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. 

Tokyo Twilight (Tôkyô Boshoku)

 

Director Yasujirō Ozu

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOKYO TWILIGHT (Tôkyô Boshoku)                    B                                                             Japan  (141 mi)  1957 d: Yasujirō Ozu

A piercing portrait of family life, easily the most downbeat, melancholic, and melodramatic of Ozu’s films, a noir-influenced family drama that is also Ozu’s bleakest film, given a German Expressionist look, as if shot through a fog, like early Hitchcock films from the 20’s, such as The Lodger (1927), where the cheerfully ironic opening and closing music resembles what you might hear in a Fellini film, also used in a similar capacity during a funeral sequence of EARLY SPRING (1956).  The lurid, somewhat sensational aspect of the material may have grown out of the criticism the director received that his films were out of touch with the youth of today, so a rebellious youth is fully integrated into this movie.  Yet it was not a success, the only Ozu film not to make the top ten of the Kinema Jumbo poll since THE ONLY SON (1936), catching Ozu off-guard, where he and longtime co-screenwriter Kōgo Noda feuded, with Noda apparently unhappy with Ozu’s final screenplay, both viewing this film as a failure.  Slow to accept new technical advances, this is Ozu’s last black and white film, shot by longtime collaborator Yūharu Atsuta under barely lit circumstances, most of it shot after dark, provocatively dealing with issues such as marital discord, rebellious adolescence, premarital sex, abortion, and suicide.  In an era of Covid and the wearing of masks, this film is eerily striking with some prominent characters wearing face masks as protection from the contamination of pollution in the city, with much of this film taking place in seedy Tokyo neighborhoods.  By any measure, this is a different kind of Ozu film, unlike any of his others, his only postwar film taking place in the dead of winter, where the lighting, in particular, accentuates shadowy figures walking late at night down darkly lit spaces, narrow alleyways, and the cramped quarters of small bars, mahjong and pachinko parlors, or noodle houses that dot the landscape, with nearly all the action taking place at night, or in shadowy interiors, offering a grim tone where the protagonists deal with the dissatisfactions in life, shockingly offering a psychologically downbeat subject matter haunted by an implacable shadow of death, where there are shady characters outside the family featuring plenty of drinking and gambling.  There’s even a Robert Mitchum movie poster from the film FOREIGN INTRIGUE (1956) hanging on the wall in one of these dimly lit bars.  It opens, however, in a wintry scene with the always sympathetic Shukichi (Chishū Ryū) taking a seat at a Ginza neighborhood sushi bar ordering a meal with some warm saki, as we see commercial buildings, power lines, and one lonesome street light illuminating the early dusk, with Tokyo viewed as a collection of neighborhoods with interconnected lives and stories, a city still in progress, a place and a people in flux, dislocated and often alone, though Shukichi lives in the more quietly traditional Zoshigaya district of Tokyo with two daughters, one obedient and one disobedient.  His wife left some time ago for a younger man during the build-up to war, abandoning her children, with Shukichi concealing his grief, never burdening the children, sparing them the circumstances, though this film explores the ramifications of that concealment.  The normally angelic Setsuko Hara appears in this film (her fourth Ozu film, the only one where her character is neither single nor widowed) as Takako, the elder daughter of Shukichi, in her most taboo-shattering role as an emotionally dispirited though proud young woman who leaves her abusive and alcoholic husband, bringing her 2-year old daughter with her, moving back into the home of her father, where she is obediently attendant to him, wearing traditional Japanese clothing.  While there was also a brother who died in a mountain climbing accident several years earlier, Takako is unsettled and overly distraught right from the outset.  When her father asks what’s wrong, she can barely say, overwrought with endless turmoil, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, never really having a moment’s reprise.  When younger daughter Akiko (Ineko Arima), a college student, arrives home even later, she is sullen and noncommittal, completely rebuffing her father’s attempts to find out where she’s been, verging closer to open defiance and blatant disrespect.  Shukichi is clearly exhausted with Akiko’s disobedient refusal to communicate, apparently unable to get through to her, where her impudence is an issue.  Akiko’s not really in school any more, learning English shorthand instead, hanging out in bars and mahjong parlors late into the night, appearing surly and bad-tempered, never smiling, smoking cigarettes while acting nonchalant, a modern reflection of Western fashions and values, always dressed in a shabby, wrinkled coat, usually seen in search of her boyfriend Kenji (Masami Taura), who has been avoiding her, with people calling her derogatory names behind her back.  By the time she catches up to him, she reveals that she’s pregnant, but he’s completely indifferent, expressing no interest whatsoever, even questioning whether the baby is his, the standard modus operandi for male denial that leaves her in a quandary.  Offering a pitiless view of a Japanese family beset by repressed secrets and lies, there seems to be no end to the damage done, resulting not just in the fracturing of the Japanese family, but even more importantly, how individuals inexplicably blame themselves for the pain it causes.  In no other film does Setsuka Hara look so world-weary and beaten-down as she does here. 

A film that reveals the complex and often corrosive impact of American occupation, which serves as an unseen backdrop for all Ozu’s postwar films, where traditional Japanese ways of life struggled in contrast with the western imposition of modernist, capitalist, and thoroughly American consumer practices.  Postwar Japan was a time when the Japanese identity was reconstructed under the influential gaze of American eyes to serve American interests.  Young people of Japan in the middle of the twentieth century came of age during the rise of television and mass commercialized media, which was complicated and amplified by the leering presence of American military bases nearby, which helped change the face of Japanese society.  This is the larger context underlying this lurid family drama.  Of note, Shukichi tells Takako that he read her husband’s article entitled “Resistance to Freedom,” a rare protest against his country’s failure to question the magnitude of American commercial and political influence.  Shukichi has a comfortable position working as a bank executive, meeting up for lunch with his sister Shigeko (Haruko Sugimura), who gets to work right away in finding marrying options for Akiko, believing this is her best option.  It’s an interesting intersection of the old world meeting the new world, using an old world solution for a modern era problem, with Akiko resembling that 50’s juvenile delinquent so prevalent in American movies, like Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), where teenagers are often viewed as socially maladjusted.  Ozu applies the same principal here, as Akiko struggles with being raised without a mother, who has been presumed dead, but she runs into a woman purely by chance, Kikuko, (Isuzu Yamada, Lady Macbeth in Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD released earlier that same year), the proprietor of a mahjong parlor in the Gotando neighborhood, known for its unpaved roads and seedy bars, who was asking a lot of questions about her, knowing her entire family history, making her think  this could be her mother.  When they meet, it raises existential questions in her mind about where she came from.  When Takako learns her sister actually rediscovered their mother, she quickly moves to protect her, paying the woman a visit while angrily informing her to never reveal she is actually Akiko’s mother.  Yet when Akiko learns her sister paid a visit to the mahjong parlor, she immediately confronts her, suspecting something is wrong.  Takako is forced to acknowledge their mother abandoned them at an early age to run off with another man, believing they would never see her again, while exhibiting shock that she actually turned up again in Tokyo.  When Shukichi learns his brash younger daughter has been asking for money from relatives, he tries to speak with her, but Akiko is evasive, continually hiding the truth, as the money was for an abortion, something she could never speak about openly (though abortion was legal in Japan since 1948), sharing the truth with her sister, but the shame this would bring her father is a primary reason she could never be honest with him, so she invents excuses and little lies.  That experience, however, leaves her emotionally drained, never fully recovering afterwards.   When Shigeko pays a visit with her marital suggestions, her joyful mood quickly turns sour, as Akiko’s not the least bit interested, literally showing contempt for the idea.  Because of her standoffishness, it is perceived as Western belligerence, seemingly wanting things her own way, where she’s such a disappointment to her father, who wonders how she turned out this way.  Takako is the intermediary, always supporting her sister, identifying with her inability to find acceptance either within her family or in broader society, feeling like an outcast.  Akiko begins doubting herself, questioning where she really came from, actually believing she is an outcast, that Shukichi is not her father, running back to Kikuko, expressing her own hatred for having been abandoned while demanding the truth, but she swears Shukichi is her father, once again leaving Akiko in a quandary, not knowing what to think, but never really feeling close with her father, instead feeling isolated and alone, which is never more apparent than when she is waiting in a bar for Kenji to show up, still waiting well past midnight, revealing a configuration of thick shadows in dark spaces, when a detective in civilian clothes (wearing a mask) picks her up and hauls her down to the police station, with Takako (also wearing a mask) coming in the wee hours to the station to pick her up.  While not breaking any laws other than curfew (the same crime police use to haul James Dean into the police station in Nicholas Ray’s film), she is simply a young girl seen as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Nonetheless, her father denounces her, claiming “You’re no child of mine,” while Akiko claims she’s not wanted, responding with “I should never have been born.”      

A film described by critic Robin Wood as “the one nobody wants to talk about,” this is one of the very rare Ozu films in which laundry hung up to dry does not appear, recurring in every Ozu film from A Story of Floating Weeds (Ukigusa Monogatari) (1934), while trains, on the other hand, are still a staple, normally representing the possibility of movement and change, but here with overtones of melancholy or tragedy.  With melodrama as the dominant element, Ozu stages an anxiety-ridden internalized struggle with the darkest realms, accentuated by bleak and somber settings, including a view from Tokyo harbor revealing smokestacks, industry, and the high cost of modernity, similar to Antonioni’s vision in RED DESERT (1964), described by Andrew Sarris as “the architecture of anxiety,” with a psychologically disoriented Monica Vitti suffering extreme alienation.  In these depictions, the high cost of modernization equates to the loss of the human soul, which becomes fractured and less resolute.  Featuring plenty of tearful scenes, this tragedy is juxtaposed against the calm demeanor of Chishū Ryū, a sympathetic figure who is the picture of fair-mindedness, with Setsuka Hara straddling the generational differences.  Ineko Arima may get swept up not only by the unfortunate circumstances, but the massive influence of the major players she’s working with, coming across as abrasively shrill in stark contrast with their more measured restraint, yet Ozu along with Kōgo Noda have written a scenario where she dominates the screen time, accentuating the plight of the youth.  More shaken than ever, Akiko wanders into a noodle house and orders sake, drinking it all down at once, sitting alone and beleaguered, then ordering another one.  Purely by chance, Kenji walks in the door, once again pleading his case, justifying his own behavior, leaving Akiko little choice but to slap him hard in the face several times before walking out the door without uttering a word.  Shortly afterwards a train whistle marks a significant event, with pedestrians running to the scene of a horrific accident, apparently throwing herself in front of an ongoing train.  With her father and sister at her side in the hospital, she can be heard wanting to start over again, with Ozu curiously cutting to a clock and a yawning nurse, disaffected images that comment on the passing of time.  Takako makes the journey to the mahjong parlor in her mourning clothes, informing Kikuko that she’s to blame for the death of Akiko, before leaving in a scene of repressed yet righteous anger.  A cloud of sadness pervades in the aftermath of a needless death, with Takako suggesting her younger sibling missed not having a mother’s love, leaving her feeling abandoned and alone, while Shukichi, in re-evaluating the situation, feels compelled to acknowledge he always paid her more attention, to the point where he felt Takako might feel slighted, and apologized to his daughter for insisting upon the marriage that has caused such grief, depriving her from marrying the one she loved.  After paying a visit to Takako’s husband, Shukichi realizes he’s not the same person, having become more irritable and disconsolate, thinking only of himself, incapable of recognizing the sorrows of others.  Kikuko then pays a visit to Takako, offering flowers as a tribute, announcing she and her husband would be departing by train later that evening to seek a new job in the far regions of Hokkaido.  Takako is stunned, to say the least, wordlessly viewing her with open disdain.  The scene at the train station is one of the better sequences in the film, as Kikuko holds out hope that Takako will see her off, eagerly looking out the train window, yet what stands out is the serenade of a youthful school choir, establishing a localized sentiment, one with roots in the community, sending off the train with high hopes, accentuating the ideals of youth, likely singing about themes of honor, courage, and integrity, perhaps even valor, all traits associated with exemplary behavior and high ideals, none of which can be attributed to her life, as she watches in vain for any sign that her life matters.  Meanwhile, Takako is rooted to her place within her own family, clearly overwhelmed by her sister’s suicide, speaking with her father about giving her marriage another chance, as her daughter deserves having the love of two devoted parents.  Fully aware that she’d be leaving her father all alone, openly concerned for his welfare, he puts all that aside, reassuring her that he’d be just fine before kneeling to pray at the altar of his deceased daughter.  As he does in so many Ozu films, there is a long, final scene of this stoic, solitary father figure alone on the floor of his finally empty home, calmly staring out in the distance, fully aware of his own solitude, accepting it with a quiet resignation.