Donald Richie is the reason that Westerners know directors like Ozu and Kurosawa in the manner that we do. He passed away in Tokyo today. The New York Times piece is also worth a look.

He recorded the lion's share of the truly great commentaries on Japanese movies, including one I listened to recently for A Story of Floating Weeds, a true masterpiece that is often overshadowed by its color sound remake. His book OZU is, for many, the starting point for Western analysis of Japanese cinema.

I cite David Bordwell's Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema as my primary source text for Discovering Ozu, but I would not be writing the series without Richie's work, which is repeatedly cited by Bordwell throughout Poetics. Discovering Ozu is designed to be an evolving, dynamic series, which will be (and already has been) updated over time.

My friend Ryan (of CriterionCast) very generously sent me a copy of Richie's book a while back, an act of generosity that was a direct motivator for overhauling and re-working what was Cinema Ozu (now deprecated) into Discovering Ozu.

I had no delusions of ever getting to talk to Richie, let alone interview him, since I've been aware he was ailing for some time now. Like Ozu, I know his work from a distance. I may delve further into it. He lived a very interesting life. From first experiencing Japan in the army during post-WWII 1947, be went on to become the leading Western authority on Japanese culture by way of cinema.

I had already planned an appendix article on Richie some time soon, but now...I need to spend more time on it.

The photo of Ozu featured on the cover of Richie's OZU

Akira Kurosawa in the classic, director-pointing-a-camera pose