Yasujiro Ozu Filmography

Born:
December 12, 1903 in Tokyo, Japan
Occupation:
Director, Screenwriter
Biography:
Yasujiro Ozu has been widely touted as the most Japanese of Japanese film directors. In fact, Japanese distributors initially refused to release Ozu's work abroad, fearing that the West wouldn't appreciate its subtle beauty at a time when films of Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi were winning...Read More
  • An Autumn Afternoon

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Shima Iwashita, Shin-Ichiro Mikami, Keiji Sada, Mariko Okada, Nobuo Nakamura, Chishu Ryu

    Synopsis: Director Yasujiro Ozu's final film, and a rare outing in color for him, continues his quietly observed explorations of family dynamics in postwar Japan. Frequent Ozu star Chishu Ryu plays Shuhei Hirayama, an aging widower whose three children each depend upon him in varying degrees. The eldest Read More

    1962
  • Early Autumn

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Ganjiro Nakamura, Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, Michiyo Aratama, Chieko Naniwa

    Synopsis: The highly accomplished Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu demonstrates his stylistic touch for deceptive simplicity, rapier wit, and nuances of melancholy in this well-wrought drama about a man in the declining years of his life. Manbei Kohayagawa (Ganjiro Nakamura) has a rich life on three different Read More

    1961
  • Late Autumn

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Nobuo Nakamura

    Synopsis: Director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63) was famous for dramas which focused tightly on the character of family members and friends making sacrifices for one another's happiness. In Akibiyori, a still-beautiful widow has a daughter who is sufficiently past the favored age for marriage to be in danger of Read More

    1960
  • Floating Weeds

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Machiko Kyo, Ganjiro Nakamura, Haruko Sugimura, Hiroshi Kawaguchi

    Synopsis: This 1959 Ozu production centers on the likable but fallible leader of an itinerant acting troupe ("floating weeds" being the Japanese name for such groups), Kimajuro, played brilliantly by Ganjiro Nakamura. The film opens on a lazy, stagnant river as the troupe lays spread about on a boat deck Read More

    1959
  • Good Morning

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Synopsis: Yasujiro Ozu's Ohayo (Good Morning) is a comedy about a pair of boys who bring much trouble to their family and community by refusing to do very basic activities. The boys desire a television, but their father refuses. They are so insistent that the father eventually commands them to be quiet. Read More

    1959
  • Equinox Flower

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Shin Saburi

    Synopsis: Equinox Flower (Higanbana) is one of the most lighthearted of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu's "home dramas." Motivating the plot is a young girl's impulsive decision to marry. The girl's father had always expected that his daughter would first ask his permission to be wed, and indeed wait until Read More

    1958
  • Tokyo Boshoku

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Synopsis: As Yasujiro Ozu's final black-and-white picture, the 1957 Tokyo Twilight explores the emotional landscapes and nuances within a strained Japanese family. Two daughters - Akiko (Ineko Arima) and Takako (Setsuko Hara) - grew up under the sold guardianship of their father, Mr. Sugiyama (Chishu Ryu) Read More

    1957
  • Early Spring

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Synopsis: Like most of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, Early Spring is a deceptively simple family drama: a middle-aged office worker, bored with dreary routines of his job and his marriage, succumbs to a brief fling with the office flirt. His wife inevitably discovers his infidelity, but when he accepts a Read More

    1956
  • Tokyo Story

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, So Yamamura, Setsuko Hara, Kyoko Kagawa

    Synopsis: As with much of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, a plot summary of this film does not do justice to the emotional power that Ozu lends to this sad, understated tale. An elderly couple, Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi Hirayama (Chieko Higashiyama), leaves their small coastal village in southern Japan Read More

    1953
  • Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Synopsis: Re-released in 1972, Ochazuke No Aji, or The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, is one of those films whose transcendent simplicity transforms an ordinary story into something special. A man with very simple tastes and habits meets with growing exasperation from his more sophisticated wife. She treats Read More

    1952
  • Early Summer

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Chikage Awashima, Kuniko Miyake, Ichiro Sugai

    Synopsis: Writer/director Yasujiro Ozu combines two of his favorite themes--the culture clashes in modern Japan and the emergence of the independent Japanese woman--in Early Summer (Bakushu). Setsuko Hara plays a young woman of the post-war era who is promised in an arranged marriage. But too much has Read More

    1951
  • Munekata kyodai

    Crew: Director

    1950
  • Late Spring

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Synopsis: Veteran Japanese writer/director Yasujiro Ozu's second postwar production was 1949's Late Spring or Banshun. Chisu Ryu plays another of Ozu's realistic middle-class types, this time a widower with a marriageable daughter. Not wishing to see the girl resign herself to spinsterhood, Ryu pretends Read More

    1949
  • Kaze No Naka No Mendori

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    1948
  • The Record of a Tenement Gentleman

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Actors: Chishu Ryu, Choko Iida, Takeshi Sakamoto

    Synopsis: In this classic shomin-geki ("story of middle-class life"), Ozu relates the slightly comic tale of a boy abandoned by his parents in postwar Japan. After his desertion, the little boy is discovered by a "tenement gentleman," who, in a gesture of kindness, decides to bring the boy back home Read More

    1947
  • Chichi Ariki

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    1942
  • Todake No Kyodai

    Crew: Director, Screenwriter

    Synopsis: This early-'40s effort from legendary director Yasujiro Ozu prefigures not only the filmmaker's own masterpiece Tokyo Story in terms of mood and story, but also such sprawling family-ensembles as The End of Summer and Yi Yi. Todake No Kyodai (aka The Toda Brothers and Sisters) opens with the Read More

    1941
  • What Did the Lady Forget?

    Crew: Director

    1937
  • Hitori Musuko

    Crew: Director

    1936
  • College Is a Nice Place

    Crew: Director

    Synopsis: This early talkie feature from Yasujiro Ozu deals with the difficult transition from the end of adolescence to adulthood. A group of friends in their final year of college prepare for graduation. Buoyed by their hopes for the future, they celebrate and have a good time. After graduation passes Read More

    1936
  • A Mother Should Be Loved

    Crew: Director

    1934
  • Ukigusa Monogatari

    Crew: Director

    Synopsis: One of Yasujiro Ozu's early masterworks, it concerns an actor, Kihachi (Takeshi Sakomoto) leading a struggling theater troupe who returns to the provincial town where he fathered a child years before. He seeks out his son, now a young man, and the woman who bore him, spending a great deal of time Read More

    1934
  • Hijosen No Onna

    Crew: Director

    1933
  • Woman of Tokyo

    Crew: Director

    Synopsis: In this melodrama of sibling love, an older sister must struggle to raise her younger brother on her own. Wanting only the best for her brother, who shows much promise, the sister works herself to the bone providing for him. His schooling costs more than she can afford, however, and she turns to Read More

    1933
  • Passing Fancy

    Crew: Director

    1933
  • I Was Born, But...

    Crew: Director

    Actors: Hideo Sugawara, Tatsuo Saito

    Synopsis: One of the last great Japanese silent films and one of director Yasujiro Ozu's first masterpieces, this gentle family comedy contrasts the complexities of adulthood with a child's innocence. Two young brothers, who are the unquestioned alpha-males of fellow classmates in their suburban Tokyo Read More

    1932
  • Haru Wa Gofujin Kara

    Crew: Director

    1932
  • Until the Day We Meet Again

    Crew: Director

    Synopsis: Until the Day We Meet Again was one of Yasujiro Ozu's very first pictures. Set over the course of a single night, the film explores the relationship of a young man and his love, a prostitute. The young man must leave for the army first thing in the morning, so the two sit up discussing their Read More

    1932
  • 1932
  • Tokyo No Gassho

    Crew: Director

    Synopsis: Tokyo Chorus is a dark comedy about unemployment and family in prewar Japan. The film opens with a group of young men at their school graduation. After saying goodbye to their teacher, they are off into the working world. The story follows a single man and his difficulties at his job. He cannot Read More

    1931
  • Beauty's Sorrows

    Crew: Director

    Synopsis: Beauty's Sorrows is about a classic love triangle. Two men vie for the attentions of a young woman, the daughter of a famous artist. A study in contrasts, the men approach the woman from two different directions: One is an unrepentant womanizer, the other is an intellectual and romantic. Read More

    1931
  • Lady and the Beard

    Crew: Director

    1931
  • I Flunked, But....

    Crew: Director

    1930
  • Ashi Ni Sawatta Koun

    Crew: Director

    1930
  • Revengeful Spirit of Eros

    Crew: Director

    1930
  • Young Miss

    Crew: Director

    1930
  • A Straightforward Boy

    Crew: Director

    1929
  • I Graduated, But...

    Crew: Director

    1929

Movie data provided by AMG

Yasujiro Ozu  not available

© 2007 Getty Images

Add this Person to Favorites