Yasujiro Ozu has been called the most "Japanese" of Japanese directors because of the restrained style and quietly contemplative tone of his family dramas. And while it is true that the films Ozu directed from the late thirties to the end of his career reflect traditional, conservative Japanese ideals and mores ("restraint, simplicity and near-Buddhist serenity" is how film historian Donald Richie described his cinematic aesthetic), this rather simplistic brand misses a defining component of his films, namely that they are utterly contemporary to their times. Where Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi found international recognition with historical adventures and elegant period dramas about samurai warriors, royal figures, and fallen heroes, Ozu exclusively made contemporary films and set his quietly understated family dramas and comedies in the modest homes and workplaces of everyday citizens trying to make a life for themselves and their children. His films are a veritable survey of Japanese society from the late 1920s to the early 1960s, a society straddling an age-old culture of expectations and codes of conduct on the one hand, and the stresses and demands of the modern world and its international influences on the other.

The story of his 1942 masterpiece There Was a Father is simplicity itself and the direction placid and restrained, but under the gentle rhythms and emotional suppression in the name of duty is a complex portrait of sacrifice and responsibility that is endured with obedience but little reward. The father, Shuhei (Ozu's longtime leading man and cinematic alter-ego, Chishu Ryu), is a doting widower and proud father of a respectful boy, Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda), an intent student who wants nothing more than to make his father proud. A respected teacher with a class of older students at Ryohei's school, Shuhei gives up teaching after one of his students drowns while on school excursion (Ozu's direction is a model of restraint here: a shot of a shrine, followed by the calm lake, a capsized boat in the water, and then a funeral). It's a matter of responsibility for Shuhei, but after a summer of introspection, he realizes that his duty is to see to his son's education and success. He moves to Tokyo to get a job so he can put his son through the best schools, a plan that will by necessity separate them through school and beyond. Even when the grown Ryohei (now played by Shûji Sano) graduates, it is the son's duty to take over the responsibility of teaching that his father abandoned years before. Apart from brief visits that each anticipates with great excitement (which is, of course, expressed with all due restraint and dignity), that duty continues to keep them apart.

The story is not autobiographical by any stretch of the imagination, but certain elements of the story reverberate with Ozu's own life. Though he was one of three children with two parents, Ozu and his siblings were separated from their father for ten years, sent to Mie Prefecture for school and raised by their indulgent mother while father stayed on to work in Tokyo. His silent and sound early films often made fun of father figures (in his 1932 comedy I Was Born, But..., a pair of young brothers go on a hunger strike to protest a social order where their father must act subservient to his boss). After his father died in 1934, Ozu's perspective on families and paternal responsibility and sacrifice started to shift. So did his choice of subject matter (no more gangster films and youth comedies) and his directorial style. With his thematic shift came a concerted makeover of his entire approach to filmmaking.

Where Ozu once employed impressive tracking shots and mobile camerawork, by the time of There Was a Father he shot scenes almost exclusively from stationary set-ups in the "tatami mat position" (about 36 inches from the floor, as if viewed from the position of a person seated cross-legged on a floor mat). Where he once edited brisk action sequences with dramatic visual contrasts and built tension by cutting into tighter and tighter shots, he slowed the pace of his editing and pulled his camera back to watch scenes play out in full shots. His direction of actors became exacting, focused on minute gestures while he imposed a rigorous, formal performing style that masked all emotions behind a polite smile and a calm resignation. And in his most unusual stylistic change, he would shoot conversation scenes by placing his camera directly in front of the actor (instead of at an angle) and direct him or her to look just off-center, creating a visual dissonance that wasn't always identifiable but never quite matched our expectations.

There Was a Father was only Ozu's fourth sound film (he resisted making the transition longer than many fellow directors), and it was his first film to bring together all of the defining elements of his mature style, including his famed "pillow shots," still life scenes of the world around his characters that serves as visual "cushions" in the transition from one scene or sequence to another. Here they are the perfect complement to scenes of father and son in the quiet company of one another, sitting on a hilltop taking in the view in the silence after Shuhei has told Ryohei of his plan to move to Tokyo, or wordlessly fishing in a stream, their poles arcing upriver in unison and slowly drifting downstream. Their peace and contentment in one another's company merges with the world around them as if part of the natural order: a moment of perfection.

Released in 1942, There Was a Father was both a critical and commercial success. Critic and Japanese film expert Donald Richie called it "one of Ozu's most perfect films. There is a naturalness and a consequent feeling of inevitability that is rare in the cinema." Chishu Ryu's performance has been hailed as one of the best in Japanese cinema. It remains one of Ozu's masterpieces. Interestingly, he made the film during World War II, while the war in the Pacific was raging. The Japanese film industry was openly controlled by the government, which insisted on propaganda and patriotic themes. Ozu refused to make propaganda and makes no reference to the war, but his own sensibility of personal sacrifice in the name of a greater responsibility fit the needs of government. But was the call to duty and sacrifice what audiences responded to? Or was it Ozu's understanding of the cost of such sacrifice?

If There Was a Father celebrates obedience as a virtue and duty the highest calling on the surface, there is an ambiguity in Ozu's tone. Which is not to say that duty carries no reward. After years in Tokyo, the aging former teacher runs across his old friend and colleague (Shin Saburi) in a Go parlor and reestablishes their friendship. Later the two of them are given a banquet by their former students, a classic ceremony of respect for elders and mentors that will be repeated in many Ozu films to come. There is a genuine sense of respect and affection from the students, and Ozu allows us to see the pride and sense of achievement behind the smiling eyes of the former teachers, aglow in the tribute offered by students they helped transform from boys to successful men. But while Ozu respects Shuhei's integrity and sense of accomplishment, he implicitly questions the high cost of duty and the lonely years of separation from his son, with a finale seeped in sadness and unacknowledged regret. As the newly married Ryohei returns to his duty, Ozu leaves us with the hope that the son Ryohei will not be sentenced to the same unforgiving fate as his father.

Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay: Tadao Ikeda, Yasujiro Ozu, Takao Yanai
Cinematography: Yuuhara Atsuta
Music: Kyoichi Saiki
Film Editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Cast: Chishu Ryu (Shuhei Horikawa), Shuji Sano (Ryohei), Shin Saburi (Yusataro Kurokawa), Takeshi Sakamoto (Makoto Hirata), Mitsuko Mito (Fumi), Masayoshi Otsuka (Seichi), Shinichi Himori (Minoru Uchida), Haruhiko Tsuda (Ryohei as a child).
BW-94m.

by Sean Axmaker