Yasujiro Ozu Filmography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Munekata kyodai

Crew: Director

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

Kaze No Naka No Mendori

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

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

Chichi Ariki

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

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

What Did the Lady Forget?

Crew: Director

Hitori Musuko

Crew: Director

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

A Mother Should Be Loved

Crew: Director

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

Hijosen No Onna

Crew: Director

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

Passing Fancy

Crew: Director

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

Haru Wa Gofujin Kara

Crew: Director

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

Where Are the Dreams of Youth?

Crew: Director

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

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

Lady and the Beard

Crew: Director

I Flunked, But....

Crew: Director

Ashi Ni Sawatta Koun

Crew: Director

Revengeful Spirit of Eros

Crew: Director

Young Miss

Crew: Director

A Straightforward Boy

Crew: Director

I Graduated, But...

Crew: Director