Late Autumn (Akibiyori)

 

Anpo protests, 1960

 

 

 

 

 

LATE AUTUMN (Akibiyori)         B                                                                                     Japan  (128 mi)  1960  d: Yasujirō Ozu

People complicate the simplest things.  Life, which seems complex, suddenly reveals itself as very simple.  I wanted to show that in this film.  There was something else, too.  If needing to show drama in a film, the actors laugh or cry.  But this is only explanation.  A director can really show what he wants without resorting to an appeal to the emotions.  I want to make people feel without resorting to drama.  And it’s very difficult.  In Late Autumn, I think I was really successful.  But the results are still far from perfect.                                            —Yasujirō Ozu, Film Comment, On Yasujirô Ozu

A somewhat comic story of family meddling, where the life of an unmarried daughter is the primary focus, with friends of the family insisting that she marry before it becomes too late, with three middle-aged men trying to get the young woman married through their own somewhat inept arrangements, which seems to be more about gossip and rumors than anything else, as the director retreads on similar themes initially raised in Late Spring (Banshun) (1949), yet inverting the parental gender roles, examining the consequences of marriage from a mother’s perspective, yet by 1960, this is an old-fashioned and extremely conservative viewpoint, resorting to pre-war methods of arranged marriage, which may explain why the mocking tone is one of comic bemusement.  Accentuating still-existing patriarchal dominance in society, featuring men in business suits nosing into a friend’s family affairs, usually centered around communal discussions over shared sake, as their bumbling incompetence leads to awkward situations and misdirected family tensions, but somehow, someway, it all works out happily in the end, but this time, instead of Chishū Ryū staring off into the distance into his solitary future, it is Setsuko Hara, having married off her lone daughter, leaving her all alone at the end to contemplate her own solitary existence, with shots of empty rooms and office corridors that were once populated with people as metaphors for the emptiness in the next phase of her life.  While this is among the last films Ozu directed, it is an adaptation of a 1960 story written by Ton Satomi, the pen-name of Japanese author Hideo Yamanouchi, unafraid to add a little toilet humor, as one of the characters, an elderly widower, always rushes off to the bathroom every time he gets excited about the prospects of remarrying.  Essentially a comedy of manners exploring how women still live in a patriarchal society, as men, 15-years post-war, even after the instillation of new democratic laws and reforms, still hold the power to decide what happens in women’s lives, even when presented as modernized and self-sufficient in a new economically revitalized Japan.  While Ozu reduces this to comic absurdity, nonetheless the point is made that women are free from masculine authority, but only in spirit, as all the power in institutions, namely government, law, education, business, finance, and professional organizations continue to be male-centric, suggesting the choice of romantic love is a luxury few can afford, that it is folly to attempt to cling to the old ways in a world so insistent upon changing, yet the newer generation’s options come with its own perils, forced to choose between independence and the restrictive safety of marriage.  Interestingly, Ozu shows a dozen young men and women assembled for a hike through the mountains walking in step through the fields, which mirrors the opening of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Good Men, Good Women (Hao nan hao nu) (1995), with men and women walking through the countryside singing songs, yet Ozu also adds the sound of a girl’s choir at a gathering of young students at a hot springs retreat, becoming a poetic narrative device, accentuating the theme of autumn leaves falling, a reference to the changing times, offering the mindset of the mother as her daughter is about to be married, bringing to an end one phase of motherhood.  Contrast that with the sounds of Mozart Piano Sonata No.11 in A Major K.331 (Mov.I - Andante grazioso) YouTube (13:44) heard being played off in the distance while a dressmaking class is in session where the mother works, shifting quickly to the sound of typewriters where the daughter works in an office, yet unlike her mother’s generation, she doesn’t need to marry as she has her own means of supporting herself, another example of a generational shift.  In Early Summer (Bakushû) (1951), the choice made by the daughter, Setsuko Hara, flew in the face of tradition, defying the wishes of her family, ignoring their marital suggestion, and made her own choice, asserting her own future.  Japan was transforming so rapidly, politically, socially, in terms of technology, in terms of lifestyle, as the country moved from being a military tyranny in the 1930’s, when Ozu was in the early part of his career, to becoming a liberal democracy in the 1950’s and 60’s, so, with that as a background, it’s no surprise that the way a parent lives, thinks, and feels is totally different to how their son or daughter does.

1960 was a year of protest and dissension against the renewal of the Japanese-American Security Treaty, which allowed the U.S. to maintain a military presence on the island of Japan, even after the end of the American occupation, a condition of restoring Japan’s sovereignty as a nation.  Known as the Anpo protests, they were the largest popular protests in Japan’s history, including violent clashes between students and police, chanting anti-American slogans and singing protest songs, with over 10,000 students protesting, resulting in a series of recurring incidents throughout the year that placed a negative light on the treaty.  Later in the year, a right-wing teenage fanatic assassinated a Socialist leader on national television, while later committing suicide in jail.  None of this social turbulence can be seen in Ozu’s film, ignoring it completely, as if existing in an alternate reality.  Portraying a tranquil society that no longer exists, this is not among the upper echelon of Ozu films, as the story itself feels slight, suffering from the stark contrast of having been done so much better a decade earlier in Late Spring (Banshun) (1949), with Setsuko Hara playing the daughter in that film, now playing the widowed family matriarch, though this film expands the viewpoint of young women during Japan’s modernization.  The film opens with a memorial service on the seventh anniversary of the death of a late college friend, Miwa, as three middle-aged friends and former college mates, Mamiya (Shin Saburi) and Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), two businessmen, and Professor Hirayama (Ryūji Kita) greet Miwa’s widow Akiko (Setsuko Hara) and her 24-year-old daughter Ayako (Yōko Tsukasa), with all three of them once having a crush on the mother when she was younger. Mocking the chauvinism of the older generation, these three men serve as a kind of outdated Greek Chorus whose patriarchal influence is increasingly irrelevant as they remark upon Ayako’s beauty, quickly deciding they immediately need to find a marital match for her, which they arrange like a business deal, while also commenting on how attractive Akiko has remained.  When these men return to their own homes, the comic exaggeration continues, displaying a comedy of errors with Taguchi dropping his clothes behind him at random throughout his home while his wife dutifully picks them all up and places them on a hangar, while the wives relentlessly tease their husbands and the children mock the emptiness of their patriarchal authority, with Ozu accentuating their blatant independence.  After Tagushi’s prospective suitor already has a fiancée, Mamiya offers one of his employees, Gotō (Keiji Sada), but Ayako, who enjoys wearing Western dress, with a short hairstyle, insists she’s not ready to get married, that she couldn’t be happier living with her more traditional mother, who teaches dressmaking, wearing old kimonos, as they remain close, travelling around the country together exploring different parts of the country.  Ayako’s refusal causes plenty of confusion and conflict, but the trio of men refuse to let go, deciding she’s only holding out because her mother’s not married, as she doesn’t want to leave her alone, so they set out to offer Hirayama as a good match for Akiko, resuscitating his teenage interest in her, but they fail to realize the consternation this careless interference will cause, leading to quarrels and misunderstandings.  When Taguchi visits Akiko, presumably to hatch their plan, he never gets around to mentioning it, as she’s consumed with thoughts of her dead husband, yet Mamiya thoughtlessly lets Ayako know about the plan, and she is indignantly shocked that her mother is considering remarrying, so when she questions her mother about it, she believes she’s keeping secrets from her, yet Akiko really has no idea what she’s talking about.  Angered by her mother’s apparent unwillingness to be forthcoming, she storms out of the house in a huff and visits a colleague from work, Yuriko (Mariko Okada, a breath of fresh air, stealing every scene she’s in), a thoroughly modern young woman, hoping she’d be sympathetic, but she takes her mother’s position, stating “I’d let my mother live her own life,” suggesting she deserves happiness, believing Ayako is simply being selfish.  Ayako and Yuriko often run to the roof of their office building to converse, as do many of the employees, often seen peering over the ledge just to watch the trains pass, yet also sharing hesitant views on marriage, observing that friends who do get married tend to become socially disconnected, with suggestions that giving up your freedom is a major sacrifice.  Nonetheless, Ayako re-engages with Gotō once he’s introduced through her own friends.     

Accentuating the transition from childhood to adulthood, and the tension between tradition and modernity, Ozu’s particular style of filmmaking shows the tiny, quiet details of everyday life, featuring long takes and low camera positions from Yūharu Atsuta using a 50mm lens, never focusing on a single character, never using flashbacks, never shooting subjective images of any kind, nothing to show what a character may be thinking or imagining, eventually rejecting all point-of-view shots, avoiding any human-level vantage point (which is why the camera is so low), while eliminating camera movement, fades, or dissolves.  The documentary look of his films feels surprisingly similar from film to film, establishing an ordinary rhythm of life, allowing viewers time to reflect, from which we can extrapolate universal themes and values, yet there are empty spaces of still lifes, interiors, building facades, urban streets, and landscapes, often occurring between scenes, with an everpresent train sequence inhabiting every film.  Working with his screenwriting partner Kōgo Noda, together they collaborated on twenty-seven films over a thirty-five year partnership, developing a special bond together, which grew out of a shared cinematic sensibility and a natural friendship.  Ozu made only two films after this one, coming near the end of his life, where four of his final five pictures were reworkings of earlier movies he’d made, the last six shot in color, writing a half-comic drama about parenthood and marriage prospects that also laments how traditions are fading away in postwar Japan.  The economic growth in Japan as it entered the 1960’s was a surge towards modernity, hosting the Summer Olympics in 1964 as the first Asian nation to do so, representing Japan’s symbolic rebirth after the devastation of World War II.  Like many of the films she’s in, Setsuko Hara only really comes into play in the later scenes, gaining more screen time, exhibiting a fuller emotional range, becoming the dominant star that she was.  This film playfully exhibits the adolescence of fully mature men, where the camaraderie of their college days has never left them, still enjoying the idea of pulling pranks.  Ozu’s films document the changing expectations placed upon women in a more modern society, exemplified by Ayako and Yuriko, two working girls in Tokyo who are offered opportunities their parents could never dream of.  While the two women have their own ideas and each approach marriage differently, they personify the transforming role of women in Japanese society.  The focus of the film shifts to Yuriko when she discovers these men have taken advantage of Akiko through behind-the-back rumors and unintentionally created a family furor.  She storms into a meeting with the three of them ready to lay the hammer on all three, exhibiting a fierce sense of moral outrage, offering scathing criticism for creating a division between Ayako and Akiko, standing over them and reprimanding them like disobedient children, which they meekly apologize for, but in doing so, she reveals essential information that was missed by these instigators, who quickly regroup and add Yuriko to their hatched plot, but not before she tricks them into eating in her family’s restaurant, ordering a generous meal along with plenty of sake to go around, as these men are secretly coerced into contributing to the family coffers, enjoying the ruse afterwards, recognizing the cleverness of this new generation.  While taking perhaps their last trip together to the Ikaho hot springs, the focus returns to Akiko, who assures her daughter that she has her full support if she wishes to marry Gotō, who by all indications is a generous and level-headed young man with steady employment, but that she is not so inclined, wishing for her daughter’s happiness while reassuring her that she’ll be fine on her own.  What’s clearly evident is that neither one knows the lengths the other is willing to go to on their behalf, which is an intriguing comment on both women.  This generational contrast is evident, however, as her daughter has much more self-assurance in approaching a new age, while Akiko remains thoroughly connected to the past through her deceased husband, whose spirit has never left her, unable to move on from his presence.  As she witnesses the ritual of Ayako’s ceremonial wedding photo, dressed in formal clothes, a send-off to a new phase in her life, Akiko returns home, briefly visited by Yuriko in a deeply affecting scene, with a montage of previously filled spaces now suddenly empty, rearranging things differently, folding her kimono, finally contemplating her solitary existence. 

Good Morning (Ohayô)

Yuharu Atsuta, Ozu’s cameraman, shows the usual position of the camera for the tatami shot






 

One of the sets used for Good Morning

 

 

GOOD MORNING (Ohayô)        B                

Japan  (93 mi)  1959  d:  Yasujirō Ozu

This is Ozu’s loosely made remake of I WAS BORN, BUT… (1932), a Silent film about rebellious kids that feel betrayed by their father when they see him bow in front of his boss, going on a hunger strike and demanding the boss offer him an apology, made 37 years later with sound, his second film in color, with a slight story variation.  Here it is no longer a labor dispute, but reflects a changing attitude towards the impact of television, which in 1959 is a radical instrument of change uniformly westernizing Japan.  A shot of a hula hoop near the end further dramatizes this point.  Two spoiled kids, brothers Minoru and Isamu (Kôji Shitara and Masahiko Shimazu), ages 8 and 4, are upset their neighbor has a television while his family has no intentions of buying one, wanting to watch wrestling and baseball, throwing temper tantrums when they don’t get their way, chided by their father (Chishû Ryû) for speaking loudly instead of listening, telling them “TV will produce 100 million idiots,” so the two brothers decide to go on a vow of silence until they get their way, continuing this habit at school as well, which causes quite a commotion in their small community.  Taking place in a small, closely congested, working class neighborhood where the blue-roofed houses compete for space with the nearby power lines hovering above, each indistinguishable wooden framed house is merely a few feet away, where neighbors often wander in and out of each others homes through sliding doors, always greeted with a polite welcome.  In fact, people in their own homes announce their arrival as well as their departures with a greeting to the family.  Ozu, more than any other Japanese filmmaker, pays attention to these customary details, observed through a series of repetition from fixed points of reference, where each home has an interior floor table where families eat and drink, a long hallway shot showing a room at the end of the hall, the narrow corridor between two exactly similar rows of houses, with a nearby hill just a short distance away with a walkway at the top, or a restaurant counter sequence where patrons talk and drink sake.  The social dynamics are revealed within this self-contained world, offering a glimpse of how ordinary people live their lives.  So when the two children alter this routine, failing to announce their morning greeting of “ohayô” (good morning), this minor detail disrupts the neighborhood harmony, producing a comedy of misunderstanding when people attribute invented motives that have nothing to do with reality.  

More so than other Ozu films, this is an ode to materialism and the effect of Americanization in contemporary Japanese life, something Kurosawa expressed quite differently in STRAY DOG (1949), IKIRU (1952), and HIGH AND LOW (1963), where his camera moves fluidly through crowded streets, bars, nightclubs, and amusement areas, showing a city teething with life.  Ozu on the other hand makes family dramas, where the streets are always off in the distance, as it’s the customs of the family that draw center attention, where the accumulation of material things has changed the behavior of the next generation, as they’ve selfishly learned to expect things, and parents are usually generous enough to buy what they want, as providing for their children’s happiness is their ultimate goal.  Nonetheless, despite this obvious shift from post-war poverty and sacrifice to 50’s materialism, the children have no concept whatsoever of hardship or personal sacrifice, which is what makes their war against grown-ups, the ones who have given them everything, all the more amusing.  While the film treats them as cute and adorable children, Ozu’s message is a broader one, suggesting the invasion of Western values has produced some troubling results, where parents are forced to buy their children’s love instead of earn it, and children learn to value materialism in the already conformist Japanese society, where everyone wants what their neighbor has, treating commercialism as a substitute for genuine love.  Enhancing this theme is Ozu’s use of Western orchestrated music from composer Toshirô Mayizumi, sounding very much like Mozart by the end, integrating Western influences throughout the film, where Ozu actually shrinks the stage of actual Japanese life, showing the diminished effects of their own culture, yet at the same time accentuating, through fixed point repetition, the very essence of what is customarily Japanese.          

Ozu’s signature style is expressed by longtime cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta, working with the director since the 20’s, placing the camera very low, almost to the floor, at the height of a coffee table, the tatami shot replicating the Japanese style of sitting on the floor, usually on a pillow.  Due to the simplicity of the lifestyle of the characters presented, no impressive sets or special effects are needed.  Nonetheless, as was Ozu’s habit throughout his lifetime, he preferred to shoot in a studio, even though by the late 50’s, there were New Wave Japanese directors like Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura, or Kon Ichikawa who preferred shooting outdoors.  In fact, there is not a single camera movement in the whole movie, quite a contrast to Ozu’s contemporaries Kenji Mizoguchi or Akira Kurosawa who preferred long shots with breathtaking camera movements.  In this manner, Ozu retains the essence of Japanese art, as it resembles the concise form of Japanese Haiku poetry.  Ozu seems to delight in updated progress reports in the children’s ongoing war against grown-ups, where they have to resort to secret reconnaissance missions to steal food, as despite playing charades with their parents, they were unable to communicate their need for school lunch money.  While there are developing storylines, including feedback from unsuspecting teachers at school, or neighbors who spread rumors and gossip, like suggesting the parents have instilled a superiority complex into their children, there’s another intriguing romance developing between two lovers, Heichiro (Keiji Sada) and Setsuko (Yoshiko Kuga), who formally meet due to work assignments, but who brighten up at the sight of each other.  The children’s argument about adults using banal phrases and words certainly applies to this couple, as they continually avoid any sign of serious conversation, never expressing any feelings, as instead they communicate in smiles and small talk, always overly polite to one another, gracious to a fault, yet they remain overly restrained and physically apart, where there is an obvious spark that just refuses to be lit.  Anyone watching them recognizes their interest, which Ozu saves for the end of the film, framed at one of his beloved railway stations with gigantic power grids dominating the skyline.  Neither one dares go beyond the basic courtesies, talking about the weather, the beautiful day, but never each other, an old-fashioned courtship ritual that hasn’t changed perhaps for centuries.