Ozu's career began with an early fondness for American films and he later told Donald Richie that he particularly liked those of Ernst Lubitsch. However, in other conversations, Ozu seems unwilling to admit to influence. He did see large numbers of Japanese films after joining Shochiku in order to study his seniors' techniques and famously said, “I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others…for me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength.” (1) Audie Bock points out that it's difficult to look for parallels between Ozu's life and his films: “College, office, and marital life—none of which Ozu experienced—are the subjects of many of his films; army life never appears, and provincial life, such as he lived with his mother in Matsuzaka, only rarely.” She concludes that Ozu must have approached film as an art of fiction from which a realism was to be distilled: “His inspiration came from outside his own life, from his mind and the lives of others observed to perfection with that mind.” (2)


As the 1940s came to an end Ozu began to fuse his early American influences with an overriding desire to reduce his techniques. In his later films, he reduced all camera movement (pans, dollying, and crabbing) to nil; he disregarded classical Hollywood cinema conventions such as the 180 degree rule (where the camera always remains on one side of an imaginary axis drawn between two talking actors) and replaced it with what critics have termed the “360 degree rule” (because Ozu crosses this axis); and he replaced traditional shot/reverse shot techniques with a system whereby each character looks straight into the camera when speaking to someone else. This had the unusual effect of placing the viewer directly in the centre of conversations—as if being talked to—instead of the Hollywood convention of alternately peering over characters' shoulders during such sequences. Furthermore, Ozu decided to reduce his choice of transition effect; gone were fades, wipes, dissolves, all replaced with the straight cut. Reducing his techniques in this way focused all attention on his characters—and their humanity shines through.


Ozu went further than limiting his vocabulary of film punctuation; he also sought to de-emphasize his films' plots—the direct opposite of what Hollywood cinema of the time was doing. He worked out the entire script, dialogue and camera positions himself before he started shooting. Ozu regular Chishu Ryu recounts:

Mr. Ozu looked happiest when he was engaged in writing a scenario with Mr. Kogo Noda, at the latter's cottage on the tableland of Nagano Prefecture. By the time he finished writing a script, after about four months' effort, he had already made up every image in every shot, so that he never changed the scenario after we went on the set. The words were so polished up that he would not allow us even a single mistake. (3)

In addition to being motionless in his later work, Ozu's camera—from early in his career—was often placed at a very low level as if the viewer were sat crosslegged. It has been noted that this is at the same level one sits on tatami for a tea ceremony in a Japanese home, or while meditating, sitting in silence, observing, reaching meaning through extreme simplificaton. (4) It is also the height Ozu had to position his camera when making a film about children, and it is said he liked it so much that he stuck with it. Ozu clearly had many reasons for adopting such a low position for his camera and it became one of the few facets of his pared down technique.


Ozu's films represent a lifelong study of the Japanese family and the changes that a family unit experiences. He ennobles the humdrum world of the middle-class family and has been regarded as “the most Japanese of all filmmakers”, not just by Western critics, but also by his countrymen. However, this accolade led to Ozu being regarded as “traditional”, and a “social conservative” by young filmmakers of the Japanese New Wave (such as Shohei Imamura, who had worked as an apprentice with Ozu). Like the children in Ozu's movies, the young filmmakers rebelled against his “old fashioned” acceptance of life as they saw it. Much has been written about the “most Japanese of filmmakers” tag; Hasumi Shigehiko believed it showed a lack of understanding of his work. Hasumi wrote that Ozu chose a persistent approach towards film and its limits, liberating himself from the ambiguity of outlines, dampness and shadows. He describes Ozu's filmmaking as preferring dry sunlight conditions (as opposed to Mizoguchi's fog, or Kurosawa's rain); its sole purpose being to “approach the dazzle of midsummer sunlight”, something that Hasumi points out is in many ways the opposite of those said to have a “very Japanese” aesthetic sense. (5)


Remarkably, Ozu's films were rarely seen in the West until the early 1970s (there had been a small tour of his films in the US in the 1960s). His barebone narratives and idiosyncratic style never appealed to distributors at the time who apparently felt they were just “too Japanese” for Western audiences. These distributors never accused Bresson of being “too French” however, and it seems that they alone were responsible for Ozu's delayed exposure to the West. Maybe they thought Ozu's themes and titles were too similar and thus confusing? After all, most of Ozu's later work (1950s/60s) centered on the same motif: the marrying off of a loyal daughter so that she could begin to live her own life. When Ozu's films did start getting shown in the West, art cinema aficionados of Bresson, Bergman and Antonioni's formal styles were ecstatic to find a Japanese master whose films spoke as eloquently about Japanese life as their favourite European films did of their respective homelands.


There is an overwhelming sensibility running through all Ozu films that is difficult to put into words but Donald Richie does well to describe it as “a point of view of sympathetic sadness”. (6) To expand upon this, the Japanese concept of mono no aware can be related to Ozu's sensibilities and worldview. Mono no aware is the perspective of a tired, relaxed, even disappointed observer, perhaps someone sagely approaching death. It is not limited to reflection on death but touches all aspects of life and nature: a pure, emotional response to the beauty of nature, the impermanence of life, and the sorrow of death. The scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) invented the unique concept of mono no aware to define the essence of Japanese culture (the phrase derives from aware, which means “a sensitivity to things”). He believed that the character of Japanese culture encompassed the capacity to experience the objective world in a direct and unmediated fashion, to understand sympathetically the objects and the natural world around one without resorting to language or other mediators. (7) This concept became the central aesthetic concept in Japan, even into the modern period, allowing the Japanese to understand the world directly by identifying themselves with that world. Film director Kenji Mizoguchi said, “I portray what should not be possible in the world as if it should be possible, but Ozu portrays what should be possible as if it were possible, and that is much more difficult.” (8)


At the time of writing, it is Ozu's centenary year—a wonderful opportunity for the world to look back on his films and for the young to see them for the first time. Celebrations, retrospectives and brand new DVD transfers are appearing around the world and Ozu's legacy is becoming even more cherished with passing time.

© Nick Wrigley, March 2003
(Thanks to Michelle Carey at Senses of Cinema who edited the full piece with me).

Endnotes:

  1. Quoted in Audie Bock, Japanese Film Directors, Kodansha International, 1985, p. 74; original quote found in Yasujiro Ozu, Boku wa eiga no mame-kantoku (I Am a Miniature Film Director), Tokyo, Maki Shoten, 1953 *

  2. Bock, p. 73 *

  3. From “Yasujiro Ozu by Chishu Ryu”, Sight & Sound, Spring 1964. Ryu continues, “Ozu was always ready to go location-hunting and walked the narrow lanes and back streets all day long in search of the places which would best fit his images. He was such a good walker and had such enthusiasm that the cameramen, who accompanied him, used to be tired out first.” *

  4. Donald Richie, Ozu, Berkeley, University Of California Press, 1974, p. 256. Ozu himself thought the height of his camera rose slightly in his later films, something he put down to the Westernization of Japanese homes: more chairs and higher tables, less tatami mats. *

  5. Hasumi Shigehiko, Kantoku Ozu Yasujiro (Director Ozu Yasujiro, Tokyo: Chikumashobo, 1983), from which the chapter “Sunny Skies” has been translated into English by Kathy Shigeta and reprinted in David Desser (ed.), Ozu's Tokyo Story *

  6. “Sympathetic sadness”, a phrase first used by Tamako Niwa, and quoted in Richie, p. 52 *

  7. Richard Hooker, Japan Glossary, Washington State University. *

  8. Masahiro Shinoda, “Mizoguchi Kenji kara toku hanarete”, Kikan Film, No.3, 1969 *