Ozu takes a hard turn away from his student comedies, embracing major social and political issues in Depression-era Japan, including the plight of women. From prostitutes to...well...more prostitutes and reluctant mob girlfriends, his next three films reveal a filmmaker in transition.
26: Until the Day We Meet Again (1932)
Mata au hi made
status || completely lost: no script, prints, or stills survive
After this final Ozu film of 1932, only two more features are completely lost, with a couple of others missing portions of reels at most. I agree with David Bordwell that this 10-reeler is one of the most tragic silent film losses in Ozu's canon.
The primary reason for this is that it seems to more directly relate to The Manchurian Incident than any other Ozu film of this era. For those unfamiliar, the next two paragraphs constitute a brief primer on the significance of "The Incident" that informs the relevance of this film.
The Manchurian Incident
On 18 September 1931, a Japanese-owned railway in Manchuria was blown up with dynamite. The Japanese used this to justify a subsequent invasion of Manchuria that is considered one of the fundamental inciting incidents of the Pacific conflict in World War II. Japan blamed the event on Chinese dissidents at the time, though most studies have shown irrefutable evidence that the Japanese did it themselves. They even managed to screw up their first attempt.
The Incident is alternately referred to as the Mukden Incident (after the place it happened in Manchuria), as well as either the 18 September Incident or the Liutiaogou Incident (in China). The Manchurian Incident is the preferred name in Japan. Akira Kurosawa's post-war No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) directly engages the controversy, with a group of students planning to protest what they see as the unwarranted invasion of a foreign power. Boy does that sound familiar in the here and now. No Regrets, I should add, stars later Ozu collaborator Setsuko Hara in one of two Kurosawa pictures (the other was The Idiot).
The Movie
As for Until the Day We Meet Again, a movie that was controversial on account of forced interpretation.
The story goes something like this: a son of privilege (Joji Oka, who also shows up in Dragnet Girl) is disowned for loving a hooker (Woman of Tokyo and An Inn in Tokyo's Yoshiko Okada). He hasn't told his family yet, but he's also been drafted into the army to fight in the invasion of Manchuria. The prostitute informs his family just as he's set to hop on a train to ship out, but they arrive at the train station just as it departs. The movie closes with the hooker going back to drumming up business.
Okada plays a "hooker with a heart of gold" again in Ozu's next film, Woman of Tokyo. Previous (and future) Ozu regulars pop up in this picture as well, from I Was Born, But...'s Mitsuko Yoshikawa as "another girl" (I'm assuming another prostitute) and Tokyo Chorus' Choko Iida as "a maid". Iida will go on to perform in a number of additional Ozu pictures, most notably The Only Son. Signature "bad girl" Satoko Date plays "a girlfriend", who I assume is the girl that the protagonist is supposed to be seeing. Shinyo Nara plays the young man's disapproving father. Nara plays a pivotal role in both Woman of Tokyo and A Mother Should Be Loved.
The "Ozu's All Stars" cast adds some more novelty to the film and deepens its loss. The fact that many players here recur in the next two or three films further expand the loss.
Controversy
At the time, a debate raged among critics over what the Ozu/Kogo Noda script indicated about the filmmakers' own feelings about the Manchurian invasion. Bordwell notes that those who thought it was against the war would cite the bleak ending with the lonely hooker sitting on a bench, whereas pro-war arguers would point to the son leaving for war without mending ties with his father. I'm of the third faction that feels that either of these readings is inconsistent with Ozu's style of not preaching, but instead, presenting a more open canvas to interpret as you wish. It's as if Ozu intended to say "these things happen" rather than "these things happen as a result of X, and Y is why it's wrong/right!". Based on what I've seen and read, that's how most Japanese films of the era treated the subject, but people were digging for definitive "with us or against us" dirt back in the day.
Until the Day We Meet Again began what is considered Ozu's "Fallen Women Trilogy", of which the latter two titles survive in full. Neither Woman of Tokyo nor Dragnet Girl are available on DVD in the US (but they are available for import).
Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) preparing for a night "out"
27: Woman of Tokyo (1933)
Tokyo no onna
4 reels, ~47 minutes
status || fully preserved: script, original negative, and prints survive
on disc (UK/R2) || BFI's Ozu Collection: 3 Melodramas set (14 GBP, or ~$22 USD) also includes Early Spring and Tokyo Twilight (which are in Eclipse: Late Ozu in the USA).
on disc (Japan/R3) || OOP 6-DVD set w/o English subs
how to watch || BFI's Ozu Collection: 3 Melodramas set is the only option.
how to release it in Region 1 || Either a monster 8-movie Early Ozu set (unlikely), or pair it with the Gangster Films as selected by the BFI as "Gangsters and Fallen Women".
Woman of Tokyo defies the modern convention of what constitutes "feature length". What would you do if you found out that your sister was selling herself to pay the bills?
We have once again entered the realm of title translation nitpicking. When it comes to Tokyo no onna, I really prefer the less-literal "Tokyo Woman" to "Woman of Tokyo" (the widely-accepted title). "Woman of Tokyo doesn't quite roll off of the tongue, and it just sounds like broken English. For example, did they title that one movie "Midnight Cowboy" or "Cowboy of Midnight"? Further, is The Guess Who's song called "Woman of America" or "American Woman? I rest my case.
This second installment in Ozu's "Fallen Women" trilogy is the shortest of the three, clocking in at about 47 minutes over four reels. It was made in under ten days due to an open spot in Shochiku's release schedule.
Ureo Egawa as Ryoichi
A college student named Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa) is a young man full of potential. His sister Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) works to support them both. By day, she works in an office. By night, her brother thinks that she does translation work for a well-respected college professor. She's actually a hostess at a seedy dance hall...and an unlicensed prostitute.
It's assumed that Ryoichi and Chikako's parents are dead, which is why Chikako is providing for them and fully taking care of him, commensurate with the inequal gender customs of the time. She's expected to literally give everything to supporting Ryoichi so that he can finish college and theoretically provide for them both thereafter. The job market is worsening, with no signs of impending improvement.
Chikako in "normal" dress
Ryoichi's girlfriend Harue (Kinuyo Tanaka) has a brother in the police force (Shinyo Nara) who catches wind that Chikako is under investigation, but not for engaging in prostitution. Rather, she's in trouble for not having a license and paying her hooking taxes.
What modern viewers (Americans especially) don't assume is that prostitution was legal in Japan at the time, but you had to be licensed and pay a 7-10% tax to the government. The cops don't care about her safety or the moral fabric of Tokyo. They want her money, that's it. They're glorified IRS watchdogs.
Chikako at her day job
Harue tells her boyfriend what she suspects his sister of doing, out of genuine concern for Chikako's well-being. Ryoichi refuses to believe Harue at first, but his suspicions grow over the next evening. The following night, he confronts Chikako and slaps her around. Later that night, he does something drastic, something that genuinely surprises me for only the second time in this series.
I initially found the film less affecting than others that I've watched from '32 & '33 upon first viewing, but I've rewtached it twice since my first pass at this project began. From my initial reaction:
...but the major difference is that there is no real "B" story threaded in, like there was in Tokyo Chorus or I Was Born, But....
The economy of storytelling gets the thing told, but the abrupt ending gives it the feel of a short story that you might read on a morning commute and forget about later. There's no nuanced, formalist punch other than a thrust of "this is one of many, many women like her". I found that I didn't really think much about it until a few days later, when the idea that "lives can change forever in 26 hours" hit home momentarily. It's grown only moderately in impact over time.
Ozu's most briskly-paced picture is deceptive in that its brevity is not an indication of its potential staying power.
Having watched more of Ozu's movies since then, I realized I missed something huge about this movie on first visitation. I was more focused on what it was missing than what was intentionally being left out.
Kinuyo Tanaka as "good girlfriend" Harue
In retrospect, what now I find most appealing about Woman of Tokyo is what made me most indifferent to it the first time around. What Ozu does in under 50 minutes with this movie shot in less than a fortnight is best chracterized as...unrepentantly ballsy. I don't want to spoil the ending for the majority who haven't seen it, but it's the reason the movie is categorized as a melodrama.
The drastic action taken is indeed extreme and implausible. It's impossibly irrational, but at once absolutely logical, given the allegorical house of cards constructed. Chikako's life is being drained by having to support her brother, finally at the cost of not just her hard work, but her very person. Something has to break.
There's a feminist subtext here that may be the imagination of my revisionist perspective. Chikako is only really demonized by her brother. She's looked down upon by others who know what she does on top of being a hostess at an unsavory nightspot. Whether it's my modern sensibility or not, she emerges as the true protagonist, fighting against misogyny and prejudice.
I find it particularly odd (and/or intriguing) that when she puts on her hooker look, it's like a superhero putting on a mask and cape. Heroic hookers are seen throughout cinema history, but this presentation is pretty rare.
The original script included references to Chikako prostituting herself not only to make money for her brother...but also donation to the Communist Party. Irrespective of personal politics, Chikako's choice being related to political beliefs fundamentally changes her as a character, and makes her more complex. Problematically, Shochiku was faced with the fact that injecting leftist sentiment would have either negatively affect the box office earnings potential or cause an issue getting the movie passed by the censors.
Ryoichi ripped apart
Ureo Egawa, who plays Ryoichi here, is in his second and last picture for Ozu, once again playing a "little emperor" with violent tendencies as he did in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?. "Good girl" Kinuyo Tanaka once again plays love interest to Egawa, as she did in the aforementioned film. She will get her biggest breakout role in Dragnet Girl, where she plays not-so-good for once.
Yoshiko Okada (Chikako) will work with Ozu just once more, in An Inn in Tokyo.
Chishu Ryu makes another cameo appearance, this time as a newspaper reporter at the end of the movie.
Ryoichi and Harue at the movies
Woman of Tokyo features the first instance of a film-within-the-film for Ozu, when Harue and Ryoichi go out to the movies to see If I Had a Million (1932).
The movie is about a wealthy man at death's door. His family disgusts him so much that he wants none of them to inherit anything. He instead wants his money given away to strangers random picked out of the phone book, in seven separate, 1-million-dollar portions. Million follows those seven individuals and how their lives change as a result. It stars a host of big names, from Gary Cooper and Charles Laughton to George Raft and W.C. Fields.
A few select bits from Ernst Lubitsch's short, wordless segment "The Clerk" (featuring Laughton) are spliced into this date night scene.
Opening credits for If I Had a Million
A shot from "The Clerk"
Any and all versions of "The Clerk" on YouTube have been removed on copyright grounds, but thankfully the lawless wilderness of The New MySpace finds "The Clerk" available in its entirety as embedded below. I would tell you where to go buy it if NBCUniversalComcast had it in print on disc or a streaming/VOD service.
Who says 80-year-old movies set during major recessions aren't relatable and fresh?
Woman of Tokyo's script is credited to being based on a short story by "Ernest Schwartz" called Twenty Six Hours, which matches the period of time covered in the narrative. Neither "Ernest Schwartz" nor a short story called Twenty Six Hours ever existed. Ozu and co-writer Kogo Noda combined the first name of Lubitsch and the last name of director Hanns Schwartz.
Tokiko: secretary by day, gun moll by night.
28: Dragnet Girl (1933)
Hijosen no onna
status || fully preserved: script, original negative, and prints survive
on disc (UK/R2) || March 2013 release BFI's Ozu Collection: The Gangster Films set (23.99 GBP, or ~$39 USD) also includes Walk Cheerfully, A Straightforward Boy, and Dragnet Girl.
on disc (Japan/R3) || OOP 6-DVD set w/o English subs
how to watch || BFI's Ozu Collection: The Gangster Films set
how to release it in Region 1 || Either a monster 8-movie Early Ozu set (unlikely), or pair it with the Gangster Films as selected by the BFI as "Gangsters and Fallen Women".
Dragnet Girl is the most surprising discovery of the series for me thus far. It's a gangster picture that is as equally steeped in Hollywood gangster tropes as it is in Ozu's developing "deep composition" style. The visuals arresting from the outset.
I think of Dragnet Girl is Ozu's most "American" picture, with settings and characters that would fit New York, NY better than you'd think they suit any part of Japan.
Cigar-chomping toughs, a former boxer as protagonist, and a gun moll leading lady who no one can trust. The noir-evoking, expressionist cinematography is gauzy and inky. The visual pallette is just gorgeous. Even though Dragnet Girl comes from across an ocean and years before the commonly-accepted American noir period of the late 40's and 50's, the similar stylistic flourishes are undeniable. Among Ozu's silent films that I hadn't seen before, this is far and away my favorite.
Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka) is a good girl who works as a typist by day. By night, she lives, lurks, and parties with gangster Joji, (Joji Oka) a washed-up boxer. A fresh-faced college student named Hiroshi (Hideo Mitsui aka Koji Mitsui) joins the gang, and Joji becomes attracted to Hiroshi's sister Kazuko (Sumiko Mizukubo in her only role for Ozu).
Tokiko the wannabe bad girl at her day jobTokiko gets jealous and plots revenge on Kazuko for so much as maybe possibly tempting her man. Tokiko takes a gun along to accomplish this. Kazuko handles herself well, and in a near-psychotic reversal, Tokiko proclaims her admiration of and adoration for Kazuko. Tokiko is tempted to go straight, but complications arise.
More than an actual bad girl, Tokiko reads throughout as more like a mousy office girl who daydreams about being the fancy gangster's queen she reads about in dime novels. Tanaka's good girl screen persona is not threatened here, though that abrupt "ok, I love you!" reversal she throws Kazuko while still holding a gun on her still seems pretty nuts.
"Joji" (Joji Oka, l.) and pal
Going through his filmography from beginning to end, I'm watching some of Ozu's films for a second, third or fourth time. Up until now, I haven't re-watched one that's entirely new to me. The week I first saw it, I watched Dragnet Girl a total of three times.
I find Dragnet Girl irresistible because, in some ways, it feels so radically different, even though it's much the same of what we've seen before. The aesthetic and dynamics of the frame just have a fresh verve that's quite unlike Ozu's previous work.
He had done a couple of "crime" films previously (Walk Cheerfully and That Night's Wife), but this one is something else. He combines elements of American films and his earlier "gangster" movies, producing something captivating, framed in layers of glass and glowing light. Due to similar plot mechanics and characters, one could reasonably consider DG a reworking of Walk Cheerfully. The movie is so rich with visual texture, it's as if Ozu wanted to say goodbye to a favorite genre by reinventing it for himself.
There are lots of fast cuts and setups, but there are still elements that are reflected in Ozu's later work. In particular, we see many "deep" compositions, with long rooms and spaces separated by glass (both opaque and transparent).
One of many shots through window glass, and also one of many in an RCA Victor shop.
A contemplative, remorseful Tokiko
Oka positively burns up the screen in every scene as the ex-boxer with a hidden soft spot. It's too bad that he never did another Ozu film, even though he'd keep acting for another three decades. He was previously the lead in the now-lost Until the Day We Meet Again. Its loss is felt after seeing how great he is here.
This was undoubtedly star Kinuyo Tanaka's break into the big-time after supporting roles in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? and Woman of Tokyo. From here, she embarks on an extremely long and successful career.
Boyish Hideo Mitsui, later credited as "Koji" Mitsui, would similarly go on to a lengthy, fruitful career that we'll look at soon after I write about A Story of Floating Weeds.
None of the other actors appeared in any Ozu pictures aside from Reiko Tani, who plays an office manager here and was previously the Company President in Tokyo Chorus. He next pops up in Passing Fancy as a barber.
Chishu Ryu once again pops in for a cameo. This time, he's a policeman.
Dragnet Girl in particular is so different from what are considered "signature" Ozu films that I feel that it deserves a little elevation. It's not counted among Ozu's "great films", but I think it's worth some recognition on its own merits in addition to the novelty value relative to what is traditionally considered a distinctly Ozu film. I'd love to see the a newly-produced "talking heads" piece on Ozu with Donald Richie, David Bordwell, and Tadao Sato all chiming in on it and other under-discussed Ozu titles.
This period is especially interesting, since we see Ozu reformulating his mixture of comedy and drama, pathos and catharsis. This is where we see his methodical re-forging of the same sword really begin in earnest.
Up Next
We take a look at the career of Kinuyo Tanaka, who jumped to the A-list with Dragnet Girl. After that, the next full installment of the series covers the entire Takeshi Sakamoto-starring "Kihachi Trilogy", beginning with Passing Fancy.
Discovering Ozu is an ongoing series of articles designed to introduce curious cinephiles to the work of Japanese master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu.
Essential sources include: David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, Donald Richie's Ozu: His Life and Films, and the various booklets and featurettes produced by The Criterion Collection. Quick reference often comes from definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".
If sharing or discussing this article or series on Twitter, please use hashtag #DiscoveringOzu
New to Discovering Ozu? Start at the beginning.