Late Spring (1949)

 Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring"

It's very interesting that "Late Spring" is often considered the starting point to Yasujiro Ozu's most prominent period of his filmography because by the time the film was released in 1949, Ozu already had two decades of great work under his belt. I think it is safe to say that most of Ozu's work has a certain level of quality to it, regardless of what period it emerged from. That being said, the post-war period was a creative leap for not only Ozu, but the entirety of Japanese cinema. 

"Late Spring" centers on a young woman named Noriko who lives with her widowed father. Her father, her aunt, and even her 'modern' divorced friend wants Noriko to leave her father's house and get married. Noriko, however, is perfectly content with her life and feels as though marrying off to someone would entrap her for the rest of her life. Despite her resistance, her friends and family are successful in their attempts to arrange her marriage. 

While the plot may be relatively simple, the themes and visual congruence to those themes are not. The utter richness of the film's subject matter can unravel into various aspects of Japanese life and circumstances, both individually minded and culturally minded. Firstly, our protagonist is living the female experience of being married off against her desires. Ozu often equates the experience of marriage with the idea of death. Marriage is even referenced in the story by one of the characters as being "life's graveyard." As film historian and author Kathe Geist writes, "Ozu connects marriage and death in obvious and subtle ways in most of his late films...The comparison between weddings and funerals is not merely a clever device on Ozu's part, but is so fundamental a concept in Japanese culture that these ceremonies as well as those surrounding births have built-in similarities...The elegiac melancholy Ozu evokes at the end of "Late Spring," "Late Autumn," and "An Autumn Afternoon" arises only partly because the parents have been left alone...The sadness arises because the marriage of the younger generation inevitably reflects on the morality of the older generation." With this, "Late Spring" is able to communicate the themes known notably for Ozu, that is themes regarding life cycles and the turning of time and changing domestic relationships. The characters must go through life changes. The young woman must get married and go live with her husband. The aging widower must watch his young daughter leave the nest and leave him in solitude. With these changes comes the changing relationship between them. There is a sense of heartbreak with both. The daughter must 'grow up' and embrace the frustrating experience of being a wife and mother and the father must move on from his daughter and let her go, now left to contemplate the approaching end of life cycle. It is something that Ozu is particularly fond of: demonstrating the various life cycles we must go through and watch as the characters face the same emotional aches and pains of the viewer.

Along with the very familiar personal and individual themes are the cultural and more bigger-picture themes of the film. Because of the Allied occupation of Japan, Japanese cinema was very censored to not include anything regarding the Western bombing and subsequent occupation. In "Late Spring," Ozu doesn't deal with the new occupational forces, but instead alludes to them in various ways, as well as centering the film's theme on the emerging cultural changes happening within Japan. Firstly, the Allied occupation is alluded to through subtle means, like English-language signs for Coca-Cola or signs alluding to weight limits of bridges. Although the images of these symbols have no direct correlation to any sort of commentary, they still point to an emerging Western force in Japan. With this new colonial influence, there also comes a new culture taking root, a new 'modernity.' As many film scholars have pointed out, there are themes of tradition vs modernity happening throughout the film. The older characters seem to represent this pre-war traditionalism, wherein they wear kimonos, sit on tatami mats, and eat more traditional Eastern dishes. The younger characters, Noriko and her friend, seem to be embracing the more modernist lifestyle, wearing Western clothes rather than kimonos, sitting in Western-style chairs, etc. These traditional vs modern cultural differences also point to differences in perspectives, especially regarding the central drama of the film. The father and aunt are arranging a marriage for Noriko, as they believe she is in the 'late spring' of her life and is getting too old to not be married. However, the aspect of arranged marriages, or even marriage in general acts as a foil to the more Western-leaning young characters. Noriko's friend is a divorcee and views marriage as something that can be broken easily. Despite Noriko's Western-influenced hesitation on traditional arranged marriage, she feels in the traditional way that marriage is forever and there is no escape. The clash between the new Western way of thinking and the old, traditional Eastern mindset is not necessary as black and white as that though. Ozu does not explicitly comment on these differences and point to any sort of good vs bad perspective. Rather, the characters are dealing with these differences and changes in their own way and ascribe to these cultural variations far more complexly than just old = traditional, and young = modernist. In fact, many of the characters share complex viewpoints that contain both. With this, it becomes more of an objective examination of the changing nature of Japan and its people.

Overall, I found "Late Spring" to be Ozu's most emotionally complex film. This is saying a lot, as Ozu typically has very emotional films in his oeuvre. However, with "Late Spring," Ozu is able to take his traditional thematic interests and wrap them around the evolving Japanese cinema that was emerging post-war. He was already a master at this time and "Late Spring" only reasserts this notion, along with starting his late period, which would go on to be his most celebrated.