This page uses content from the Yasujiro Ozu biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

was an influential Japanese film director.

Career

Ozu was born in Fukagawa, Tokyo, and was educated at a boarding school in Matsuzaka, Mie prefecture, after which he worked briefly as a teacher before returning to Tokyo in 1923 to join the Shochiku Film Company. Initially a cameraman, he became an assistant director within three years and directed his first film, The Sword of Penitence (Zange no Yaiba), in 1927. He went on to make a further 53 films – 26 in his first five years as a director, and all but 3 for Shochiku. Although marriage and family were among the most persistent themes in his body of work, Ozu remained single and childless all his life.

In July 1937, at a time when Shochiku was unhappy about Ozu's lack of box-office success, despite the praise (and awards) he had received from critics, the 34-year-old director was called up, and he served for two years in China as an infantry corporal. The first film Ozu made on his return was the critically and commercially successful Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (Toda-ke no Kyodai, 1941). In 1943, Ozu was again drafted into the army to make a propaganda film in Burma. However, he was sent to Singapore instead, where he spent much of his time watching American films that the Japanese army had confiscated. According to Donald Richie, Ozu's favourite was Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

Ozu had started out making distinctive comedies, before moving onto more socially aware works in the 1930s, concentrating on family dramas. He often worked with screenwriter Kogo Noda; other regular collaborators included cameraman Yuharu Atsuta and the actors Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara. His films were most favourably received from the late 1940s, with works such as Late Spring (Banshun, 1949), Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953) – considered to be his masterpiece – The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice (Ochazuke no Aji, 1952), Early Spring (Soshun, 1956), Floating Weeds (Ukikusa, not "Ukigusa", 1959) and Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960). His last film was An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma no aji, 1962). He died of cancer on his 60th birthday and is buried in the grounds of Engaku-ji temple, Kamakura.

As a director, he was eccentric and a notorious perfectionist. His films were typically infused with the concept of Mono no aware, an awareness of the impermanence of things. He was seen as one of the 'most Japanese' film-makers, and as such his work was only rarely shown overseas before the 1960s. He took a long time to turn to sound – his first talkie was The Only Son (1936) – and did not film in colour until Equinox Flower (Higanbana) in 1958.

Ozu is possibly as well known (if not more) for the technical style and innovation of his films as for the narrative content. The style of his films is most distinctive in his later films, and he had not fully developed it until his post-war talkies. He did not conform to most Hollywood conventions, most notably the 180 degree rule. Also, rather than use the typical over-the-shoulder shots in his dialogue scenes, the camera gazes on the actors directly, which has the effect of placing the viewer in the middle of the scene. Ozu also did not use typical transitions between scenes. In between scenes he would show shots of certain static objects as transitions, or use direct cuts, rather than fades or dissolves. His camera rarely, if ever, moved. He also invented and shot most shots in the "tatami shot," in which the camera is placed on the ground, precisely where it would be if one were kneeling on a tatami mat.

In narrative structure, Ozu was also an innovator in his use of elipses, in which many major events are left out, leaving only the space between them. For example, in Early Summer a wedding is mentioned in one scene, and then in the next, a reference is made to the wedding that already occurred. The wedding, though, never occurs on screen. This is typical of Ozu's films.

The films Late Spring, Tokyo Story, and Good Morning all feature young brothers named Minoru and Isamu.

Select filmography

The following 33 films survive:

• Days of Youth (1929)
• Walk Cheerfully (1930)
• I Flunked But... (1930)
• That Night's Wife (1930)
• The Lady and The Beard (1931)
• Tokyo Chorus (1931)
• I Was Born, But... (1932)
• Where Now Are The Dreams Of Youth (1932)
• Woman of Tokyo (1933)
• Dragnet Girl (1933)
• Passing Fancy (1933)
• A Mother Should be Loved (1934)
• A Story of Floating Weeds (1934, 浮草物語)
• An Inn in Tokyo (1935)
• The Only Son (1936, ひとり息子)
• What Did the Lady Forget? (1937)
• Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941)
• There Was a Father (1942, 父ありき)
• Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)
• A Hen in the Wind (1948)
• Late Spring (1949, 晩春)
• The Munakata Sisters (1950, 宗方姉妹)
• Early Summer (1951)
• Tea Over Rice (1952)
• Tokyo Story (1953, 東京物語)
• Early Spring (1956, 早春)
• Tokyo Twilight (1957, 東京慕色)
• Equinox Flower (1958, 浮草)
• Good Morning (1959, おはよう)
• Floating Weeds (1959, 浮草)
• Late Autumn (1960), 秋日和)
• The End of Summer (1961, 小早川家の秋)
• An Autumn Afternoon (1962, 秋刀魚の味)

Tributes

In the movie Tokyo-Ga, director Wim Wenders travels to Japan to explore the world of Ozu, interviewing both Chishu Ryu and Yuharu Atsuta.

In 2003, the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu's birth was commemorated at various film festivals around the world. Shochiku produced the film Café Lumière (珈琲時光), directed by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien as homage to Ozu, with direct reference to the late master's Tokyo Story (1953), to premiere on Ozu's birthday.

John Walker, editor of the Halliwell`s Film Guides, placed Tokyo Story top in a list of the best 1000 films yet made.

Further reading

• Ozu by Donald Richie. University of California Press; (July 1977), ISBN 0-520-03277-2
• Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema by David Bordwell. Princeton University Press; (1988), ISBN 0-691-00822-1
• Ozu's Anti-Cinema by Kiju Yoshida. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan; (1998), ISBN 1-929280-27-0
• Ozu yasujiro zenshū (Ozu Yasujiro's Complete Works -- two volume set of Ozu's scripts). Shinshokan; (March 2003), ISBN 4-403-15001-2 (in Japanese)
• Ozu yasujiro no nazo (The Riddle of Ozu Yasujiro -- manga biography of Ozu). Shōgakukan; (March 2001), ISBN 4-09-179321-5 (in Japanese)
• Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer by Paul Schrader (1972) ISBN 0-306-80335-6

External links

• A Yasujiro Ozu Resource
• Profile at Japan Zone
• Yasujiro Ozu's JMDb Listing (in Japanese)
• Directions for finding Yasujiro Ozu's grave at Engaku-ji
• Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian, June 10, 2005, "The quiet master"

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