The Yasujirô Ozu movies about the nucleus of the Japanese family
Throughout the works of the iconic Japanese filmmaker Yasujirô Ozu, audiences find a central focus on the importance of the family. Family in Eastern cultures tends to be given the highest form of worship and respect, and this theme is found in a vast amount of Eastern literature, but Ozu’s films deliver their vital imperative in a beautiful way that only the cinematic medium can.
Having started out in silent films, Ozu saw the transition of the artistic medium as the industry adopted sound and colour, among many other innovations. With this rapid urbanisation and modernisation in Japan in the first half of the 20th century, filmmakers like Ozu had started to worry that the once imperative ideals of the family would dissipate and be replaced, encouraging him to explore this dynamic in several of his most iconic releases.
A particular selection of his most famous movies, beginning with 1949’s Late Spring, provides a certain level of anxiety about the nature of the family disappearing from Japan rather than a mere glorification and idealism of how a domestic lifestyle could adhere to the beliefs of the Japanese people in general.
Late Spring is typical of the ‘shomin-geki’ cinema genre in how it looks at the day-to-day lives of ordinary people and is often considered the first film in Ozu’s last artistic period, perhaps where he showed the world the importance of family for one final time. It sees a young woman pressured into marrying by several outside sources, though she insists on caring for her widowed father instead.
Instantly, we see the belief Ozu has in looking after one’s own family rather than going with any level of self-advancement. Simply, those we are born to and with are given a higher level of respect than those we haven’t met yet, even at the cost and sacrifice of one’s own life.
While Ozu’s films indeed explore family from a Japanese perspective, the academic Donald Richie once claimed that his works contain within them a universality that is understandable from a Western perspective, too. “The Japanese say no director is more Japanese than Ozu, and they’re right: he is indeed profoundly Japanese.”
Richie continued: “But when you talk about being profoundly American or Japanese or British, when you dig down really deep, it’s all universal. That’s why we are all so moved by [Ozu’s] films because we truly understand what the characters are going through, and we recognise their humanity. Deep down, we share our essential humanness; we feel the same things.”
Four years after Late Spring, Ozu followed up with what many consider to be his masterpiece, 1953’s Tokyo Story. Again, the director insists on the importance of family, though he delivers it through a rather painful narrative. It features an elderly couple who realise that they are coming to the end of their days and travel to Tokyo from Onomichi to visit their children, some of whom have pushed them aside.
Tokyo Story is a rather heartbreaking work, but it is undeniably stunning in the way it posits the notion that we should never stop loving our elders, even when they have become a hindrance in our personal lives. In fact, Ozu suggests that the time when our parents are old is when we should start loving them even more.
Several of Ozu’s films stress that we should love our families above all else, but one of his final movies, Good Morning, does it in the finest artistic manner. A slight reworking of his 1932 comedy I Was Born, But… focuses on two young boys who take a vow of silence so their parents will buy them a television set. “I tried to represent the collapse of the Japanese family system through showing children growing up,” Ozu once said of his films in general, words that seem especially applicable to Good Morning.
Good Morning is naturally more comedic in its delivery, but it doesn’t shy away from exploring the nature of family and how it will always provide more comfort and joy than things like technology and entertainment.
Ozu has always looked to the family as a source of inspiration for his unique cinematic tales, but these three films are perhaps his best instances. A master of making quiet, mundane moments into scenes of real emotional power, Ozu’s legacy has inspired contemporary Japanese filmmakers to follow, with Hirokazu Koreeda having a deep interest in the family dynamic and the relationships one forms with a father and mother.
Whilst Ozu pioneered such stories about the family nucleus, it appears that such tales are inherent of the Japanese culture, with the iconic director merely sparking the cinematic conversation.