When the patriarch of one affluent family is lost in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family, there is little left to hold its fragmented remains together, and Yasujirō Ozu exacts a cutting critique of those intimate bonds weakened by class privilege.
The Tokyo that Ryōsuke moves to in The Only Son is not the bustling city of opportunity he once dreamed of, but a desolate wasteland of factories and smokestacks, underscoring Yasujirō Ozu’s tale of parental expectations and disappointments with the social realities of Depression-era Japan.
The contempt that travelling actors hold for themselves in A Story of Floating Weeds may be extreme, yet the petty drama they vindictively stoke only further condemns them to sorrowful lives, as Yasujirō Ozu examines their thorny relationships with both compassion and cynicism.
Woman of Tokyo does not deliver the formal impact of Yasujirō Ozu’s later masterpieces, yet there is a melodramatic tension in its exposure of one young woman’s scandalous double life, glimpsing the quiet devastation that lies beneath domestic stability.
The subdued melodrama of Tokyo Chorus stands as a delicate testament to those teachers who not only educate us, but sagely guide us through our lowest moments, as Yasujirō Ozu cultivates his craftsmanship through the tender-hearted tale of an unemployed family man.
