This is a Bergen Film Club podcast.
Hello, welcome to The Real Thing.
I am your host Joel Lortz.
This podcast is an extension of Bergen Film Club, which is an independent cinema society
in Bergen, Norway, with a focus on expanding Bergen's film literacy, shining a light on
those who deserve it, female directors, non-binary directors, showing films from countries that
don't necessarily get a spotlight, and most importantly showing great film.
This podcast is an extension of SIT Film Club, where I contextualize the films and talk about
the wider story going on there, and just getting a better understanding, any cool stories,
anything like that.
Today is something a little unconventional in terms of our podcast history.
We're actually revisiting an old topic, just to give it the real attention that it deserves.
So in 2023, on the 30th of October, episode 22 of the podcast, we talked about the director
Yasujiro Ozu, leading off to his 120th birthday.
We talked about it then.
Just a disclaimer, the podcast is an ever-evolving thing, as am I, as a researcher, as a host,
as a producer of myself.
So in retrospect, I feel like that topic needed more attention and needed to be a bit more
thorough.
Source-wise, it was kind of lacking.
I'm going there.
If you listen to that episode, then maybe listen to this one.
So before we dive in, I'm going to start with my sources.
Obviously, the Wikipedia page for Yasujiro Ozu talks a lot of information from that.
A Nippon.com article, Ozu Yasujiro, a director's time in Tatashina by Carmen Grout Villa, which
was originally in Spanish and was translated.
A Harvard Film Archive, Ozu 120 by Kelly Dong.
And a BFI article, Ozu Yasujiro, the master of time by Tom Anderson.
And a grave of Yasujiro Ozu from Atlas Obscura, amongst many other sources which you can see
in the show notes.
Specifically, one source, Kantoku Ozu by Shigwe Hiko Hasumi, which is a book that has recently
been released.
There were a number of articles that I took from that included translations from that
article.
So without further ado, let's tell the story of Yasujiro Ozu in the way that it should
have been told.
Yasujiro Ozu was born December 12th, 1903 to a working class riverside neighborhood
in Tokyo on the banks of the Fukugawa River.
On the second of five siblings, he spent the majority of his childhood in the city of Tokyo
with his mother Assei and his older brother Shinichi.
His father, Toranosuke, was a successful merchant who sold sardine flour, which at the time
was a highly coveted amenity due to its use as fertilizer, particularly in cotton cultivation.
Which set his family apart from the rest of the families living in this arena, like he
was squarely a middle class child, but his family was kind of set apart from the rest
of them as they never really went without.
When he turned 10, the family moved to Matsusaka in the Mie Prefecture where Ozu would spend
the rest of his childhood, attending schools as a boarder, practicing judo and sketching
and journaling.
Known to be something of a rule breaker, Ozu would often skip school to attend some
of the first cinemas in the area to watch American silent films such as Quo Vadis, The
Last Days of Pompeii and Civilization, a movie that spurred his desire to be a film director.
At the age of 17 in 1920, Ozu was actually thrown out of dormitories after being accused
of writing a quote love letter to a good looking boy in a lower class, following which he had
to commute to school by train.
In 1921 he graduated from high school and took the entrance exam for what is now Kobe
University but failed.
Against his father's wishes, he instead worked as a substitute teacher in a rural school
in the Mie Prefecture.
In 1922, his family, except Ozu and his sister Toki, moved to Tokyo to live with his father.
In 1923 when Toki graduated, Ozu also moved to Tokyo to try his first luck in the film
industry.
With Ozu's uncle acting as an intermediary, Ozu entered the Shichiku Film Company as an
assistant in the cinematography department.
Although not coming from a family in the arts, Ozu's nephew, Nagai Hideyuki, stated he believed
Ozu was born at a good time and his vision in the film was the result of the era in which
he lived.
In the early 20th century, Japan's rural areas experienced significant changes due to the
broader forces of modernization and industrialization.
The Meiji Restoration started in 1868 and this set the stage for rapid economic and
social transformations.
While cities embraced western technologies at more conveniences, rural Japan faced a more
gradual shift where traditional agrarian life began to intersect with new influences.
This period of transition created a notable generational divide within rural communities.
Older generations deeply rooted in traditional practices and values often struggled to adapt
to the rapid changes occurring around them.
They clung to the established customs and social structures, valuing the continuity
of cultural heritage and the familiar ways of life.
In contrast, the younger generations were more receptive to modernization.
They were exposed to new ideas and technology, partly through education and exposure to urban
influences.
This younger cohort began to embrace aspects of western culture, including new agricultural
techniques, modern conveniences, and evolving social norms.
The resulting generational divide was evident in various aspects of this rural life.
Traditional roles and values were increasingly questioned by younger generations, leading
to tensions between maintaining cultural traditions and pursuing modern advancement.
This divide often manifested in different attitudes towards work, family structure,
and societal changes and roles, reflecting the broader clash between the old and the
new and the rapidly changing Japan.
The 20th century rural Japan was marked by significant modernization which deepened the
divide, older generations holding faster to these traditional ways, with younger individuals
increasingly embracing modern influences, creating a dynamic interplay between preserving
cultural heritage and adapting to new realities.
It's these themes that you would see crop up in many, many, many of Ozu's films.
In 1926, Ozu became a director at Shichiku, in a rather unconventional way.
Whilst waiting in line for lunch, a colleague of his jumped the queue, which Ozu responded
to by punching the employee.
When called to the director's office, Ozu took this opportunity to present a film script
he had written.
This kind of behaviour had only gotten him in trouble in the past, but here his impudence
was rewarded.
The following year, he was promoted to the director of the Jitageki, period film, department,
and directed his first film, Sword of Penitence, which is now lost.
This marked the first time working with Kogo Noda, who became Ozu's co-writer for the
rest of his career.
On September 25th, he was called up to service in the military reserves until November, which
meant that the film had to be partly finished by another director.
Upon his return, he was able to complete the production of multiple films a year across
many genres and hone his craft, exploring through trial and error, playing with pans,
tilts, dollies, dissolves, and the like, all to develop his technical proficiency as a
director.
Once he began exploring films about upper middle class life and the acceptance of choice,
circumstance, and being, he began to develop into the auteur he is known as today.
As Harvard Film Archive puts it, his,
The creation of his trademark setup was something of an accident during the making of another
lost film, Body Beautiful, in 1928.
To avoid tidying up electrical cables over the floor, he lowered the camera to the floor
and immediately fell in love with what he saw.
Towards the end of the 30s, Ozu had become a well-recognized artist, regularly receiving
accolades for his work in film, mainly in Japan, but was frequently praised by critics.
This never really translated into box office success however, and Ozu came to resent the
label of quote, critics director, as a sign of banishment into a niche.
Before any of this had real consequence however, Ozu was drafted.
In September 1937, during this time of uncertainty in his career, he was conscripted into the
Imperial Japanese Army.
He spent the following two years in China during the second Sino-Japanese war.
Arriving in Shanghai, he was fairly quickly promoted to sergeant as part of an infantry
regiment handling chemical weapons.
He was stationed in several places across China and Japan, with his conscription ending
in 1939.
There was a lot of controversy concerning Ozu's character and role in the war, the
information from his diaries, which were published even though he forbade it.
In these diaries, he refers to the group's involvement in chemical warfare, which were
in violation of protocol.
However, Japan had, as in violation of what was stated in the Geneva Protocol, however,
Japan had withdrawn from the League of Nations.
He similarly refers to Chinese soldiers disparagingly, often using slurs, perhaps due to the nature
of the situation he found himself retreating into his kind of directorial aspect in mind,
usually referring to certain situations as quote similar to what they are in films, such
as the murder he witnessed.
His diaries also offer insight into the Japanese military's use of comfort women, who were
forced into sexual slavery.
Despite being actively involved in the war planning and deployment, he developed and
wrote the script for his film, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, which concerns marmarriage
conflict and family struggles.
The first film he released following the war was Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
in 1941 and There Was a Father in 1942, which explores the dynamics of a father-son relationship
following a great separation.
In 1943, Ozu was drafted again, this time to make a propaganda film in Burma.
He was instead sent to Singapore to make a documentary about Chandra Bose, who is an
extremely interesting person, if you want to look into this person.
During this time, however, he had little desire to work and instead spent most of his time
reading, exercising, playing tennis and watching American films provided by the Army Information
Corps, being particularly impressed by Citizen Kane.
At the end of World War II, Ozu destroyed the script and all footage of his documentary.
He was then detained as a citizen and forced to work on a rubber plantation along with
his 32 strong film team.
After this time, 28 spaces were available for the first repatriation boats back to Japan,
which Ozu had won a spot on in a lottery to go home, but he waited longer because he gave
the ticket away to someone else who he felt was more deserving to go home than he.
Akiko Ozu, his niece, recalled Ozu's return in 1946 and that he had travelled straight
to his neighbourhood in search of his mother, but she had gone, having left Tokyo following
the Great Tokyo Air Raid in 1945.
She was now living with her daughter in Noda, two hours from the capital.
Once learning this, he spent the night in Tokyo, then headed straight to his mother
the next day.
He spent these post-war years in this town with his mother and extended family.
Akiko recalls the definitive role that Soke played for Ozu at this time, that he would
play with the children on the same level and that he was mischievous as a child in this
way.
He later moved to Tatsushina, with this move often heralded at his last creative haven.
This is where he would create some of the movies that are now recognised as his most
accomplished.
Anecdotal stories from his niece Akiko and nephew Nagai Hidaki portray Ozu as something
of a sake gomon and that there is a degree of hedonism that could be inferred from this
kind of lifestyle that he lived, but his family stories say that this couldn't be further
from the truth.
Those who shared a table with him as Nagai, his nephew often did, stated that experiences
with him were just to focus on the meal, simply drinking and sharing the time between a close
one.
He speaks fondly of travelling local areas with his uncle to discover or hunt down new
dishes which later came to feature in some of his films.
He didn't go to fancy places.
What he liked was to get together with people.
He enjoyed being with others.
A character point of Ozu's which is frequently pinpointed is that he never married and was
alone most of his life.
It's often also remarked questioningly about him living with his mother for the majority
of his life.
From this information alone it's easy to create this idea of a brooding, contemplative, perhaps
standoffish and sturdy man, but again from his family descriptions, from this Nippon.com
article, it seems like he was completely opposite.
Nagai, his nephew states, quote, I think he was able to do everything he did because he
was single.
He never married.
Sure, but it doesn't mean that he didn't have affairs.
Many different women played different roles in his life.
Ozu in a way owed Asai, his mother, his life twice over.
Firstly being born, but when Ozu was three years old, he contracted meningitis which led
him to be very, very sick and obviously incredibly life threatening illness at the beginning
of the 20th century.
That his mother devoted herself, body and soul to his recovery, which is something that
the filmmaker remained deeply grateful for the rest of his life.
Ozu Akiko also, his niece also believes that her uncle liked to be around others, but that
he was very shy at heart.
And as far as she knows, he liked at least three girls.
Quote, he had an inability of declaring his love.
And in the meantime, often people would get there ahead of him.
With such a large family, the rich tapestry of interpersonal affairs must have struck
him and kind of the melodrama of life and the largeness of one's own life is seemingly
what drove his kind of autistic flair.
Expectation, love, conflict and all the more obvious and interesting to him.
For example, his older brother as his tradition was supposed to care for his mother in her
old age, but as Ozu observed this complex relationship between his mother and his sister
in law, it fell to him to take over.
It seems that these kind of meditative moments of conflict are what fascinated him the most
or all of us, which is why his films kind of strike chord just so many that he'd be
able to kind of play the melodrama of the Quote d'Ion so perfectly and strongly that
you kind of drop into these moments that could be as if you are enjoying or you're experiencing
the conversation as if it's happening in front of you.
The so-called Noriko trilogy is esteemed as Ozu's most favorably received and acclaimed
works with these being Late Spring in 1949, Early Summer 1951 and Tokyo Story in 1953,
which all feature Setsuko Hara.
Late Spring, the first of these three films was the beginning of Ozu's commercial success
and the development of his cinematography and storytelling style or kind of the perfection
of it.
These three films were followed by his first color films, Equinox Flower 1958, Floating
Weeds 1959 and Late Autumn in 1962, which released the ep before he died in 1963.
His frequent collaboration with Setsuko Hara sparked romance and rumors, but his family
claimed that this relationship was purely professional.
Since the rumor mill was furthered by Hara's retirement following Ozu's death in 1963,
his nephew claims that this was purely due to her place in the industry as a woman quote
well over 40, that she had kind of peaked and she would never really be like taken seriously
or even hired again.
However, it was commonly known that they believed that they brought out the best of each other
professionally so hence the collaboration.
So following the production of some of his most acclaimed best work as a lifelong swagger,
he died of throat cancer in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday just one year after his
own mother's passing.
They are buried together in Kamakura with a headstone that has no name, but rather the
character Mu, which means nothingness in Japanese.
And this kind of concept of nothingness is something that through all of the sources
that I read is some kind of thing that plays often through his films.
It's not necessarily that it's like nothingness, but I think I'll speak a bit later, but he
speaks that there's no need to kind of like bring a grandeur to a situation that doesn't
need it, that everyday life and everyday situations and relationships and conflict in a kind of
like interpersonal way has its own gravitas and that there is this level of kind of of
nothingness of emptiness that really isn't empty at all.
Ozu was a frugal and vital man and the numerous awards he received in Japan did not affect
his worth.
According to his nephew, his last years were spent composing scripts in the middle of a
forest in Tateshina and that this was a very good period for him.
He was a man of his tough era, who did not mind living in the wilderness and experiencing
its harshness.
During the winter he generated ideas and in the summer he filmed.
For almost a decade he and his colleague and screenwriter No Gokobo followed a cycle of
creation and rest at a villa located in the mountains of Nagano still preserved today.
Even though these landscapes were never seen in his work, Tateshina was always in his heart.
Ozu's narrative content and technical style are probably what is the most striking to
viewers, particularly in the post-war sound films.
He shoots in a way that involves the viewer as if you have a seat at the table of the
conversation and it's happening before you.
His development of quote pillow shots, which are these intermediate shots that take place
of traditional cuts or fades, a way he would contextualize and vary the viewer from one
conversation to another, sometimes with static images reflecting the themes of the film,
often with images countering classical imagery with something mechanized.
Shigwe Hiko Sumi, who recently published this book, Kantoku Ozu, which means Director Ozu,
has actually criticized or rather identified that the West's perception of Ozu is largely
driven by three people, Donald Ritchie, Paul Schrader and David Bordwell, all of which
are obviously influential in their own right. And it's worth noting that there is a degree
in which he has kind of been contextualized in Western cinema by kind of reflecting an
Eastern or Japanese expectation back upon him. By kind of ascribing certain choices,
shots, dialogue, inclusion of certain set pieces that are chosen by Ozu that like this
was only done because he was a Japanese man or applying like Eastern religion motif to
it. When it, as Sumi says, may not have necessarily been the case, that rather it was just kind
of like, this is everyday life, not necessarily some kind of like deeper, like religious Eastern
meaning. I just thought I can't speak too much to it because I'm not like a film analysis
nerd, but it's an interesting point the way that we kind of view Eastern cinema, I guess
that we have it, maybe have a tendency to kind of like put on an extra level of Eastern
motif because it is an Eastern film. I just thought it was a very interesting point. I
believe the Hatsumi book has been translated or it will be. So I'm sure that there's a
lot of interesting points in there. Ozu's legacy and influences, nonetheless, undeniable.
The themes in his movies are as relevant today as then, you could say. It's intergenerational
conflict, whether this be due to expectation, tradition, generals, it's a strong core theme
throughout all of his features, but not necessarily told in this heavily dramaticized way that
it could be told in other films of the period. Ozu never aimed to sensationalize or go beyond
what was necessary. It was deliberate and calm. It was a family. It was people talking.
Yeah. So I guess that's kind of, I just wanted to kind of broaden the Ozu narrative that
we have on the podcast because I'm not saying that I did a bad job researching it, just
could have done a better job, I think. And yeah, I just think it's, you know, like with
research, with sighting, it's just important to be like, I'll talk about everything. So
this is, you know, I think I filled in the gaps with that. I didn't touch on any other
episodes, so that could definitely be like, kind of like a companion episode in that way,
but it's just good to have something a bit more holistic and a bit more well researched.
So that's why I did this. Yeah. But many cool episodes coming up, collaboration and yeah,
I'm excited to move forward. It's been fun researching this episode. I actually had a
good time learning about him as a person. There's a lot like pressure kind of like put
on him as a person, but he was just a guy just being alive, living his life pretty much.
So do with that, or you will. But thank you very much for listening. This has been The
Real Thing, I've been Jill Lawrence. Goodbye.