Original scenery of family separation
In “I Was Born, But….”, a track runs in front of the garden of the main character's family's new home, and the brothers of the family walk along this track every morning to go to the elementary school they are transferring. However, a railroad crossing stood in the way like a checkpoint on the way to school. When the brothers cross this railroad crossing, they are in the area of influence of the local bad boys. In other words, it is another world for the brothers. The drama of “I Was Born, But….” revolves around this one point, how the brothers cross this railroad crossing.
I would like to present one interesting fact here. When Ozu moved to Matsusaka in the early 1910s, the road from Ozu's house to the elementary school was crossed by railroad tracks, and Ozu had to cross this railroad crossing every morning to get to the elementary school. For Ozu, this railroad crossing that appears in front of his eyes every morning was, so to speak, a completely new landscape brought about by his move. For Ozu, the railroad crossing was a key image that brought back memories of his family move and the resulting separation of his family, of his childhood living in a rural area, where he was separated from his father and elder brother.
Railroad crossings appear repeatedly in Ozu films, which include, in addition to the aforementioned “I Was Born, But….”, “Early Summer”, “A Mother Should Be Loved”, “There Was a Father”, and “Tokyo Twilight”. But if you go back further, railroad crossings also appeared in “Fighting Friends Japanese Style ”(1929) and the screenplay for “Beauty's Sorrows ”(1931), adapted by James Maki and Ikeda Tadao. (The print and negative of “Beauty's Sorrows ”is said to have been lost.) If you follow each of these films one by one, you can clearly discern a consistent meaning in them.
In other words, in Ozu movies, as soon as the railroad crossing image appears, the main character's family is forced to move or be separated, or one of the family members dies.
First, in the case of “Early Summer”. In a scene near the end, the railroad crossing that appears in this scene is a symbolic and representative image of the separation of families that is often depicted in Ozu's films. In this scene, the elderly father (Sugai Ichiro) of the protagonist's family who lives in Kamakura goes out of buying feed for the birds. He passes a gravestone on the side of the road and soon comes to a railroad crossing. Then the barrier goes down, and he sits down on a stone by the roadside and waits for the train to pass. A train passes by with a roaring sound. The barrier goes up smoothly. He remains in the same position, sighs, and looks up at the sky.
Ozu said the following about “Early Summer”.
I directed it in such a way as to leave a blank space without pushing it all the way. However, those who understand should understand.
Indeed, even in “Early Summer”, this railroad crossing scene in particular is open to a wide range of interpretations, allowing viewers to come up with a variety of understandings. This is because “Early Summer” takes a dramatic turn after the appearance of a railroad crossing image that itself has no meaning. The sketches of the family's life, which had been accumulated at a slow pace up until then, suddenly rush forward like a torrent toward the family's dispersion after this railroad crossing scene. In other words, the youngest daughter (Hara Setsuko) leaves to Akita Prefecture to get married, the elderly couple retires to Yamato (present-day Nara Prefecture), and the eldest brother (Ryu Chishu) opens a clinic.
Next is the case of “A Mother Should Be Loved”. An upper-class family in financial crisis due to the sudden death of their father sells their mansion in the exclusive residential area of Tokyo and moves to a house in the suburbs. During the move, the shots of a railroad crossing appeared. This appears twice. Also, just in front of the house in the suburbs where this family has moved, there are railroad tracks, similar to “I Was Born, But….”, and there are shots of trains passing over the tracks.
In the case of “There Was a Father”, there is a scene in which a father (Ryu Chishu), who has resigned from his job as a teacher, arrives with his son in the town of Ueda in Shinshu and eats at a restaurant. A shot of a railroad crossing appeared just before that.
In the case of “Tokyo Twilight”, the place where the youngest daughter (Arima Ineko) committed suicide is a railroad crossing itself, which is right next to the Ramen shop where she often stopped by in search of her lover before committing suicide.
In the case of “Fighting Friends Japanese Style”, the final scene in which two fighting friends see off the train carrying their rival and his new wife is in front of a railroad crossing.
The footage of “Beauty's Sorrows”, whose film was lost, cannot be verified, but according to the script, there's a scene where the main character (Okada Tokihiko) asks a woman (Inoue Yukiko) in front of a railroad crossing with a barrier down, “Don't you want to go to Tokyo?”
What these films have in common is that railroad crossings are placed as if they were symbols that foretell the separation of families that will occur as a result of a move or a move triggered by the death of a family member.
In “Early Summer”, the elderly father decides to retire to Yamato when his youngest daughter gets married. However, no specific lines or actions were shown to indicate that he had decided to move. What appeared instead was a railroad crossing with a barrier down.
In “Tokyo Twilight”, the mother moves to Hokkaido after her youngest daughter commits suicide at a railroad crossing.
In “There Was a Father”, the father and his son move to Ueda, and after the train crossing scene, the father moves further to Tokyo in search of a job, and his son ends up living apart from each other as he enters a junior high school dormitory.
In “Fighting Friends Japanese Style” and in “Beauty’s Sorrows,” a railroad crossing literally became a place for the protagonists to part ways.
To be sure, the railroad crossing image is not exclusive to Ozu films. For example, in “Hideko the Bus Conductor” (1941) directed by Naruse Mikio, there is a memorable scene in which Takamine Hideko sees off a train carrying a novelist returning to Tokyo at a railroad crossing. However, in the case of Ozu's film, the railroad crossing image appears as a visual representation that inevitably invites Ozu's own childhood experience of moving and the resulting separation of his family. For the protagonists in Ozu's films, railroad crossings are the dividing line between Tokyo and a foreign land far away. They are faced with a railroad crossing, desperately wishing to return to Tokyo, but repeatedly giving up in vain.
The two parallel bars of a railroad crossing and their vertical movement were vividly imprinted in Yasujiro's eyes. This visual memory will eventually be transformed into the similar character placement and composition characteristic of Ozu's films, and will continue to be etched onto the screen over and over again.
