60 Fun Facts About Yasujirō Ozu

Tokyo Story, voted the greatest film of all time by directors in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, was released in which year?

Japanese exporters judged it "too Japanese" to sell abroad, and it was not screened abroad until 1957.

Ozu's trademark low camera position, roughly at the eye level of someone kneeling on a mat, is known as what?

His camera was often even lower, one or two feet off the floor, requiring special tripods and raised sets.

Which studio hired Ozu as a cinematography assistant in 1923 and employed him for virtually his whole career?

His uncle acted as go-between; his father was against it.

Setsuko Hara played a young woman named Noriko in three Ozu films. Which is NOT one of the so-called Noriko trilogy?

The three Norikos are unrelated characters linked only by their status as single women in postwar Japan; in the fourth film Hara plays a widowed mother named Akiko.

Which actor appeared in at least 32 of Ozu's 54 films and shorts, including every one of his post-war features?

He was only 32 when he played a failed middle-aged schoolteacher in his 1936 breakthrough, the first of many "elderly" roles.

What was Ozu's last film, released in 1962?

The film's Japanese title means "The Taste of Sanma", a type of fish; Ozu died the following year.

Ozu died in 1963 of throat cancer on which notable day?

He was born on 12 December 1903 and was a heavy smoker.

The grave Ozu shares with his mother at Engaku-ji in Kamakura bears no name, only a single character meaning what?

The character is mu, a key term in Zen Buddhism.

Who co-wrote Ozu's first film in 1927 and then thirteen of his fifteen post-war films?

The pair reportedly measured a script's progress by how many bottles of sake they had emptied.

Ozu and his co-writer famously measured the progress of a screenplay by counting what?

Ozu never married and lived with his mother until she died in 1961.

Which lens focal length did Ozu use throughout his career?

It is usually considered the lens closest to human vision.

When Ozu moved to colour, which process did he choose because he felt it captured reds better?

He turned down Kodak and Fujifilm stock for the German product.

What was Ozu's first colour film, released in 1958?

Japan's first colour film, Keisuke Kinoshita's Carmen Comes Home, had come out seven years earlier.

Ozu's 1932 silent comedy about two brothers disillusioned with their father was later loosely remade in colour as Good Morning. What was the 1932 film?

It was the first Ozu film to win the Kinema Junpo award for best film of the year.

In Good Morning (1959), two boys go on a silence strike against adults because they want their parents to buy what?

They had been sneaking to a neighbour's house to watch televised sumo.

Ozu's 1959 colour film about a travelling kabuki troupe was a remake of which of his own 1934 silents?

The 1934 original follows a travelling kabuki troupe and won the Kinema Junpo best-film award.

Floating Weeds was Ozu's only film for which studio, made after Good Morning fulfilled his yearly obligation to his home studio?

The cast was mostly Daiei contract players and the story was moved to a summer setting in seaside Wakayama.

Which cinematographer, famous for Rashomon, shot Floating Weeds in place of Ozu's regular cameraman Yuharu Atsuta?

Ozu said working with him taught him that different colours needed different amounts of light.

Tokyo Story was loosely inspired by which 1937 American film directed by Leo McCarey?

Both films follow elderly parents visiting grown children who have no time for them.

In Tokyo Story, the elderly Hirayama couple travel to Tokyo from which town in western Japan?

Their eldest son runs a suburban clinic and their eldest daughter a hair salon; neither has time for them.

In Tokyo Story, the busy children pack their parents off to a hot-spring resort at which town?

The nightlife keeps the old couple awake and they return early, to their daughter's annoyance.

At the end of Tokyo Story, what memento of his late wife does Shūkichi give to his daughter-in-law Noriko?

Noriko contemplates it on the train back to Tokyo in the film's closing scenes.

Tokyo Story finally gained international recognition when it won the inaugural Sutherland Trophy in 1958 at which festival?

American critics only caught up after a 1972 screening in New York.

Which actress played the sharp-tongued eldest daughter Shige in Tokyo Story and won a Mainichi award for it?

She was another Ozu regular, appearing in Late Spring, Early Summer and Floating Weeds among others.

Late Spring (1949) was based on the short novel Father and Daughter by which writer?

Ton Satomi supplied the source stories for two of Ozu's later colour films instead.

In Late Spring, Aunt Masa says Noriko's proposed suitor Satake resembles which Hollywood star, a favourite of Noriko's?

Occupation censors first cut the reference, then restored it once they realised the comparison was flattering.

The most-discussed "pillow shot" in all of Ozu is a lingering image in Late Spring of what object at a Kyoto inn?

It follows a night-time conversation between father and daughter and precedes a scene at the Ryōan-ji rock garden.

In the final scene of Late Spring, the newly alone father Shukichi sits down and slowly does what?

The peel drops to the floor in one long ribbon; the shot is one of the most famous endings in cinema.

Late Spring opens with which traditional scene?

Father and daughter later attend a Noh play together, where Noriko's jealousy is triggered.

In Early Summer (1951), Noriko surprises her family by agreeing to marry a widowed doctor being posted to which rural northern region?

Noriko and her friend Aya had earlier mocked the region's accent.

Ozu's first film with a dialogue soundtrack, released in 1936, was which?

It arrived five years after Japan's first talkie, Heinosuke Gosho's The Neighbor's Wife and Mine.

What pen name did Ozu use for his screenwriting credit on early films such as Young Miss?

Young Miss was also his first film to make Kinema Jumpo's Best Ten, at third place.

Ozu's first film as director, Sword of Penitence (1927), was made in which department of his studio?

The film is lost; he was called up for reserve duty mid-shoot and another director had to finish it.

Which 1928 Ozu film was the first to use the low camera position that became his trademark?

It was released during Shochiku's run of cheap "no star" comedies ordered by studio head Shiro Kido.

At the age of three Ozu fell into a coma for several days after developing which illness?

His mother Asae nursed him through it; he lived with her until her death in 1961.

At 17, Ozu was thrown out of his school dormitory after being accused of doing what?

He then had to commute to school by train; he did skip classes to watch films such as Quo Vadis.

Which 1916 American film convinced the teenage Ozu that he wanted to be a director?

He was then a judo-practising boarder at what is now Ujiyamada High School in Mie Prefecture.

Ozu was conscripted in 1937 and spent two years in China. What rank had he reached when he was promoted in June 1938?

His infantry regiment handled chemical weapons; his published diaries refer to their use.

Which fellow director, stationed near Ozu in Nanjing in 1938, died of illness there that September?

Yamanaka was 28 and had made Humanity and Paper Balloons the year before.

In 1943 Ozu was sent to Singapore to make a propaganda documentary about which figure?

He spent the year reading, playing tennis and watching American films instead, and destroyed all the footage when the war ended.

Which American film particularly impressed Ozu when he watched captured Hollywood prints in Singapore during the war?

After the war he was detained as a civilian and worked on a rubber plantation before repatriation.

Which seaside inn was Ozu's favoured place for writing scripts, up to and including Tokyo Story?

Later he and Noda wrote in a mountain house at Tateshina in Nagano called Unkosō.

From 1955 until his death Ozu served as president of which organisation?

In 1959 he also became the first person from cinema to win the Japan Art Academy Prize.

Wim Wenders's 1985 documentary about Ozu, which interviews Ozu's cameraman Yuharu Atsuta and his favourite actor, is titled what?

It was shot in spring 1983 and screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.

For Ozu's centenary in 2003, his home studio produced Café Lumière as a homage to Tokyo Story. Who directed it?

Kiarostami's Five (2003) was also inspired by Ozu; Yamada later remade Tokyo Story as Tokyo Family in 2013.

Setsuko Hara, who never married, is known in Japan by what nickname?

She quit acting in 1963, the year Ozu died, and lived in seclusion in Kamakura for the rest of her life.

How many films did Setsuko Hara make with Ozu over their twelve-year collaboration?

She quit acting the year Ozu died and lived in seclusion in Kamakura, refusing interviews and photographs, until 2015.

Ozu's favourite actor, himself the son of a temple priest, later played a Buddhist priest in more than forty entries of which long-running film series?

He played the curmudgeonly but kindly priest from 1969 until his death in 1993.

Tokyo Twilight (1957), the story of two sisters reunited with the mother who abandoned them, holds what place in Ozu's filmography?

Several reviewers consider it the bleakest film he ever made.

Ozu's 1960 film starring Setsuko Hara and Yoko Tsukasa as mother and daughter was Japan's Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film. What happened?

Three middle-aged friends try to marry off a late friend's daughter, played by Yoko Tsukasa, whose mother is Setsuko Hara.

Which 1952 Ozu film about a childless married couple takes its title from the humble dish ochazuke?

Ozu first drafted it in 1939 but shelved it after military censors demanded extensive changes.

Ozu is noted for narrative ellipsis. In his final film, which major event is mentioned but never shown on screen?

The following scene simply refers to it as having already happened, a typical Ozu way of avoiding melodrama.

Ozu was born in 1903 in which district of Tokyo, before being sent as a boy to his father's home town of Matsusaka?

His father managed the family fertiliser business in Nihonbashi.

In the 2002 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest directors of all time, where was Ozu ranked?

His films were rarely shown outside Japan before the 1960s.

In which Mie Prefecture town did Ozu live from 1913 to 1924, sent there by his father?

His family was a branch of the Ozu Yoemon merchant family from Ise; he skipped classes there to watch films like Quo Vadis.

Which 1932 Ozu comedy is hailed as the first notable work of social criticism in Japanese film?

Its story of two brothers disillusioned with their father was loosely remade in colour as Good Morning in 1959.

What was Ozu's first film released after the Second World War, in 1947?

He had returned to Japan in February 1946 after detention in Singapore, where he worked on a rubber plantation.

In 1959 Ozu became the first film figure to receive which Japanese honour?

He also served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan from 1955 until his death.

Which novelist co-wrote Ozu's only television drama, After the End of Youth (1963)?

It followed his final feature, An Autumn Afternoon, released in 1962.

Where did Ozu and Kogo Noda later write scripts in a mountain house called Unkosō?

Ozu stayed in a nearby house called Mugeisō; earlier, the seaside Chigasakikan inn had been his writing base through Tokyo Story.