The Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro

Abstract

Bringing three key issues - Ozu, everyday life and the modern Japanese history - into a unified discussion, The Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro re-examines the renowned film director Ozu Yasujiro and his films from a socio-historical point of view to present a more contextualised contour of his cinema. The new approach will revise the previous tendency in Ozu studies that have emphasised Ozu's formal style, and articulate his consistent effort to explore the everyday life of ordinary Japanese people. The main subjects of this book include major issues of the history of Japan and Japanese cinema from prewar modernism and coming of sound cinema through struggles at war and during the US occupation, and the reconstruction and change of the postwar. It also emphasizes Ozu’s status and role as a studio director in Japanese film industry, with discussions of his generic contributions, such as shōshimin films, family melodrama, and bourgeois drama, which could be established under the constant conflict and negotiation with the studio Shochiku’s everyday realism. Upon this socio-historical context, the book attempts detailed reanalysis of Ozu's films throughout his career, centering on the multilateral aspect of the everyday in terms of space and time, produced through constant negotiation among different genders, classes and generations.