Chapter 4 Father
Sensitive and lonely
Many documents say that from 1913 to 1923, when Ozu lived in Matsusaka with his family ,mother, younger sister, and younger brother, only his father, Toranosuke, remained in Tokyo as the branch manager of Yuasa-ya. However, in actually, Toranosuke did not stay in Tokyo for the entire period; he once moved to Matsusaka with his family, and then lived alone in Tokyo for about half of each year to run the store.
The following is the testimony of Ozu's elder brother Shinichi.
In fact, my father also moved to his hometown, Matsusaka, with his family. However, he was transferred to Tokyo for about half of each year and lived there. There was a manager at the store in Tokyo, and my father took turns working with the manager in Tokyo.
While the manager was in charge of the store in Tokyo, Toranosuke left the store management to him and returned to Matsusaka. In Yasujiro's diary, it is written that on the day his father returned to Matsusaka, he and his elder brother went to the station to greet their father.
My brother and I went to the station to pick up our father.
My father returned home by taking a direct train from Tokyo to Yamada (present-day Ise City), arriving at 9 o'clock, with no transfers. (December 30, 1918)
Compared to his elder brother, who was old enough to enter a junior high school under the old system in the year he moved, Yasujiro was still an elementary school pupil, and the fact that his father was often absent made an even stronger impression on him than it actually was. What was Yasujiro's state of mind, growing up in a home where his father was absent for at least half of each year? A close reading of his diary from his childhood reveals that Yasujiro had a very sensitive personality and felt very lonely at being separated from his family.
In 1918, his elder brother Shinichi graduated from Mie Prefectural 1st Junior High School (present-day Tsu High School) and entered Kobe High School of Commerce (present-day Kobe University Faculty of Economics). Shinichi would return home to Matsusaka during each holidays, and as the holidays drew to a close, he returned to his boarding house in Kobe. As New Year's holiday and spring vacation come to an end, his brother finally leaves for Kobe. As the day approaches for his beloved brother to leave Matsusaka, young Yasujiro, feeling increasingly lonely and bitter, writes in his diary the following:
My brother is finally going to Kobe tomorrow. I'll be lonely again as my brother leaves. (January 8th)
My brother is finally leaving for Kobe.
Without my brother, I feel a deep sense of loneliness as I am forced to attend school starting tomorrow.
I'm finally going to study tomorrow. My goal is Kobe High School of Commerce. (January 9th)
Taking my brother away from me hurts more than anything. Inui and I saw off my brother and Katayama as they were leaving on the 12 o'clock train (April 10th)
These texts clearly show his sentimental temperament. At the same time, it provides a good analogy for Ozu's inner thoughts when his father leaves for Tokyo.
Perhaps it was a memory of his father returning home during the New Year. The words Ozu said in his later years remembering his father remain.
I think whether you feel alcohol hot or cold is due to genetics. My father was very fond of alcohol. When I was a child I would go up to him, and then he let me sip a little, and the smell of alcohol would fill my nose. I felt that this is what alcohol is like. When my father, who was drinking, got up from his seat, I playfully sipped his drink. After all, the smell of alcohol hit my nose. I thought this is what alcohol is like. Eventually, my father died. Now that I'm old enough to drink, I remember my father nostalgically while drinking.
The fathers in Ozu's movies almost always drink alcohol. For example, in “A Story of Floating Weeds”, Kihachi (Sakamoto Takeshi) drinks a sake cup and looks delicious at the house of a woman he hasn't seen in a long time. Nakamura Ganjiro in the re-film version of “Floating Weeds”, the sake brewer's old boss (Nakamura Ganjiro) in “The End of Summer” (1961), an elder father (Ryu Chishu) visiting an old friend in “Tokyo Story”, and ex-teacher (Tono Eijiro) in “Autumn Afternoon” - how happy they look when they are drunk and inebriated. They were probably the father figures that lived in Ozu's own memories, or perhaps they were Ozu's own self-portrait.
