Setsuko Hara as Noriko and Chishū Ryū as Shukichi in Late Spring (production still)

THE 1949 feature film, Late Spring, is a simple masterpiece about a family in postwar Japan.

Available with subtitles on the Internet Archive, it is one of a trilogy directed by Yasujirō Ozu in the style of Japanese cinema known as shomin-geki, a genre that realistically portrays the ordinary daily lives of working class and middle class people. These films though involving a far different culture and people are similar to some of the British movies from that era discussed in previous posts in that they lack the glamorous clothes and settings common to so many Hollywood productions of that time. They do not hide domestic banalities and elevate ordinary conflicts into compelling drama.

Late Spring made it through the postwar censors of American-occupied Japan, but not without some significant alterations. Though it takes place in Tokyo, no scenes of the immense destruction from firebombing were permitted. And while the main characters are dealing with lost relatives and friends, the cause of the deaths is never mention in the film. Changes also were made to modernize some aspects of traditional Japan, part of the American social engineering the conquered nation faced at that time.

It is special too in that it deals realistically with a subject matter — Ozu tackles it elsewhere — so often neglected in movies: the bonds and universal conflicts between grown children and their parents. The film is based on the short novel Father and Daughter (Chichi to musume) by the novelist Kazuo Hirotsu. It centers around a 27-year-old unmarried woman, Noriko, played unforgettably by Setsuko Hara, and her widowed father, Professor Shukichi Somiya, played by the outstanding Chishu Ryu. The two characters live together and Noriko, who also works at an office job, is dedicated to her father. She clearly enjoys the domestic tasks of caring for him and in traditional Japanese style, she brings him tea, prepares his bath or lays out his clean clothes at his command.

Noriko is so attached to her home as it obviously was when her mother died (no cause of death is mentioned) that she is shocked when a widower friend of the family reveals that he plans to remarry. She laughs when her father advises that she herself think of marrying.

Her paternal Aunt Masa, played by Haruko Sugimura, is not happy with this state of affairs. And the professor too is deeply worried about his daughter’s future. They both want the young woman to marry, despite her reluctance to leave her father.

Aunt Masa is a steely negotiator and sets about arranging a marriage for Noriko. She announces she will also find a wife for the professor and this prospect is highly upsetting to his daughter.

Aya, played by Yumeji Tsukioka, is another interesting character in the film. She is the cynical divorced friend of Noriko, a representative of the forces of modernity which by now, in 2023, have thoroughly transformed a society in which the relations between men and women were highly ritualized and differentiated. Aya openly admits she hates her husband, has no intention of ever marrying again, and relishes the luxuries of dress and food she enjoys outside her job.

The man Aunt Masa chooses for Noriko is never shown on screen and, according to Wikipedia (please don’t read the entry before you see the film), this was because the American censors disapproved of arranged marriage. To say more about Aunt Masa’s schemes would be to ruin this beautiful film and its character studies for readers.

Here is a movie both sad and wonderfully uplifting, a story essentially about loyalty and the terrible price it must pay in the onward march of the generations. As the father Shukichi says to his daughter “that’s the order of human life and history.” Late Spring takes its title from Noriko’s belated consideration of a husband, evoked later in the movie by scenes of the gardens of Kyoto. The film conveys the deepest of love between not two lovers, but a daughter and father. If love is to have good will toward another person, then the characters of Late Spring love truly. The film shows a Japan far removed from the vicious stereotypes of American war propaganda and one cannot watch it today perhaps without sensing the terrible cost Japan paid not just in the war but in the onward march of modernity.

— Comments —

SK from Steepletea writes:

Thank you for reviewing Late Spring on The Thinking Housewife. As an admirer of Japanese cinema, I, too, love this film. I have seen it a number of times, along with some of Yasujirō Ozu’s other works. It is everything you described…a lovely touching movie.

Another that you might enjoy if you can ever find it is Madadayo (“Still Walking”), which was the last film completed by the renowned Akira Kurosawa. This film is a tender and sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking look at the life of an elderly college professor, focusing on the time from just before WWII through the American occupation. Kurosawa does a masterful job of showing the everyday lives and trials of ordinary Japanese folks during this interesting period of their history. The original trailer can be seen here.

Hope all is well with you and yours in this beautiful spring season. I continue to pray for you and your family as you grieve your precious grandson.

Laura writes:

Thank you for the movie recommendation. Madayo is also available on Internet Archive. I’ve never seen it and am looking forward to watching it.

I appreciate your thoughtfulness and prayers.

Zeno writes:

I was happy to see your post about Ozu’s “Late Spring”. It is one of my favorite movies. Really a jewel. Setsuko Hara shines in it. The ending is heart-wrenching.

I didn’t know that Americans had censored the film. Very interesting information.

The Americanization of Japan is depicted in at least one scene of the movie where a Coca-Cola sign appears. (Or maybe that was put in as propaganda by the Americans?) If you watch Ozu’s movies chronologically, from the 1940s to the 1960s, you can see the growing Americanization or modernization (it’s the same thing) of Japan, including of course the pushing of feminism. In the later movies, you start to see more divorced women, “independent” young single women working and rejecting marriage and family, etc.

Ozu’s final film, “An Autumn Afternoon” (1963), also with Chishu Ryu, is also very beautiful. It has a scene in a bar with a discussion about the war that can be seen as a criticism of the Americanization of Japan, although Ozu is ambiguous about it.

Ozu shows that, contrary to popular belief, you do not need to have constant murders or explosions on screen to create drama — a simple story about family conflict often suffices. Most of his movies are about family relations, and usually with the same cast of actors.

Ozu works equally well in black-and-white and color. Some of the scenes from his color films are very much like paintings (he rarely moved the camera, preferring to work with composition).

Thank you.

Laura writes:

I can’t imagine any reader of this website not liking this film, and others by Ozu. I hope to post about another one in this trilogy.

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