (“What the hell!”).

Though rarely subtle, these films displayed a considerable expertise, as the comparison of Sword of Doom with the 1960 Daibosatsu Pass by Kenji Misumi (himself a talented filmmaker) suggests. The precision and violent intensity of Okamoto’s direction conveyed with particular clarity the theme of bushidō values used as a cover for individual psychopathy. Memorable among Okamoto’s set pieces was the climax of Samurai Assassin: a battle in a snowstorm which dramatically concluded a largely static, dialogue-centered film. His work was notable, too, for good performances, not only from such established genre stars as Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshirō Mifune, but also from character actor Yūnosuke Itō, who had acted for Okamoto in the comedy Oh, My Bomb (Ā bakudan, 1964), and whose lugubrious persona brought an unusual, seedy edge to the villains in Samurai Assassin and The Red Lion.

Okamoto’s later work was less successful. Battle Cry (Tokkan, 1975), another chanbara set at the time of the Meiji Restoration, lacked his characteristic flair, the use of handheld camera seeming clumsy. This was another low-budget ATG film, as was At Long Last, the Charleston (Chikagoro naze ka Chārusuton, 1981), a bizarre, improvisational, ultimately unsuccessful art movie, filmed in dreamy monochrome, about a group of elderly peace campaigners. Latterly, Okamoto directed some curious hybrids of Japanese and American modes: Dixieland Daimyo (Jazu daimyō, 1986) was about a group of black slaves adrift in Meiji-era Japan, while East Meets West (1995) told the story of a samurai sent to San Francisco to prevent the signing of a treaty between the United States and Japan. However, his last film, Vengeance for Sale (Sukedachiya Sukeroku, 2001), was a reunion with actor Nakadai and a return to his most fruitful vein of samurai action laced with humor.

1958 Kekkon no subete / All About Marriage

Wakai musumetachi / Young Daughters

1959 Ankokugai no kaoyaku / Underworld Boss / The Big Boss

Aru hi watashi wa / Some Day I’ll Know

Dokuritsu gurentai / Desperado Outpost

1960 Ankokugai no taiketsu / Underworld Duel / The Last Gunfight

Daigaku no sanzokutachi / Bad Boys in University / The Spook Cottage / The University Scamps

Dokuritsu gurentai nishi e / Westward Desperado

1961 Ankokugai no dankon / Underworld Bullets / Blueprint of Murder

Kaoyaku akatsuki ni shisu / Big Shots Die at Dawn / Death of the Boss

Jigoku no kyōen / Procurers of Hell / Banquet in Hell (lit.)

1962 Dobunezumi sakusen / Operation Sewer Rats / Operation X

Gekkyū dorobō / Salary Robber

1963 Sengoku yarō / Warring Clans

Eburiman-shi no yūgana seikatsu / The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman

1964 Ā bakudan / Oh, My Bomb

1965 Samurai / Samurai Assassin / Samurai (lit.)

Chi to suna / Fort Graveyard / Blood and Sand (lit.)

1966 Daibosatsu Tōge / Sword of Doom / Daibosatsu Pass (lit.)

1967 Satsujinkyō jidai / The Age of Assassins / Epoch of Murder Madness (lit.)

Nihon no ichiban nagai hi / Japan’s Longest Day / The Emperor and the General

1968 Kiru / Kill!

Nikudan / The Human Bullet

1969 Akage / The Red Lion (lit. Red Hair)

1970 Zatōichi to Yōjinbō / Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo

1971 Gekidō no Shōwa shi: Okinawa kessen / The Battle of Okinawa

1972 Nippon sanjūshi: Osaraba Tōkyō no maki / Musketeers of Japan: Farewell, Tokyo

1973 Nippon sanjūshi: Hakata obishime ippon dokko no maki / Musketeers of Japan: The Pattern of a Hakata Obi

1974 Aoba shigereru / Green Leaves Grow Thick

1975 Tokkan / Battle Cry

1977 Sugata Sanshirō / Sanshiro Sugata

1978 Dainamaito dondon / Dynamite Bang Bang

Burū kurisumasu / Blue Christmas

1979 Eireitachi no ōenka: Saigo no Sōkeisen / The Last Game (lit. Cheerleaders’ Song for the Spirits of War Dead: The Last Waseda-Keio Match)

1981 Chikagoro naze ka Chārusuton / At Long Last, the Charleston

1986 Jazu daimyō / Dixieland Daimyo / Jazz Daimyo (lit.)

1991 Daiyūkai / Rainbow Kids

1995 East Meets West

2001 Sukedachiya Sukeroku / Vengeance for Sale

ŌMORI Kazuki

(b. March 3, 1952)

大森一樹

Little known outside Japan, Ōmori has achieved both critical and commercial success at home during the course of a prolific career. During the seventies, while a medical student in Kyoto, he made a number of admired amateur films on 8 and 16mm formats; these apparently displayed the influence of Jean-Luc Godard. His success in this field earned him an invitation to make a feature, Orange Road Express (Orenji rōdo ekusupuresu, 1978) at Shochiku; as with most of his early work, he scripted this himself. ATG financed Ōmori’s next film, Disciples of Hippocrates (Hipokuratesu-tachi, 1980), a semi-autobiographical account of the lives of a group of Kyoto medical students; visually rather indifferent, it nevertheless conveyed a real sense of the varied facets of student life.

After making Hear the Song of the Wind (Kaze no uta o kike, 1981), based on a Haruki Murakami novel, Ōmori helped to establish the Director’s Company with Kazuhiko Hasegawa and other younger directors. Such films as the youth film Paupers’ Walk (Sukanpin wōku, 1984) bolstered his reputation, and by the mid-eighties he was working at Toho. There he made Young Girls in Love (Koisuru onnatachi, 1986), which juxtaposed a high school girl’s experience of first love with a number of other love stories, and Sayonara, Fraulein (“Sayonara” no onnatachi, 1987), a road movie about a woman who leaves her native Hokkaido to search for work in the Kansai region. At the same time he also directed several successful television dramas, including some set again among medical students. For Kadokawa, he made Afternoon When Flowers Fell (Hana no furu gogo, 1989), a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the port city of Kobe.

By the nineties, Ōmori’s work had grown more commercial in tone, but he has continued to essay a wide range of genres and subjects. He scripted several and directed two installments in an updated sequence of Godzilla (Gojira) movies. Hit the Goal (Shūto, 1994) was a story about teenage soccer players, somewhat sentimental in tone, but with a sharp eye for the homoerotic dimension of adolescent hero worship. Succession Ceremony (Keishō sakazuki, 1992) was a comic riff on the yakuza genre, about the complications which ensue when a young gangster has to persuade the boss of an allied clan to preside at a succession ceremony; Ōmori satirized the elaborate codes of the gangster world. Night Train to the Stars (Waga kokoro no Ginga tetsudō: Miyazawa Kenji monogatari, 1996) was another centenary tribute: to Tohoku-born poet and children’s author Kenji Miyazawa. More recently, Those Were the Days (Kanashiki tenshi, 2006) was a thriller about male and female detectives investigating a murder.

Ōmori has realized several international co-productions and films made or set abroad. Emergency Call (Kinkyū yobidashi: Emājenshī kōru, 1995), in which he again focused on the medical profession, was shot on location in the Philippines, while T.R.Y. (2003) was a Sino-Korean-Japanese co-production with Ken Watanabe as a Japanese swindler selling arms to anti-government factions in early twentieth-century Shanghai. Natu: Dance! Ninja Legend (Natu: Odoru! Ninja densetsu, 2000) was a film in the style of Bollywood, with Hindi-language song-and-dance numbers. This high-profile career in Asia contrasts with Ōmori’s general lack of recognition in the West—perhaps because, Godzilla aside, he has rarely worked in the masculine genres that tend to win distribution in Europe and North America.

1969 Kakumeikyō jidai / Revolution Crazy Age (8mm short)

Shiroi koibitotachi / White Lovers (8mm short)

1972 Death Cover Japan (8mm short)

Hiroshima kara tōku hanarete / Far from Hiroshima (8mm short)

Sora tobu enban o mita otoko / The Man Who Saw the Disk Flying in the Sky (8mm short)

Ashita ni mukatte hashirenai! / I Can’t Run Towards Tomorrow (8mm)

1973 Shinu ni wa ma ni awanai! / Death Won’t Do! (8mm)

1975 Kuraku naru made matenai! / I Can’t Wait Till It’s Dark / Never Wait Until Dark (16mm)

Sora tobu enban o mita otoko: Ginmaku shitōhen / The Man Who Saw the Disk Flying in the Sky: Battle to the Death on Screen (8mm short)

1978 Orenji rōdo ekusupuresu / Orange Road Express

Natsuko to, rongu guddobai / A Long Goodbye to Natsuko (16mm short)

1980 Hipokuratesu-tachi / Disciples of Hippocrates

1981 Zenritsusen no byōki to yobō / The Prevention of Prostatic Disease (16mm short)

Sora tobu enban o mita otoko 3: Enerugīman / The Man Who Saw the Disk Flying in the Sky: Energyman (8mm short)

Kaze no uta o kike / Hear the Song of the Wind

1984 Sukanpin wōku / Paupers’ Walk

Nyōro kesseki bishōhappa / Blasting Kidney Stones in the Urinary Tract (16mm short)

1985 Yū gatta chansu / You’ve Got a Chance

1986 Teiku itto ījī / Take It Easy

Koisuru onnatachi / Young Girls in Love

1987 Totto channeru / Totto Channel

“Sayonara” no onnatachi / Sayonara, Fraulein / Goodbye to the Girls

1989 Hana no furu gogo / Afternoon When Flowers Fell

Gojira vs. Biorante / Godzilla vs. Biorante

1990 Boku ga byōki ni natta wake / The Reason I Got Sick (co-director)

1991 Mangetsu / Mr. Moonlight

Gojira vs. Kingu Gidora / Godzilla vs. King Ghidora

1992 Keishō sakazuki / Succession Ceremony

1994 Shūto / Hit the Goal / Shoot

1995 Daishitsuren / The Great Heartbreak

Kinkyū yobidashi: Emājenshī kōru / Emergency Call

1996 Waga kokoro no Ginga tetsudō: Miyazawa Kenji monogatari / Night Train to the Stars (lit. My Heart’s Railway to the Milky Way: The Story of Kenji Miyazawa)

1997 Dorīmu sutajiamu / Dream Stadium

1998 Jūn buraido: 6-gatsu 19-nichi no hanayome / June Bride

2000 Kaze o mita shōnen / The Boy Who Saw the Wind

Hakata mūbī: Chinchiromai / Hakata Movie: Chinchiromai

Natu: Odoru! Ninja densetsu / Natu: Dance! Ninja Legend

2001 Hashire! Ichirō / Run, Ichiro!

2003 T.R.Y.

2005 Gekijōban: Chōsei kantai seizā X tatakae! Hoshi no senshitachi / Theatrical Version: Super Star Fleet Sazer X Fight! Star Warriors

2006 Kanashiki tenshi / Those Were the Days (lit. The Sad Angel)

ŌSHIMA Nagisa

(b. March 31, 1932)

大島渚

Arguably the most formally innovative and politically provocative director of the Japanese New Wave, Ōshima was certainly its most acclaimed artist internationally, although his reputation has latterly been eclipsed somewhat by that of his older contemporary Shōhei Imamura. As a critic in the fifties, he rejected the conservatism he saw embodied in Shochiku’s sentimental “Ōfuna flavor”; nevertheless, he directed initially at Shochiku, then seeking to emulate the success of the Nouvelle Vague. His debut feature, A Town of Love and Hope (Ai to kibō no machi, 1959), was a merciless anecdote about a poor boy criminalized for an insignificant fraud, while The Sun’s Burial (Taiyō no hakaba, 1960) and Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari, 1960) were nihilistic accounts of young delinquents, which recalled the taiyōzoku (“sun tribe”) movement of the fifties. These films established Ōshima’s recurrent tactic of using crime to suggest the underlying rottenness of society. Night and Fog in Japan (Nihon no yoru to kiri, 1960), a more directly political film, confronted the disunity of the radical left in the context of its failure to stop the ratification of the U.S.-Japan (Anpo) Security Treaty. After Shochiku withdrew this work from circulation, Ōshima’s next two films tackled controversial subject matter under cover of historical distance. The Catch (Shiiku, 1961) detailed the ill-treatment and ultimate murder of a black American airman captured by the inhabitants of a remote village during World War II, while The Rebel (Amakusa Shirō Tokisada, 1962) dramatized the seventeenth-century Christian rebellion in Shimabara, apparently as an allegory of the fate of the postwar student movement.

Ōshima reached artistic maturity, however, later in the sixties, with an independently produced sequence of complex and subversive analyses of Japanese society. Again, his heroes were criminals: he saw crime as a symptom of social injustice and potentially a revolutionary act. Violence at Noon (Hakuchū no tōrima, 1966) juxtaposed the murders committed by the protagonist with the collapse of a collective farm, the contrast implicitly expressing despair at the failure of progressive politics. In this film and Death by Hanging (Kōshikei, 1968), Ōshima treated murder in a non-judgmental fashion, believing that “as long as the state makes the absolute evil of murder legal through the waging of wars and the exercise of capital punishment, we are all innocent.” Though persuasively argued, this proposition was morally questionable. With Boy (Shōnen, 1969), however, Ōshima produced a more nuanced account of guilt and responsibility, focusing on a child used by his family to fake car accidents so that compensation can be extorted from the drivers. Here, in his most moving film, he showed the helplessness of those for whom no option exists but criminality.

Several of Ōshima’s sixties films examined issues related to Korea. Yunbogi’s Diary (Yunbogi no nikki, 1965) was a photomontage focusing on child poverty in that country; while with A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Song (Nihon shunkakō, 1967) Ōshima began to detail the prejudice experienced by Koreans in Japan. Death by Hanging and Three Resurrected Drunkards (Kaette kita yopparai, 1968) were in part fables about the artificial construction of ethnic identity. In Death by Hanging, a botched execution leaves its Korean victim an amnesiac, and the film charted the re-creation of his identity as a “typical” Korean: both his Japanese captors, who re-enact his childhood as they imagine it according to ethnic stereotypes, and the compatriot who urges him to become a militant encourage him to define his identity along racial lines. In Three Resurrected Drunkards, identity became a matter of surface appearances: when a Korean army deserter steals the clothes of three Japanese students and substitutes Korean costumes, they begin to experience the ill-treatment suffered by racial minorities in Japan.

Another recurrent concern, particularly in Ōshima’s later work, was sexuality, and its ambivalent relation to power politics. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobō nikki, 1969) suggested a link between crime, sexual liberation, and political change; and a similar implication was offered by Ōshima’s last film, Gohatto (1999), which showed how homosexual desire undermined discipline among the elite Shinsengumi corps of samurai at the time of the Shogunate’s downfall. By contrast, in Ōshima’s most notorious work, the hardcore In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no korīda, 1976), a couple’s obsessive sado-masochism was seen as a retreat from politics: their erotic gameplaying was set discreetly against the backdrop of Japan’s prewar descent into fascism. Another film about transgressive love was Max, Mon Amour (1986), a Bunuelian satire about a bourgeois woman’s relationship with a chimpanzee. By the time of these later works, Ōshima was reliant on foreign funding, a fact that sometimes influenced their subject matter and setting: Max, Mon Amour was filmed in Paris and mainly in French, while Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Senjō no merī Kurisumasu, 1983), an Anglo-Japanese co-production with much English-language dialogue, was an account of the relationship between Japanese officers and their British captives in a prisoner-of-war camp.

Ōshima’s style has varied dramatically from film to film, drawing on an eclectic range of influences. Violence at Noon was an exercise in Soviet-style montage, where constant reframing reflected societal fragmentation. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief mimicked the freewheeling artifice of Godard. By contrast, Night and Fog in Japan, Boy, and Death by Hanging explored the expressive potential of the long take as a means of achieving both dramatic efficacy and theatrical artificiality. The unifying factor in Ōshima’s technique was a tension between overtly stylized devices and realist or documentary elements. Thus, Death by Hanging opened with a matter-of-fact description of the practical details of implementing an execution before developing into a theatrical fantasy; Boy, generally naturalistic in approach, drained the color from the image at climactic moments; Diary of a Shinjuku Thief combined disruptive text inserts with scenes of apparent improvisation.

The most assured example of this method was Ceremonies (Gishiki, 1971), a masterly account of the history of postwar Japan reflected through the microcosm of one family. Here every character was fully rounded, but also personified a facet of Japanese society; melodrama encouraged emotional involvement, while structural formality and overt symbolism invited a detached, analytical response. Ōshima also explored the complex relationship between the filmed image and reality in The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Tōkyō sensō sengo hiwa, 1970), a more self-conscious work about a Marxist student trying to discover the motive behind the suicide of a comrade through clues left in a documentary, only to find that the film shapes his own actions. Both here and in Ceremonies, which exposed the persistence of feudal values in postwar Japan, Ōshima suggested that only violence can overcome the oppressive weight of the past.

The doctrinaire aspects of Ōshima’s films sometimes made them excessively arid in tone, and some of his political concerns now seem specific to their time and place, a fact which may account for his relative neglect in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, his best work retains its power and remains both suggestive and formally imaginative.

1959 Asu no taiyō / Tomorrow’s Sun (short)

Ai to kibō no machi / A Town of Love and Hope

1960 Seishun zankoku monogatari / Cruel Story of Youth / Naked Youth

Taiyō no hakaba / The Sun’s Burial

Nihon no yoru to kiri / Night and Fog in Japan

1961 Shiiku / The Catch

1962 Amakusa Shirō Tokisada / The Rebel / Shiro Tokisada from Amakusa

1963 Chiisana bōken ryokō / Little Adventure Trip (short)

1964 Watashi no beretto / My Beretto (short)

1965 Etsuraku / Pleasures of the Flesh

Yunbogi no nikki / Yunbogi’s Diary (short)

1966 Hakuchū no tōrima / Violence at

Noon / Violence at High Noon / The Daylight Demon

1967 Ninja bugeichō / Band of Ninja

Nihon shunkakō / A Treatise on Japanese Bawdy Song / Sing a Song of Sex

Muri shinjū Nihon no natsu / Japanese Summer: Double Suicide / Night of the Killer

1968 Kōshikei / Death by Hanging

Kaette kita yopparai / Three Resurrected Drunkards / Sinner in Paradise

1969 Shinjuku dorobō nikki / Diary of a Shinjuku Thief

Shōnen / Boy

1970 Tōkyō sensō sengo hiwa / The Man Who Left His Will on Film / He Died After the War

1971 Gishiki / Ceremonies / The Ceremony

1972 Natsu no imōto / Dear Summer Sister

1976 Ai no korīda / In the Realm of the Senses / Empire of the Senses (lit. Bullfight of Love)

1978 Ai no bōrei / Empire of Passion

1983 Senjō no merī kurisumasu / Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (lit. Merry Christmas on the Battlefield)

1986 Makkusu mon amūru / Max, Mon Amour

1991 Kyoto, My Mother’s Place (short)

1999 Gohatto / Gohatto / Taboo

OZU Yasujirō

(December 12, 1903–December 12, 1963)

小津安二郎

One of Japan’s greatest directors and a towering figure in world cinema, Ozu has nevertheless been represented in partial and misleading terms in many Western accounts. The standard view is exemplified by Paul Schrader’s assertion that “Ozu is the filmmaker who doesn’t do certain things”: thus, he was the maker of subdued, contemplative dramas of family life; he elicited restrained, understated performances from his actors; and he used an invariably static camera. It has become something of a cliche to refer to him as “the most Japanese of Japanese directors”: the serenity of his films has been related to his adherence to Zen Buddhism, and his distinctive low camera positions explained as marking the viewpoint of a person kneeling on a tatami mat. As a corrective to this, it should be noted that Ozu himself dismissed the connection with Zen, and that, as David Bordwell has shown, his camera was often closer to ground level than to the height of a seated observer. Moreover, though the subject matter of his later films was distinctively Japanese, Ozu admired Chaplin, Lubitsch, and Harold Lloyd, and his silent films included slapstick comedies such as Days of Youth (Gakusei romansu: Wakaki hi, 1929), melodramas like A Woman of Tokyo (Tōkyō no onna, 1933), and thrillers and gangster movies such as That Night’s Wife (Sono yo no tsuma, 1930) and Dragnet Girl (Hijōsen no onna, 1933), all influenced to a greater or lesser degree by Hollywood. Indeed, as late as 1956, the opening shots of Early Spring (Sōshun), with their René Clair-like, rhythmic depiction of the morning awakening and activity of the city, testified to the continuing influence of Western popular cinema.

Nevertheless, the homogeneity of Ozu’s work remains remarkable, and his films may be interpreted as a chronicle of the experiences of his generation, from student days (I Flunked, But…[Rakudai wa shita keredo, 1930]) to early parenthood (I Was Born, But…[Otona no ehon: Umarete wa mita keredo, 1932]) to a middle age characterized in the postwar films by nostalgia, disillusionment, and the indifference of grown-up children (Ozu, ironically, never attended university and was childless). Even in the early thirties, he was already the acknowledged master of the shomin-geki genre, focusing on the realities of daily life for lower middle class Japanese. Films such as Tokyo Chorus (Tōkyō no kōrasu, 1931) and the masterly I Was Born, But… essayed the delicate fusion of comedy and pathos for which Ozu and his studio, Shochiku, would be renowned, and focused discreetly on the alienation of the salaryman at a time of poverty and unemployment. A Story of Floating Weeds (Ukigusa monogatari, 1934), a poignant low-key melodrama about generational conflict, was set in a more traditional milieu among a troupe of traveling actors.

In these films, too, Ozu began to refine his style, gradually eliminating fades, dissolves, and pans, and developing his trademark “pillow shots”—cuts away from the action to surrounding objects or scenery, which gave the viewer space to contemplate the drama. His mature style was fully established with his first sound film, The Only Son (Hitori musuko, 1936), which was also one of his richest and most moving accounts of the sorrows and disappointments of family life. This film, about a mother who has sacrificed her own happiness for her son’s well-being, also marked a shift in Ozu’s sympathies towards the older generation: subsequently, The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Toda-ke no kyōdai, 1941), focused on the indifference of grown-up children to their mother’s well-being after their father’s death, while There Was a Father (Chichi ariki, 1942) studied the loneliness of a father forced for professional reasons to live at a distance from his son. Despite occasional injunctions to do one’s duty, these wartime films seemed largely unaffected by the troubles of the time. In the immediate postwar period, however, Ozu made some films which focused with uncharacteristic directness on contemporary social problems: thus, Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Nagaya shinshi roku, 1947) depicted the experiences of an abandoned child and A Hen in the Wind (Kaze no naka no mendori, 1948) was a melodrama about a repatriated soldier who finds that his wife has had to support herself through prostitution.

The bulk of Ozu’s postwar work, however, conforms more closely to the standard account and constitutes a searching examination of the Japanese family system in an era of change. In films such as Tokyo Story (Tōkyō monogatari, 1953), Early Summer (Bakushū, 1951), The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki, 1961), and Late Spring (Banshun, 1949)—plus its reworkings or remakes, Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960) and An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji, 1962)—he examined the emotional gulfs between individuals and especially between the generations. The tone of these films was one of gentle melancholy, with the bleakness of the subject matter redeemed by the tenderness of Ozu’s approach. For Ozu, as for Renoir, “Everyone has his reasons,” but he showed that the needs and desires even of people who love each other are often mutually incompatible. His films about the family ended almost invariably with its disintegration, through death or geographical separation, and his closing scenes often focused on the loneliness of those left isolated, such as the widower of Tokyo Story, or the parents of married children in The Only Son, Late Spring, and Early Summer.

Noel Burch has compared Ozu’s technique to that of classical Japanese painters, who sought to explore every possible variation on a chosen theme. Thus, Late Autumn substituted a widowed mother for the widowed father of Late Spring, while Good Morning (Ohayō, 1959), about brothers who go “on strike” when their parents refuse to buy a television set, updated the silent I Was Born, But… to the context of the postwar economic boom. Especially in Ozu’s later films, this approach was enriched by the presence of a repertory company of actors, pre-eminently Chishū Ryū and Setsuko Hara, who essayed subtle variations on set roles, and contributed to the creation of a uniquely nuanced portrait of human interaction, where simplicities of style elucidated complexities of feeling. Though the consistency of his later work threatens to make some of the minor films redundant, all of Ozu is rewarding, and his finest films rank, in their formal perfection and humanity, among the summits of cinematic art.

1927 Zange no yaiba / Sword of Penitence

1928 Wakōdo no yume / The Dreams of Youth

Nyōbō funshitsu / Wife Lost

Kabocha / Pumpkin

Hikkoshi fūfu / A Couple on the Move

Nikutaibi / Body Beautiful

1929 Takara no yama / Treasure Mountain

Gakusei romansu: Wakaki hi / Days of Youth

Wasei kenka tomodachi / Fighting Friends, Japanese Style

Daigaku wa deta keredo / I Graduated, But…

Kaishain seikatsu / The Life of an Office Worker

Tokkan kozō / A Straightforward Boy

1930 Kekkongaku nyūmon / An Introduction to Marriage

Hogaraka ni ayume / Walk Cheerfully

Rakudai wa shita keredo / I Flunked, But…

Sono yo no tsuma / That Night’s Wife

Erogami no onryō / The Revengeful Spirit of Eros

Ashi ni sawatta kōun / Lost Luck / The Luck Which Touched the Leg (lit.)

Ojōsan / Young Miss

1931 Shukujo to hige / The Lady and the Beard / The Lady and her Favorite

Bijin aishū / Beauty’s Sorrows

Tōkyō no kōrasu / Tokyo Chorus

1932 Haru wa gofujin kara / Spring Comes from the Ladies

Otona no miru ehon: Umarete wa mita keredo / I Was Born, But… (lit. Picture Book for Adults: I Was Born, But...)

Seishun no yume ima izuko / Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

Mata au hi made / Until the Day We Meet Again

1933 Tōkyō no onna / A Woman of Tokyo

Hijōsen no onna / Dragnet Girl / Woman on the Firing Line

Dekigokoro / Passing Fancy

1934 Haha o kowazuya / A Mother Should Be Loved

Ukigusa monogatari / A Story of Floating Weeds

1935 Hakoiri musume / An Innocent Maid

Tōkyō no yado / An Inn in Tokyo

1936 Kikugorō no Kagamijishi / Kagamijishi (short)

Daigaku yoi toko / College Is a Nice Place

Hitori musuko / The Only Son

1937 Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka / What Did the Lady Forget?

1941 Toda-ke no kyōdai / The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family / Toda Brother and Sister

1942 Chichi ariki / There Was a Father

1947 Nagaya shinshi roku / Record of a Tenement Gentleman

1948 Kaze no naka no mendori / A Hen in the Wind

1949 Banshun / Late Spring

1950 Munekata kyōdai / The Munekata Sisters

1951 Bakushū / Early Summer

1952 Ochazuke no aji / The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice

1953 Tōkyō monogatari / Tokyo Story / Their First Trip to Tokyo

1956 Sōshun / Early Spring

1957 Tōkyō boshoku / Tokyo Twilight

1958 Higanbana / Equinox Flower (lit. Cluster Amaryllis)

1959 Ohayō / Ohayo / Good Morning

Ukigusa / Floating Weeds

1960 Akibiyori / Late Autumn (lit. A Clear Autumn Day)

1961 Kohayagawa-ke no aki / The End of Summer / Early Autumn / The Autumn of the Kohayagawa Family (lit.)

1962 Sanma no aji / An Autumn Afternoon (lit. The Taste of Mackerel)