In 2017 I decided to write a book about the Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, and I spent the next three years closely analyzing his 33 extant films along with 3 fragments, researching the historical background, and catching up with what other scholars had written. I had been writing about Ozu since 1983, and my most recent article was published in 2010. That article went into the book almost unchanged, but, in fact, every article I had ever written about him went in in some form, sometimes as only a paragraph or a single sentence, along with material from my earlier book on Wim Wenders and some of my research on Hollywood’s 1950s films about Japan. But much of my analysis was new, and most of the older material was rethought, revised, and updated. I critiqued previous authors, whose work other scholars had let stand, when I thought parts of it did not hold up under close scrutiny. I nevertheless benefitted greatly from the research and insights of many of those same authors as well as material from many others. Among those I leaned on most were David Bordwell, Peter B. High, Kyoko Hirano, Tadao Sato, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, and historians John Dower and Ben-Ami Shillony. Anthologies on Asian film in general and Ozu in particular also proved a wonderful resource, particularly one edited by Jinhee Choi and those by edited by David Desser (with or without colleagues).
I finished the first draft just as the pandemic struck and was able to spend the next six months revising without interruption, thanks to the pandemic lockdown. Securing a publisher took another six months, but, finally, in April of 2021, Hong Kong University Press snapped up the manuscript proposal, toward which American presses had been fairly indifferent. I spent the entire next year revising, editing, gathering illustrations, and creating an index. Finally, in June of 2022, Ozu: A Closer Look rolled off the presses and arrived at my house. I approached the package apprehensively, like a new mom hoping her child had all its fingers and toes, but I needn’t have worried. HKUP did a beautiful job and continues to be a delight to work with.
The book is divided into three parts. The first takes up issues concerning Ozu’s silent films, including a close analysis of his three “gangster” films, the symbolism he used in his silent period, how he pictured sound in these films, and how he structured narrative. In Part II I looked at his first ten sound films, which were made as Japan’s war with China intensified then morphed into a war with the United States, followed by the American Occupation of Japan, which lasted until 1952. Each of these films finds Ozu endorsing the policies of whichever government was in a position to censor them while at the same time offering subtle critiques and sometimes mocking those same governments.
Part III takes up specific themes that pertain to all of the films but particularly those later, mainly color films from the 1950s and early 60s that closed out Ozu’s career. These themes include narrative strategies and meaning in his late films, his take on gender issues and religion, the extent to which other two-dimensional art forms in Japan (i.e. painting and printmaking) influenced or coincided formally, thematically, and ideologically with his work, and, finally, a discussion of a selection of specific films and filmmakers whose work was influenced by Ozu.
This book concludes my decades of work on Ozu, whose films will never get old. I hope it will prove a valuable companion for those wanting deeper insight into the filmmaker and his films and that it, too, will stand the test of time.
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