Yasujiro Ozu

Equinox Flower

Equinox Flower

Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.

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Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1958
  • 118 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese

Available In

Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu

Eclipse 3: Late Ozu

DVD Box Set

5 Discs

$48.96

Equinox Flower
Cast
Shin Saburi
Wataru Hirayama
Ineko Arima
Setsuko Hirayama
Kinuyo Tanaka
Kiyoko
Teiji Takahashi
Shotaro Kondo
Keiji Sata
Masahiko Taniguchi
Miyuki Kuwano
Hisako Hirayama
Chishu Ryu
Shukichi Mikami
Chieko Naniwa
Hatsu Sasaki
Nobuo Nakamura
Toshihiko Kawai
Credits
Director
Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay
Kogo Noda
Screenplay
Yasujiro Ozu
Based on the novel by
Ton Satomi
Cinematography
Yuharu Atsuta
Music
Kojun Saito
Art direction
Tatsuo Hamada
Editing
Yoshiyasu Hamamura

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Explore

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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