Kamata Nonsense
On September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake struck Tokyo and Yokohama. Kamata studio was also affected by the disaster, so the studio's staff, including Nomura Hotei, temporarily evacuated to Shimokamo studio in Kyoto. Shimazu Yasujiro was the only director left at Kamata, and Ozu remained at Kamata as a member of the Shimazu team along with Saito Torajiro. Fortunately, the damage to the studio was minor, and most of the staff who had evacuated to Kyoto returned to Kamata by the end of January the following year, leaving only a samurai drama department staff behind.
On July 1, 1924, when Nomura Hotei became the head of the Shimokamo studio, Managing Director Kido Shiro was appointed as the head of the Kamata studio.
Kido insisted on breaking away from the modern drama style of Shimpa tragedy that had dominated Shochiku films up until then, and declared as follows:
I'm not going to completely deny movies that bring tears to your eyes. However, movies like that are boring. Entertainment should be bright and healthy. Let's aim to make movies that make people laugh and learn about life by exploring the contradictions and ironies within society and the family.
Kido has promoted the creation of films that warmly, brightly, and realistically look at everyday events and life through the eyes of ordinary people. In order to strengthen the production staff, he would visit the department of scriptwriter whenever he had free time and engage in film discussions with the members. From such lively discussions and a free atmosphere, new plans and shooting techniques were born one after another. The Shimpa tragic modern drama that had dominated until then was in decline, and in its place was a family drama filled with everyday realism, modernity, humor, and humanity that became the mainstream of Kamata. This is what is known as the Kamata-Style, and many young directors have emerged from this trend, including Shimazu Yasujiro, Saito Torajiro, Gosho Heinosuke, Shimizu Hiroshi, Naruse Mikio, and Ozu Yasujiro.
Under these circumstances, in November 1927, the samurai drama department of Shochiku, which was considered to be one step lower than contemporary drama one, was abolished. Three months earlier, in August, Ozu, who had received an offer to be a film director of the samurai drama department, began filming contemporary dramas with Okubo Tadamoto, who was also a director of the samurai drama department, and his pupil Saito Torajiro. Those contemporary dramas are the group of short comedies called Kamata Nonsense centered in Okubo. And Ozu, a novice director at the time who was at the bottom of the hierarchy at the studio, first distinguished himself with works in this genre.
Between his promotion as director and the abolition of the samurai drama department, Ozu made his only samurai drama, “Sword of Penitence” (1927). However, just as the film was about to be completed, Ozu was called up to serve in the military reserves, and the first scene that had not been shot was left to Saito Torajiro to complete.
After being discharged from the army and returning to work at the studio, Ozu turned down six or seven film projects offered by his company, and in 1928 made his second film, “Dreams of Youth”, based on his own original story and adaptation. The script, negative film, and prints of this film are all said to have been lost, so referring to the introduction of the film at the time and the review by Kitagawa Fuyuhiko, it seems that it was a comedy depicting the daily life of a student living in a boarding house. However, rather than falling into the trap of being a mere comedy or a film that follows the current trends, the film seems to depict a humorous yet extremely bitter humor through the eyes of the sarcastic Ozu.
According to Kitagawa's article, when the main character, a student, uses alphabet-shaped biscuits to line up the letters “I love you” on a book, his girlfriend, who was restless, also lines up the biscuits with the letters “W.C.” and then rushes to the communal toilet. This kind of portrayal is perhaps a gift inherited from his master Okubo, who was known for being “splendid, free-spirited, and intelligent with a rare samurai-like temper and a sense of humor”. Already in his second film, the taste for dirty jokes that would later explode in “Early Summer”, in “Good Morning”, in “Late Autumn”, and in “An Autumn Afternoon” is bursting forth.
Ozu was an employee director at a film company, and he was a novice director who had only made one film so far. “Dreams of Youth”, which such Ozu finally directed after continuing to defy his company's orders, became the beginning of a series of films that he would make repeatedly.
“Dreams of Youth” was followed by “Days of Youth”, “I Graduated, But…”, “I Flunked, But…”, “Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?”, “College is a Nice Place”, and “Spring Comes from The Ladies” - The main characters in these films are consistently students from rural areas. Afterwards, some of them, like the protagonists of a serial drama, graduate from college and find low-paying office jobs through hardship, while others flunk out or leave the city.
However, Ozu explains why he often made films with student protagonists as follows:
Many of my works feature students as main characters. If a young actor were to be used, the main character would have to be an office worker or a student. However, the types of office workers at that time were limited. On that point, students didn't get into scuffle with police officers like they do today, and they were carefree and easy to make a story out of nonsense movies.
Indeed, Ozu was still a novice director at the time, so he was unable to cast high-paid star actors in his own films, and was in a position where he had to respond to company orders in a short period of time. Therefore, there is some truth to Ozu's explanation.
Ozu eventually began making a series of films depicting the life after that of young people who graduated from college and became office workers, while also making student comedies. These films were later called The Shoshimin films (films featuring the lower middle-class or petit bourgeois), starting with “The Life of an Office Worker” (1929). The main characters in these films are young people who have graduated from college. Although they finally manage to get a job, they face various hardships and their carefree and innocent days become a distant past.
For example, the main characters in Ozu's films, such as in “The Luck Which Touched the Leg” (1930), in“ Tokyo Chorus”, in “I Was Born, But….”,in “Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?” and in “Early Spring” become subservient office workers who are sensitive to their superiors' mood, as soon as they graduate from college. Some of them, like the main characters in “The Life of an Office Worker” and in “Tokyo Chorus”, are suddenly fired and lose their jobs, while others, like the main character in “I Graduated, But…. ” are unable to tell their family that they are unemployed.
The main character of “The Only Son”, a representative work of Shoshimin films, is not an unemployed man, but a poorly paid night school teacher who lives a poor life with his wife and baby in a tenement house on the edge of a waste incinerator lined with chimneys. He (Himori Shinichi) wants to entertain his mother (Iida Choko), who has come to Tokyo from the countryside, dreaming of her son's successful career, but he has no money. So he borrows money from his co-worker and takes his mother to watch a movie. However, his mother, who must have watched a foreign movie for the first time in her life, falls asleep while the movie is showing. Just for information, this description is based on Ozu's real experience. Ozu's diary on January 17, 1933 states that when he took his mother, Asaye, to the movie theater, she fell asleep from the beginning to the end.
The son, who had not informed his mother of the miserable reality of life in Tokyo, excuses himself by saying, “The reason I can't get a satisfying job is because there are too many people in Tokyo”. “The Only Son” wasn't the first time Ozu used this line in his own works, as it had already appeared in the screenplays for “Spring Comes from the Ladies” and “College is a Nice Place”. Ozu seems to have been particular about this line, which could be seen as an excuse or an evasion for his parents.
A young person, who came to Tokyo from a rural area with the expectations of his parents, but was unable to find a satisfying job and felt sorry and guilty for letting his parents down. The prototype of the image of young person that underlies Ozu's films already appeared in his first script, “Kawaraban(Newspapers published in the Edo period) Kachikachi-yama” (1927), which Ozu submitted at the request of Kido Shiro ,the head of Kamata Studio.
The main characters of this script are an elder brother who is a Goyo-kiki (an assistant to police officer) and a younger sister who is a Geisha from Fukagawa. On the surface, the elder brother is good to his sickly mother, but he is actually a pickpocket leader and hides the fact from his mother. Although the film version was not made because the content was too plain, the script itself was well-received and Ozu was given the chance to be promoted to director. By the way, this script was later passed on to Inoue Kintaro, a film director who belonged to Kyoto Studio, and a revised version was made into a movie.
The bad son who appeared in “Kawaraban Kachikachi-yama” continue to appear as an essential personality in Ozu's works up to “The Only Son”, with the exception of a few films such as “Wife Lost” (1928), which he directed under company orders.
Why do bad sons repeatedly appear in Ozu movies? And why are almost all of them from rural areas? Of course, the reason behind Ozu's continued portrayal of such young people was the chronically severe recession of the early Showa era, when it was said that there were no jobs available even after graduating from college. However, even in “Tokyo Story”, which can be said to be a postwar remake of “The Only Son”, Ozu still focuses on the relationship between children living dull lives in the outskirts of Tokyo and their elderly parents who are dissatisfied with their current situation.
In real life, Ozu almost got expelled from junior high school, failed his college entrance exams two years in a row, and jumped into the film industry, which at the time was not considered a respectable job. Ozu, who continued to feel guilty and remorseful for being so bad to his parents, drew a self-deprecating caricature by assigning himself to the protagonists from rural areas. This is how early student comedies and the Shoshimin films, which are the world filled with funny but then with sad, were born.
It was in 1923 that the elementary school teacher (Ryu Chishu) in “The Only Son” ran away from his rural village, yearning for Tokyo. That very year, Ozu actually resigned from his substitute teaching position and returned to Tokyo. This is significant point that should not be overlooked when interpreting “The Only Son”. This year, Ozu returned to Tokyo for the first time in 10 years and spent nearly half a year doing nothing, and relying on his close relative's connection, he finally joined Kamata Studio in early August.
Ozu's words about his family's reaction at that time remain.
It was just before the Great Kanto Earthquake that I joined Shochiku. At that time, my father insisted that I should go on to college and study, and would not allow me to work at a film studio. However, I begged him to let me use his money to enter the film world if he had the money for me to go to college. At that time, it was impossible to enter the film industry without being strong-minded. Around that time, my grandmother went to the movie theater and watched a movie directed by Shimazu Yasujiro, and she said this. ‟ Yasujiro became a filmmaker, but perhaps he was embarrassed about becoming a filmmaker, so he changed his name from Ozu Yasujiro to Shimazu Yasujiro.”
According to Ozu's words, becoming a member of the filming studio was the act of a bad son, and in the worst case scenario, he could have been disowned. Some of Ozu's acquaintances pretended to work at a bank because they wouldn't allow it if their parents found out. Director Ushihara Kiyohiko, who joined Shochiku Kamata three years before Ozu, describes his own experience as an example of how joining a film studio was looked down upon by society.
I had been given a deferment from conscription until I graduated from university, but when I took the conscription test in Kumamoto Prefecture, my hometown, I was treated in an unusual way. When I entered the hearing testing room after completing the various tests, the young military doctor who was the examiner looked at me with obvious contempt. When I covered my right ear as instructed, the military doctor whispered, “A-Sa-Ku-Sa (Asakusa, one of the leading entertainment districts)”.
When I loudly repeated “Asakusa!” and then covered my left ear, the military doctor said “Ka-Tsu-Do (which means movies)” in an even quieter voice. When I loudly repeated “Katsudo!”, the military doctor sneered and yelled, “Is it funny?”, as if he had completely looked down on me.
Although I was in perfect health, I was not drafted. I was probably seen as a weakling who was beneath contempt.
There were frequent rumors that my parents had severed ties with me. I'm sure that many people who entered the film industry at that time had similar circumstances to my own.
