Late Spring
| Late Spring | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Japanese name | |||||
| Kanji | 晩春 | ||||
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| Directed by | Yasujirō Ozu | ||||
| Screenplay by |
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| Based on | [1] | ||||
| Produced by | Takeshi Yamamoto | ||||
| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Yūharu Atsuta | ||||
| Edited by | Yoshiyasu Hamamura | ||||
| Music by | Senji Itō | ||||
Production company | |||||
| Distributed by | Shochiku | ||||
Release date | |||||
Running time | 108 minutes | ||||
| Country | Japan | ||||
| Language | Japanese | ||||
Late Spring (晩春, Banshun) is a 1949 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and written by Ozu and Kogo Noda, based on the short novel Father and Daughter (Chichi to musume) by the 20th-century novelist and critic Kazuo Hirotsu. The film was written and shot during the Allied Powers' Occupation of Japan and was subject to the Occupation's official censorship requirements. Starring Chishū Ryū, who was featured in almost all of the director's films, and Setsuko Hara, marking her first of six appearances in Ozu's work, it is the first installment of Ozu's so-called "Noriko trilogy", succeeded by Early Summer (Bakushu, 1951) and Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953); in each of which Hara portrays a young woman named Noriko, though the three Norikos are distinct, unrelated characters, linked primarily by their status as single women in postwar Japan.[note 1]
Late Spring belongs to the type of Japanese cinema known as shomin-geki, a genre that deals with the ordinary daily lives of working class and middle class people of modern times. The film is frequently regarded as the first in the director's final creative period, "the major prototype of the [director's] 1950s and 1960s work".[4] These films are characterized by, among other traits, an exclusive focus on stories about families during Japan's immediate postwar era, a tendency towards very simple plots and the use of a generally static camera.[2][5]
Late Spring was released on September 19, 1949, to critical acclaim in the Japanese press. In the following year, it was awarded the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics' award as the best Japanese production released in 1949. In 1972, the film was commercially released in the United States, again to very positive reviews. Late Spring has been referred to as the director's "most perfect" work,[6] as "the definitive film of Ozu's master filmmaking approach and language"[7] and has been called "one of the most perfect, most complete, and most successful studies of character ever achieved in Japanese cinema".[2] The film has been considered one of the greatest films of all time.[8][9][10][11][12][13]
Plot
[edit]The film opens at a tea ceremony. Professor Shukichi Somiya, a widower, has only one child, a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried daughter, Noriko, who takes care of the household and the everyday needs—cooking, cleaning, mending, etc.—of her father. On a shopping trip to Tokyo, Noriko encounters one of her father's friends, Professor Jo Onodera, who lives in Kyoto. Noriko knows that Onodera, who had been a widower like her father, has recently remarried, and she tells him that she finds the very idea of his remarriage distasteful, even "filthy." Onodera, and later her father, tease her for having such thoughts.
Shukichi's sister, Aunt Masa, convinces him that it is high time his daughter got married. Noriko is friendly with her father's assistant, Hattori, and Aunt Masa suggests that her brother ask Noriko if she might be interested in Hattori. When he does bring up the subject, however, Noriko laughs: Hattori has been engaged to another young woman for quite some time.
Undaunted, Masa pressures Noriko to meet with a marriageable young man, a Tokyo University graduate named Satake who, Masa believes, bears a strong resemblance to Gary Cooper, a favorite of Noriko. Noriko declines, explaining that she does not wish to marry anyone, because to do so would leave her father alone and helpless. Masa surprises Noriko by claiming that she is also trying to arrange a match between Shukichi and Mrs. Miwa, an attractive young widow known to Noriko. If Masa succeeds, Noriko would have no excuse.
At a Noh performance attended by Noriko and her father, the latter smilingly greets Mrs. Miwa, which triggers Noriko's jealousy. When her father later tries to talk her into going to meet Satake, he tells her that he intends to marry Mrs. Miwa. Devastated, Noriko reluctantly agrees to meet the young man and, to her surprise, has a very favorable impression of him. Under pressure from all sides, Noriko consents to the arranged marriage.
The Somiyas go on one last trip together before the wedding, visiting Kyoto. There they meet Professor Onodera and his family. Noriko changes her opinion of Onodera's remarriage when she discovers that his new wife is a nice person. While packing their luggage for the trip home, Noriko asks her father why they cannot simply stay as they are now, even if he does remarry – she cannot imagine herself any happier than living with and taking care of him. Shukichi admonishes her, saying that she must embrace the new life she will build with Satake, one in which he, Shukichi, will have no part, because "that's the order of human life and history." Noriko asks her father's forgiveness for her "selfishness" and agrees to go ahead with the marriage.
Noriko's wedding day arrives. At home just before the ceremony, both Shukichi and Masa admire Noriko, who is dressed in a traditional wedding costume. Noriko thanks her father for the care he has taken of her throughout her life and leaves in a hired car for the wedding. Afterwards, Aya, a divorced friend of Noriko's, goes with Shukichi to a favored eatery. Over celebratory sake, he confesses that his claim that he was going to marry Mrs. Miwa was a ruse to persuade Noriko to get married herself. Aya, touched by his sacrifice, promises to visit him often. Shukichi returns home alone to an empty house. He sits down in a chair and starts to peel an apple with a small knife. The apple peel grows into a long continuous ribbon before it finally drops loose onto the floor. Shukichi slowly lowers his head in silence.
Cast
[edit]| Actor | Character name (English) | Character name (Japanese) | Rōmaji (Japanese order) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chishū Ryū | Shūkichi Somiya | 曾宮 周吉 | Somiya Shūkichi |
| Setsuko Hara | Noriko Somiya | 曾宮 紀子 | Somiya Noriko |
| Yumeji Tsukioka | Aya Kitagawa | 北川 アヤ | Kitagawa Aya |
| Haruko Sugimura | Masa Taguchi | 田口 マサ | Taguchi Masa |
| Hohi Aoki | Katsuyoshi Taguchi | 田口 勝義 | Taguchi Katsuyoshi |
| Jun Usami | Shuichi Hattori | 服部 昌一 | Hattori Shūichi |
| Kuniko Miyake | Akiko Miwa | 三輪 秋子 | Miwa Akiko |
| Masao Mishima | Jo Onodera | 小野寺 譲 | Onodera Jō |
| Yoshiko Tsubouchi | Kiku Onodera | 小野寺 きく | Onodera Kiku |
| Yōko Katsuragi | Misako | ||
| Toyoko Takahashi | Shige | ||
| Jun Tanizaki | Seizo Hayashi | ||
| Yōko Benisawa | a teahouse proprietress |
Production
[edit]The Occupation censorship
[edit]Censorship problems with Late Spring
[edit]The central event of Late Spring is the marriage of the heroine to a man she has met only once through a single arranged meeting. This immediately presented a problem for the censors of the American Occupation. According to film scholar Kyoko Hirano, these officials "considered feudalistic the Japanese custom of arranged meetings for prospective marriage partners, miai, because the custom seemed to them to downgrade the importance of the individual."[14] Hirano notes that, had this policy against showing arranged marriages onscreen been rigidly enforced, Late Spring could never have been made.[14] In the original synopsis (which the filmmakers were required to submit to the censorship before production could be approved), Noriko's decision to marry was presented as a collective family decision, not an individual choice, and the censors apparently rejected this.[15]
The synopsis explained that the trip to Kyoto by father and daughter, just prior to Noriko's marriage, occurs so she can visit her dead mother's grave. This motivation is absent from the finished film, possibly because the censors would have interpreted such a visit as "ancestor worship," a practice they frowned upon.[16]
Any reference in the script to the devastation caused by the American bombings was removed. In the script, Shukichi remarks to Onodera's wife in Kyoto that her city is a very nice place, unlike Tokyo, with all its ruins. The censors deleted the reference to ruins (as an implied critique of the Allies) and, in the finished film, the word "hokorippoi" ("dusty") was substituted as a description of Tokyo.[17]
The censors at first automatically deleted a reference in the script to the Hollywood star Gary Cooper, but then reinstated it when they realized that the comparison was to Noriko's (unseen) suitor Satake, who is described by the female characters as attractive, and was thus flattering to the American actor.[18][19]
Sometimes, the censors' demands seemed irrational. A line about Noriko's health having been negatively affected by "her work after being conscripted by the [Japanese] Navy during the war" was changed to "the forced work during the war," as if even the very mention of the Japanese Navy was somehow suspect.[20]
At the script phase of the censorship process, the censors demanded that the character of Aunt Masa, who at one point finds a lost change purse on the ground and keeps it as a kind of totem of good fortune for the wedding succeeding, should be shown handing over the purse to the police. Ozu responded by turning the situation, in the finished film, into a kind of running gag in which Shukichi repeatedly (and futilely) urges his sister to turn the purse in to the police. This change has been called "a mocking kind of partial compliance with the censorship."[21]
Ozu's alleged "subversion" of censorship
[edit]One scholar, Lars-Martin Sorensen, has claimed that Ozu's partial aim in making the film was to present an ideal of Japan at odds with that which the Occupation wanted to promote, and that he successfully subverted the censorship in order to accomplish this. "The controversial and subversive politico-historical 'message' of the film is... that the beauty of tradition, and of subjugation of individual whims to tradition and history, by far outshines the imported and imposed western trends of occupied Japan."[22]
Sorensen uses as an example the scene early in the film in which Noriko and her father's assistant Hattori are bicycling towards the beach. They pass a diamond-shaped Coca-Cola sign and another sign, in English, warning that the weight capacity of a bridge over which they are riding is 30 tons: quite irrelevant information for this young couple, but perfectly appropriate for American military vehicles that might pass along that road. (Neither the Coke sign nor the road warning are referred to in the script approved by the censors.)[23] Sorensen argues that these objects are "obvious reference(s) to the presence of the occupying army."[24]
On the other hand, Late Spring, more than any other film Ozu made, is suffused with the symbols of Japanese tradition: the tea ceremony that opens the film, the temples at Kamakura, the Noh performance that Noriko and Shukichi attend, and the landscape and Zen gardens of Kyoto.[3][25] Sorensen argues that these images of historical landmarks "were intended to inspire awe and respect for the treasures of ancient Japan in contrast to the impurity of the present."[18] Sorensen also claims that, to Ozu's audience, "the exaltation of Japanese tradition and cultural and religious heritage must have brought remembrances of the good old days when Japan was still winning her battles abroad and nationalism reached its peak."[26] To scholars such as Bordwell who assert that Ozu was promoting with this film an ideology that could be called liberal,[3] Sorensen argues that contemporary reviews of the film "show that Ozu (the director and his personal convictions) was considered inseparable from his films, and that he was considered a conservative purist."[27]
Sorensen concludes that such censorship may not necessarily be a bad thing. "One of the positive side effects of being prohibited from airing one's views openly and directly is that it forces artists to be creative and subtle in their ways of expression."[28]
Ozu's collaborators
[edit]On Late Spring, Ozu worked with a number of old colleagues from his prewar days, such as actor Chishu Ryu and cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta. However, a long-deferred reunion with one artist and the beginning of a long collaboration with another—the screenwriter Kogo Noda and the actress Setsuko Hara, respectively—were to prove critical artistically, both to this work and to the direction of Ozu's subsequent career.
Kogo Noda
[edit]
Kogo Noda, already an accomplished screenwriter,[29] had collaborated with Ozu on the script of his debut film of 1927, Sword of Penitence.[30][29] Noda had later written scripts with Ozu (while also collaborating with other directors) on many of his best silent pictures, including Tokyo Chorus.[29] Yet by 1949, the director had not worked with his old friend for fourteen years. However, their reunion on Late Spring was so harmonious and successful that Ozu wrote exclusively with Noda for the rest of his career.[29]
Ozu once said of Noda: "When a director works with a scriptwriter they must have some characteristics and habits in common; otherwise, they won't get along. My daily life—what time I get up, how much sake I drink and so on—is in almost complete agreement with that of [Noda]. When I work with Noda, we collaborate even on short bits of dialogue. Although we never discuss the details of the sets or costumes, his mental image of these things is always in accord with mine; our ideas never criss cross or go awry. We even agree on whether a dialogue should end with wa or yo."[31] From Late Spring on, partly due to Noda's influence, all Ozu's characters would be comfortably middle class and thus, unlike the characters in, for example, Record of a Tenement Gentleman or A Hen in the Wind, beyond immediate physical want and necessity.[32]
Setsuko Hara
[edit]
Setsuko Hara (born Masae Aida in Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture, on June 17, 1920) had appeared in films since the mid-1930s, when she was in her teens.[33] Her tall frame and strong facial features—including very large eyes and a prominent nose—were unusual among Japanese actresses at the time; it has been rumored, but not verified, that she had a German grandparent.[34] She maintained her popularity throughout the war years, when she appeared in many films made for propaganda purposes by the military government, becoming "the perfect war-movie heroine."[35] After the defeat of Japan, she was more popular than ever, so that by the time Ozu worked with her for the first time on Late Spring, she had already become "one of Japan's best-loved actresses."[36]
Ozu had a very high regard for Hara's work. He said: "Every Japanese actor can play the role of a soldier and every Japanese actress can play the role of a prostitute to some extent. However, it is rare to find an actress [like Hara] who can play the role of a daughter from a good family."[35] Speaking of her performance in Early Summer, he was quoted as saying: "Setsuko Hara is a really good actress. I wish I had four or five more like her."[31]
In addition to the three "Noriko" films, Ozu directed her in three other roles: as an unhappily married wife in Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo Boshoku, 1957),[37][38] as the mother of a marriageable daughter in Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960)[39][40] and the daughter-in-law of a sake plant owner in the director's penultimate film, The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no Aki, 1961).[41][42] Bordwell summed up the critical consensus of Hara's significance to the late work of Ozu when he wrote: "After 1948, Setsuko Hara becomes the archetypal Ozu woman, either the bride-to-be or the widow of middle years."[29]
Narrative, themes and characterization
[edit]Narrative strategies
[edit]The films of Yasujirō Ozu are well known for their unusual approach to film narrative. Scenes that most filmmakers would consider obligatory (e.g., the wedding of Noriko) are often not shown at all,[4] while apparently extraneous incidents are given seemingly inordinate prominence.[43] Sometimes important narrative information is withheld not only from a major character, but from the viewer, such as the news of Hattori's engagement, about which neither Noriko's father nor the audience has any knowledge until Noriko, laughing, informs him.[43] And at times, the filmmaker proceeds, within a scene, to jump from one time frame to another without transition, as when two establishing shots of some travelers waiting for a train on a platform lead to a third shot of the same train already on its way to Tokyo.[44]
"Parametric" narrative theory
[edit]Bordwell refers to Ozu's approach to narrative as "parametric narration." By this term, Bordwell means that Ozu's "overunified" visual approach, characterized by its "stylistic rigor," often provides the basis for "playful deviation," including narrative playfulness.[45] As Bordwell puts it somewhat more plainly, Ozu "back[s] away from his own machinery in order to achieve humor and surprise."[46] In his view, "in narrative poetry, rhythm and rhyme need not completely subordinate themselves to the demand of telling the story; in art song or opera, 'autonomous' musical structures may require that the story grind to a halt while particular harmonic or melodic patterns work themselves out. Similarly, in some films, temporal or spatial qualities can lure us with a patterning that is not wholly dependent on representing fabula [i.e., story] information."[47]
Bordwell points out that the opening scene of Late Spring "begins at the railroad station, where the characters aren't. A later scene will do exactly the same thing, showing the train station before showing [the characters] already hurtling towards Tokyo... In Tokyo, [Professor] Onodera and Noriko discuss going to an art exhibit; cut to a sign for the exhibit, then to the steps of the art gallery; cut to the two in a bar, after they've gone to the exhibit."[43]
"Essentialist" narrative theory
[edit]To Kathe Geist, Ozu's narrative methods reflect the artist's economy of means, not "playfulness." "His frequent use of repetition and [narrative] ellipsis do not 'impose their will' on Ozu's plots; they are his plots. By paying attention to what has been left out and to what is repeated, one arrives at Ozu's essential story."[48]
As an example, Geist cites the scene in which Noriko and Hattori bicycle together to the beach and have a conversation there, an incident that appears to imply a budding romantic relationship between them. When Noriko slightly later reveals to her father that Hattori, before that bicycle trip, had already been engaged to another woman, "we wonder", writes Geist, "why Ozu has wasted so much time on the 'wrong man' [for Noriko]."[49] However, the key to the beach scene's importance to the plot, according to Geist, is the dialogue between Hattori and Noriko, in which the latter tells him that she is "the jealous type." This seemingly unlikely claim, given her affable nature, is later confirmed when she becomes bitterly jealous at her father's apparent plan to remarry. Geist thus claims "Her jealousy goads her into her own marriage and is thus the pivot on which the plot turns."[49]
Geist sums up her analysis of several major Ozu films of the postwar period by asserting that "the narratives unfold with an astounding precision in which no shot and certainly no scene is wasted and all is overlayered with an intricate web of interlocking meaning."[50]
Major themes
[edit]The following represents what some critics regard as important themes in this film.
Marriage
[edit]The main theme of Late Spring is marriage: specifically, the persistent attempts by several characters in the film to get Noriko married. The marriage theme was a topical one for Japanese of the late 1940s. On January 1, 1948, a new law had been issued which allowed young people over twenty to marry consensually without parental permission for the first time.[51] The Japanese Constitution of 1947 had made it much easier for a wife to divorce her husband; up until that time, it had been "difficult, almost impossible" to do so.[32] Several commentators have pointed out that one reason why Noriko is still unmarried at the relatively late age of 27 is that many of the young men of her generation had been killed in the Second World War, leaving far fewer eligible potential partners for single young women.[25][32]
Marriage in this film, as well as many of Ozu's late films, is strongly associated with death. Prof. Onodera's daughter, for example, refers to marriage as "life's graveyard."[52] Geist writes: "Ozu connects marriage and death in obvious and subtle ways in most of his late films... The comparison between weddings and funerals is not merely a clever device on Ozu's part, but is s