Yasujirô Ozu's Post World War Two Japan

Before World War Two, Yasujirô Ozu’s films were far more varied, focusing on various aspects of life in Japan, including many films about the experiences of youth and young professionals. Melodrama was a key theme in some of these films. In his later years, his films were more grounded and the easily recognisable Ozu style developed. Ozu, who himself was in the Japanese military, saw post-war Japan as a place where the elderly were being forgotten and traditions were being lost. These themes are central to nearly all of his most influential and popular films, including Late Spring (1949) and Tokyo Story (1953), continuing all the way through to his final work An Autumn Afternoon (1962).

Yasujirô Ozu, director of over fifty films

A sense of confusion hangs over the elderly characters that Ozu puts on screen; they have been left behind by society. They seem like aliens in the rapidly modernising cities of mid-twentieth-century Japan. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ozu’s most popular film, regarded by many as his best, Tokyo Story. In this film, the Hirayama family, most of whom live in Tokyo, are receiving a visit from their parents, of whom they see little. The parents, Shukichi and Tomi Hirayama, played by frequent Ozu collaborators Chishû Ryû and Chieko Higashiyama, are excited to visit their children and experience the big city.

When they arrive, however, their children are all too busy to take them anywhere, and their grandchildren too shy to talk to them. It is only their daughter-in-law, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who is willing to spend any time with them, taking them on a bus tour of the city, for which they are grateful. The Hirayama children eventually send them to stay at a spa, convincing themselves that their parents will be happier there, completely missing that the intent behind the visit was to spend time with them. After one night in the spa, the elderly couple decide that they should return home as to not inconvenience their children further and are met with little resistance. Their entire trip serves as a vehicle to show how the elderly do not fit into the big, modern cities of Japan, and how the once unbreakable ties of Japanese families had been reduced to distant formalities. It is ironic how the only character committed to honouring tradition is the adjacently related Noriko, who refuses to remarry after her husband’s death despite the encouragement of her father-in-law.

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953), Chishû Ryû as Shukichi Hirayama (right) and Chieko Higashiyama as Tomi Hirayama (left)

After being discarded by their children and returning home, all the elderly couple can do is find hollow solace in the fact that their children are ‘better than average’. The final chapter of the film rubs further salt into the open wounds of the traditional Japanese family. After the mother passes away, surrounded by most of her children, all they can do is bicker over what items of hers they want to keep, mourning simply as a brief formality before they leave for Tokyo once again.

The theme of a discarded elderly generation is touched on once more in Ozu’s swansong, An Autumn Afternoon. In the film, as is common for post-war Ozu films, a father, Shuhei Hirayama, again played by the venerable Chishû Ryû, is trying to marry away his daughter despite her objections. A subplot in the story is the chance meeting of the father, and an old army subordinate. They go to a bar where they get drunk, uncharacteristically so for Ryû’s character, and sing a rendition of a Japanese war song. There is an overwhelming sense of sadness while they are reminiscing; both are spectres, never truly returning from the war. Perhaps this is a side to other Ozu characters that is not always explicitly shown as it is in Afternoon. Alienation due to war, combined with being immersed in traditions that have crumbled by the time of Ozu’s movies, make his elderly characters some of the most tragic in the history of cinema.

An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu, 1962), Chishû Ryû as Shuhei Hirayama

Although nostalgia and a longing for tradition are evident in the majority of Ozu’s works, he warmly accepts the strides in gender equality that come from the breaking of tradition. His movies are more often than not focused on a father-daughter relationship, with the daughters being the heroines of the story. A common Ozu story, as in the popular Late Spring, is that of a daughter whose father wishes her to marry, but who herself wishes to remain with and care for her father. In this sense, Ozu portrays traditional values in his young people, with the older generation realising the way society is headed and trying to push their daughters in a modern direction, or at least into marriage. Ozu’s heroines are the ones who take the autonomy in the stories, which suggests a side of Japan that Ozu is happy has changed.

Ozu, having lived with his mother his whole life, has a great respect for a woman’s role in society, but at the same time projects his desire to stay with and care for his mother onto his characters who wish to stay with and care for their fathers. His choice in changing the genders from his own situation likely stems from the fact that having to take care of the elderly was seen as less of an obstacle for men, who could pawn off the duties to their wives if they were married. The conflict of having to choose between caring for the elderly and marrying had a far greater effect on a woman’s life, as by marrying she likely forfeited her care of her father. Ozu often portrays the choices of his Heroines as those made by people with truly good hearts. He recognises that although the older generation is being left behind, it is often how it has to be, rather than due directly to the choices of insensitive children as in Tokyo Story.

Even when not exploring familial duties, Ozu’s post-war world is one of stiffness, shown notably in his treatise on communication Good Morning (1959). The people inhabiting this film are having trouble communicating, whether it be a young man and woman who cannot profess feelings for each other, middle-aged women who only communicate through gossip, or children whose communication is more primitive. All the characters are at the mercy of the inability of people in mid-twentieth-century Japan to meaningfully talk to one another. The titular phrase ‘good morning’ reflects how the aforementioned young man and woman resort to small talk in order to be able to say anything to each other. Collapsing social fabric in Ozu’s mind is reflected by the increasing homogeneity of speech. Relationships are replaced with colloquialisms. Arguments are won through silence, as in the case of the children trying to force their parents to buy a TV set. Problems are only made worse by accepting gossip at face value instead of asking people what actually happened.

Yasujirô Ozu’s post-war Japan is one of distance. Children are distant from their parents, both geographically and emotionally, everyday conversations have been made pointless by small talk, and Japan has distanced itself from its culture and traditions in favour of industry and westernisation. Ozu does not necessarily see pre-war Japan as something that should be returned to, he simply wishes his country would remember that they have roots, and not be so hasty to abandon them.