Japanese Film Icon Ozu Yasujiro (Finally) Set to Receive a Full-Scale Tribute in Tokyo

Japanese Film Icon Ozu Yasujiro (Finally) Set to Receive a Full-Scale Tribute in Tokyo

Yasujiro Ozu, Japan's top film director behind such classics as "Tokyo Story" and "Late Spring," celebrates his double birthday - he died on his 60th birthday in 1963, just shy of his last film It was released just over a year ago. “Autumn Afternoons” – Celebrations will be held throughout 2023 at venues as diverse as the Cannes Film Festival, the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles, and the Taiwan Film Audiovisual Academy.

But this October’s Tokyo International Film Festival will feature the largest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s astonishingly varied career.

The festival, in partnership with the National Film Archive of Japan, presents an extensive retrospective covering nearly every film directed by Ozu from October 24 to 29 (TIFF/NFAJ Classics: The Yasujirō Ozu Week).

Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to acclaimed director in 1962, as an employee of Japan's major studio Shochiku, an arrangement that came with various pros and cons.

While Ozu is best known for his stripped-down dramas, often about family relationships, sometimes problematic or contentious, involving parents and young or adult children, many deal with issues of marriage, intergenerational misunderstandings, or loneliness in the elderly. Not entirely his own decision.

"The apparent consistency of postwar cinema is certainly due to both this production situation and Ozu's aesthetic choices," critic Tony Rains wrote in a recent Sight and Sound profile. Raines also noted that Ozu's prewar work was more diverse than his postwar work, and that he borrowed freely from other industries, including Hollywood.

"Few people know that the director of films like Tokyo Story and Early Spring had made riotous student comedies and gangster movies," Raines writes.

Ozu's films must be explored again and again. Few of his postwar films were released outside Japan until Western audiences became aware of Kurosawa and Mizoguchi in the 1950s. Likewise, many of his pre-war works were thought to be lost, only to be reassembled and reevaluated later in Japan.

The repertoire played at the Tokyo Festival covers the entire period 1929 to 1962, whereas the repertoire played at the National Archives focuses more on the earlier period, 1929 to 1941 (see below).

Japanese academics and contemporary filmmakers, including Kelly Reichardt, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Jia Zhangke and Wim Wenders, will moderate a panel discussion titled "On the Shoulders of Giants" that same week.

Wenders, who will chair this year's Tokyo competition jury and oversee the festival's opening title "Perfect Day," is a fan of Ozu and will host the tribute. Another session, moderated by radio host Chris Tomoko, will feature discussion of Ozu by various guests and a live performance by Kanenobu Sachiko.

The discussion was co-hosted by the Tokyo Toilet Art Project, which also worked on Perfect Day, Shochiku and the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, among others.

(Shochiku handled the 4K digital restoration of “The Apartment Gentlemen,” while Toho handled the restoration of “Muneteka Sisters,” both of which screened in Cannes in May and are scheduled to be re-released in French theaters.)

On October 26, there will be a public reading of the "Tokyo Story" script, as well as personal memories of Norie Nakai's time spent with Ozu. The campaign is backed by Shochiku and retail chain Mitsukoshi, both of which have links to Ozu.

Japanese pay-TV platform Wowow recently commissioned six aspiring filmmakers to remake six of Ozu's early silent films. Three episodes will be screened at the festival as part of the TIFF series.

Yasujiro Ozu wins first prize at Tokyo International Film Festival
"The Straight Boy" (1929, 21-minute version)
"I was born, but..." (1932, WP) "Dragnet Girl" (1933, 4K, (live performance by famed trumpeter Takuya Kuroda) "Kagamijishi" (1936, WP)
"Having a Father" (1942, 4K)
The Rendezvous (1947, 4K) Hen in the Wind (1948, 4K)
"Late Spring" (1949, 4K) "The Munakata Sisters" (1950, 4K)
"Early Summer" (1951, 4K) "Tokyo Story" (1953, 4K)
Tokyo Dusk (1957, 4K) Equinox (1958) Good Morning (1959) Floating Weeds (1959, 4K)
"Late Autumn (1960)"
"Late Summer" (1961, 4K**)
"Autumn Afternoon" (1962).
*4KWP: World premiere digitally restored 4K version.
**4K: Shows digitally restored 4K version.

Works exhibited at the National Film Archive of Japan during the Tokyo International Film Festival
"The Years of Youth" (1929)
"I graduated, but..." (1929)
"Tokyo Women" (1933)
The Lady and the Beard (1931)
"The Honest Boy" (1929, 14-minute version)
"The Straight Boy" (1929, 21-minute version)
"Walking Quickly" (1930),
"The Women of the Night" (1930)
"Tokyo Chorus" (1931)
"Where are the dreams of young people today?" (1932)
"Fleeting Fantasy" (1933)
"Mothers should be loved" (1934)
"Floating Grass" (1934)
"A Hotel in Tokyo" (1935)
"Only Son" (1936)
"What has the lady forgotten?" (1937)
"The Toda Brothers and Sisters" (1941).