Yasujiro Ozu

Early Spring

Early Spring

In his first film after the commercial and critical success of Tokyo Story, Ozu examines life in postwar Japan through the eyes of a young salaryman, dissatisfied with career and marriage, who begins an affair with a flirtatious co-worker.

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Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1956
  • 145 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese

Available In

Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu

Eclipse 3: Late Ozu

DVD Box Set

5 Discs

$55.96

Early Spring
Cast
Ryo Ikebe
Shoji
Keiko Kishi
Chiyo Kaneko
Teiji Takahashi
Taizo Aoki
Chishu Ryu
Kiichi Onodera
So Yamamura
Yutaka Kawai
Haruko Sugimura
Tamako
Credits
Director
Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay
Kogo Noda
Screenplay
Yasujiro Ozu
Cinematography
Yuharu Atsuta
Art direction
Tatsuo Hamada
Music
Kojun Saito
Editing
Yoshiyasu Hamamura

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Yasujiro Ozu

Writer, Director

Yasujiro Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu has often been called the “most Japanese” of Japan’s great directors. From 1927, the year of his debut for Shochiku studios, to 1962, when, a year before his death at age sixty, he made his final film, Ozu consistently explored the rhythms and tensions of a country trying to reconcile modern and traditional values, especially as played out in relations between the generations. Though he is best known for his sobering 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story, the apex of his portrayals of the changing Japanese family, Ozu began his career in the thirties, in a more comedic, though still socially astute, mode, with such films as I Was Born, But . . . and Dragnet Girl. He then gradually mastered the domestic drama during the war years and afterward, employing both physical humor, as in Good Morning, and distilled drama, as in Late Spring, Early Summer, and Floating Weeds. Though Ozu was discovered relatively late in the Western world, his trademark rigorous style—static shots, often from the vantage point of someone sitting low on a tatami mat; patient pacing; moments of transcendence as represented by the isolated beauty of everyday objects—has been enormously influential among directors seeking a cinema of economy and poetry.

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