"As long as life goes on, relationships between parents and children will bring boundless joy and endless grief." This is Tokyo Story. This 1953 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu. The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Ozu's long-time collaborator and co-screenwriter Kōgo Noda suggested adapting the 1937 American film, Make Way for Tomorrow, which Ozu had not yet seen. Noda remembered it from its initial release in Japan. Ozu and Noda then wrote the script over a period of a hundred and three days in a country inn in Chigasaki. Both films depict an elderly couple and their problems with their family and both films depict the couple travelling to visit their children. Differences include the older film taking place in Depression era US with the couple's problem being economical and Tokyo Story taking place in post-war Japan, where the problems are more cultural and emotional. The two films also end differently. American film theorist and historian David Bordwell wrote that Ozu "re-cast" the original film instead of adapting it. For a film that sides with the parents, it's not so surprising to learn that Ozu never married and lived dutifully with his mother all his life.
Ozu used many of the same cast and crew members that he had worked with for years. Ozu, Noda and cinematographer Yūharu Atsuta scouted locations in Tokyo and Onomichi for another month before shooting commenced. Shooting and editing the film took place from July to October 1953. Filming locations were in Tokyo (Adachi, Chūō, Taitō and Chiyoda), Onomichi, Atami and Osaka. Most of indoor scenes were shot at the Shochiku Ōfuna Studio in Kamakura, Kanagawa. Like all of his other films, Ozu favored a stationary camera and believed strongly in minimalism. A distinctive camera style is used, in which the camera height is low and almost never moves. The low camera positions are also reminiscent of sitting on a traditional Japanese tatami mat. Ozu rarely shot master shots and often broke the 180-degree rule of filmmaking and screen direction. Characters, who often sit side by side in scenes, often appear to be facing the same direction when speaking to each other, such as in the first scene with Shūkichi and Tomi. During some transitions, characters exit a scene screen right and then enter the next scene screen right. Therefore, all the sets had to be constructed with ceilings. Film critic Roger Ebert noted that the camera moves once in the film, which is "more than usual" for an Ozu film. David Dresser has compared the film's style and "de-emphasized plot" to Zen Buddhism and the modern world's fascination with surface value and materialism. Many of the transitional shots are still lifes of non-human subjects, such as smokestacks and landscapes. Like all of Ozu's sound films, Tokyo Story's pacing is slow. In his narrative storytelling, Ozu often had certain key scenes take place off camera with the viewer only learning about them through the characters' dialogue.
Released in Japan in 1953, it did not immediately gain international recognition and was considered "too Japanese" to be marketable by Japanese film exporters. The original negative was lost soon after the film was completed, due to a fire at the vault of the lab in Yokohama city. The film had to be released using prints made from a dupe protective negative. It was screened in 1957 in London, where it won the inaugural Sutherland Trophy the following year. Unlike Rashomon (1950), Ugetsu monogatari (1953) and Jigokumon (1953), the film didn't receive a U.S. release until 1964, after Ozu's death. It received praise from U.S. film critics, even after a 1972 screening in New York City. Tokyo Story is now widely regarded as Ozu's masterpiece and is often cited as one of the greatest films ever made. In 2005, it was voted #7 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time list. In 2012, it was voted as the 3rd greatest film of all time in Sight & Sound's 2012 critic's poll. It is also included in Ebert's Great Movies list, and among 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, edited by Steven Schneider. Themes in the film include the break-up and Westernization of the traditional Japanese family after World War II and the inevitability of children growing apart from their parents. The film takes place in 1953 post-war Japan, a few years after the new Civil Code of 1948 stimulated the country's rapid re-growth and embraced Western capitalist ideals while simultaneously destroying older traditions such as the Japanese family and its values. Ozu was very close to his own mother, living with her as a surrogate wife and never marrying. Ozu called Tokyo Story "the film that tends most strongly to melodrama." It is considered a Shomin-geki film for its depiction of working-class people.
The film stars Chishū Ryū, Chieko Higashiyama, Sô Yamamura, Haruko Sugimura, and Setsuko Hara. The performances given by the cast were immensely affecting—gentle, loving, amusing, thoughtful and heartfelt beings. But this is also due to Ozu's profound respect for the characters' and their privacy, for the mystery of their emotions. Because of this—not in spite of this—his films, of which the film is one of the finest, are so moving.
Although released in 1953, this infrequently-seen example of the cinematic mastery of Ozu compares more than favourably with any major Japanese film. Tokyo Story is a heartwarming and very worthy cinematic effort. A transcendent and profoundly moving work rivaling Late Spring (1949) as the director's masterpiece. Ozu’s greatest achievement and, thus, one of the ten best films of all time, for both Japanese cinema and cinema in general.
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