Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu 1949) VS US Censorship
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- Опубліковано 17 лип 2024
- #latespring
How Yasujirō Ozu's 1949 masterpiece 'Late Spring' (晩春 - Banshun) subtly resisted against US colonial censorship.
Sources:
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower
A Different Postcolonialism: the Cultural Ethics of Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring by Patrick Colm Hogan
Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation by Kyoko Hirano
This makes absolute sense, I remember kurosawa in his autobiography talking about how Ozu calmed him down from storming into the censoring office by praising his work and calming him down by saying something like "if ratings were given from 10 points, I'd give your film a 11/10 score".
He initially was furious because they kept him waiting for hours and also saw two soldiers mimicking some fighting moves from his movie.
I didn’t know this. That’s amazing!
Would never have thought to read Ozu in this way. History is important.
Man, this analysation of this film and its significance in life, history and societal importance hit me hard , given the results of my mother's genealogy results which we received last year that helped confirm years of speculation, whispered beliefs and accusations in my family for years ! We have blood ties through my grand father during the occupational force safter WW2, he was just a stupid kid spreading his seed after the war and kept pictures and letters from women he had encounters with after the war before he met my grandma, apparently I have an aunt and a bunch of cousins I've never met in Japan and Korea SMDH . Another great video !
That’s an amazing bit of history in your family. At the end of the day, occupation personnel in Japan were mostly kids, really. A lot of the US soldiers based in the U.K. during WW2 had lots of flings with British women too.
My great great grandfather was a white colonial officer in India during its British Rule, he not only had a fling with a Punjabi woman - but he brought her back to England.
Wow, I had no idea that Ozu’s script was flagged by censors? If Ozu was worrying them, then I can’t imagine what other filmmakers were experiencing.
Yeah. That’s really the main aim of the video - to show how Ozu was able to quietly rebel against occupation censors.
I don't think these observations are contrived whatsoever. I found them not only likely but very fascinating.
Ozu was a sneaky one.
Excellent analysis, thank you! And I agree it is Ozu's best film. I love all of his films, but Late Spring stands out for me as his most nuanced, most emotional, and having also the most powerful ending (the peeling of the apple) My second favorite is Tokyo Twilight which is often overlooked.
Thank you so much. Tokyo Twilight is also my second favourite too. I agree, it’s always been criminally overlooked - despite being arguably Ozu’s darkest film.
Big fan of your channel and this is a great video. Keep them coming!
Thank you 🙏🏻
Just watched this film today it's very interesting to hear this because I was too focused on the characters and cinematography to think of the historical subtext
The characters and aesthetics are what you should focus on - especially if it’s your first time viewing it - as that’s really what Ozu intended. This video is just an additional footnote for those interested in how creative Ozu was at expressing his vision - even with censorship hurdles.
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory my favourite Ozu film is good morning do you use letterboxd?
As always loved your video even if I don't completely agree with the analysis. For me the greatness of Ozu film has always been about how his movies feels like it just observes rather than comment about anything(which is an accomplishment unlike any other director in my opinion).
Thank you, my friend. I can definitely understand why many may disagree with this analysis. And I agree with you 100%, Ozu was a master at capturing the simple - yet profound - moments of everyday interactions that so many of us overlook.
Colonial iconography was more prominent than the feminist and existential literature, so I definitely appreciated the additional illumination of this Ozu subtext
Wow, great video! Definitely gave me a new perspective on this film and made me love it even more.
Thanks for watching. This info made me love it even more too.
Great vid! Thanks for your fresh perspective on this film!
Thank you. Coming from you, that’s a huge compliment 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory Haha - We learn from each other la! 🤝
@@jessicayeung4746 🙇🏼♂️🙇🏼♂️🙇🏼♂️
Thanks for this perspective
Thank you for watching 🙏🏻
Hope you don't mind if I use this but of knowledge once i write my review of the film?
@@kostajovanovic3711 I don’t mind at all. I think more people should know about it. Let me know when you’ve written your review - I’d love to read it.
Thank you so much! Wonderful video!
Thank you for watching !!!
Very interesting. Any lit rec for further elucidation on Ozu's religious & political ideals?
Thanks buddy. Well, it seems Ozu was quite apolitical and religious - or at the very least “flexible.” ‘Ozu and the poetics of cinema’ by David Bordwell attempts to tackle Ozu’s political and spiritual sensibilities in a different way to how Donald Richie does in his more famous ‘Ozu: His Life and Films’. However, there’s an interesting paper called ‘Rethinking Noriko: marriage narrative as historical allegory in Ozu Yasujiro's The Moon Has Risen and other Occupation-era films’ by Woojeong Joe, which I believe addresses Ozu’s ideas from a more legitimate Eastern perspective.
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory Thanks! Will check them out 👍
"..Ozu's famous gentle and nuanced approach to filmmaking"--BINGO my man.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Given that Ozu is a the only God of Cinema, your points and analysis are angelic :)
Ozu is, without question, the only true God of cinema. And thank you!!!
Nice views
Thanks for watching!
From where are these photos? they are great!
Do you mean the Allied Occupation images? They are mostly from historical archive sites and magazines.
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory Just asking for the source, thank you!
Thanks!!
It's almost like Gojira / Godzilla is not being about how the war ended for the Japanese.
This bucking of trends and censorship has been constant in Japan. Quite recently, ex-prime minister was murdered.
Even today, people will drive around in a blue van with the Emperor's Chrysanthemum symbol painted on it and play patriotic music and songs from the WWII era, and the police simply follow a polite distance behind, to prevent the unlikely event of a riot.
The people on the street I was on pretended not to see it, like most Japanese with most things.
I really want to make a video exploring how Japanese filmmakers navigated censorship via different eras. Especially the pre-war period. I think Japanese art in general has been a long, ever-shifting, and complicated evolution of filmmakers adapting their vision around varying restricted climates. Some more nuanced in their limitations than others.
I know this essentially occurs in all nations and territories, but there is something that sticks out with Japan.
I appreciate this video, but context is extremely important.
Japan is one the most notorious colonizers of indigenous peoples. Talking about how the US came to occupy Japan would be very helpful for your discussion. In addition to a discussion on the brutal Japanese colonization of Korea and Manchuria, as well as the war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers in China and Indochina.
I find a lot of selective amnesia in Ozu and in post-war Japanese cinema in general. Much like how the massively pro-Nazi German populace seemingly became pro-liberal democracy overnight once the war ended.
Discussing the possible war crimes committed by Ozu himself as a soldier should also be noted.
Yes. Japan has its own colonial and imperialist context that I probably should have mentioned - even just briefly for background.
However, this video is just about the censorship processes of the time: why they existed and how Ozu got around them in his own unique way. It’s not really a discussion on the US vs Japan, but how the production of Late Spring harbours hidden details regarding the limitations Japanese filmmakers had during the occupation. But more importantly -how Ozu was even more creative than many may have thought.
If I went into too much detail about Japan’s imperialist endeavours, it would have made the video far too much about “US imperialism Vs Japanese imperialism” - rather than a description and analysis on how a film navigated censorship regulations in an unlikely manner.
The irony is - the US occupation censorship also prevented Japanese filmmakers from dealing with topics based on their own militarily activities during the war. As they believed it may have incited nationalist unrest.
But yes, I agree with you, I should have briefly mentioned something at the beginning.
Especially considering a lot of people from North America seem to stop watching the video half way through and miss the second half - which is where I explain that Ozu really didn’t have a dog in the race regarding US or Japanese imperialism - he simply responded to each environment in his own distinctive way to tell the stories he wanted. This video was simply dedicated to an individual film that he made right in the middle of the Allied Occupation.
As I understand it, American censorship was quite easygoing by 1949. Therefore I am skeptical of this theory.
We have quite a lot of archival notes by the allied occupation censorship board on Japanese scripts going up until late-1950/early-1951 that were still quite harsh on certain topics. Late Spring’s script was one of them. Ozu still had to make significant adjustments when you compare the original script, the censorship notes, and the final film.
However, towards the end of the occupation (1952) censorship did begin to subvert - which is a common phenomenon in most occupations.
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory Fair enough, thanks for the info
In the first election under the Occupation, the Socialists won 93 seats and the Communists won 5. In 1947, Socialists, 143; Communists, 4. In 1949, Socialists, 48; Communists, 35. And these seats were supposedly won under a "virtual dictatorship" that allowed "no public criticism."
Fortunately, Osu's critique of the Occupation is far more subtle than this analysis. Which, despite being insightful, sounds like a British complaint that Americans don't do imperialism as well as London did.
It's pretty much a truism that the elections were cosmetic and had little to no influence on the broader policies that the Allied Occupation implemented on Japan - it was a superficial diplomatic gesture, at best. A case in point is how MacArthur had final say on everything - allowing him to overrule any upper-level political or economic proposal - which provided his decision-making power with an immunity to democratic interventions. If that's not a virtual dictatorship, I'm not sure what is. Even the the most adamant defenders of the AO accept that the Japanese people were denied any real representation - their argument usually being that it was a "temporary arrangement" until Japan could get back on its feet.
Also, I don’t think this video argues that Ozu was being overtly critical of the occupation - he was actually quite politically neutral (as I explain in the end). The video just shows how Ozu had to manoeuvre around the occupation’s censorship policies in his own creative and subtle way - which is an under-appreciated factor regarding Ozu’s creative process at the time.
But you might be onto something in relation to the video being a complaint that the US didn’t do imperialism as well as the British Empire 😂 touché 👍🏻
Thanks for taking the time to leave such a considered comment. Always appreciated.
You can’t understand this movie as a Westerner. The Japanese have their own distinct Dasein.
Very true. The Western lens will always been limited.
Pretentious nonsense. If uttered by a far Right nationalist you'd likely squirm. Also, problematic to use the term Dasein to indicate an essence. If a Westerner was moved, they gained understanding. Likewise, Japanese contemporaries of Ozu shared a different understanding of his films than twenty-something Japanese do today.
"Colonialist" presence of the US in Japan?
That's a stretch!
The US in fact was a benign temporary overseer.
Your criticism is dogmatic and thoughtlessly irrelevant.
Wanna try again?
1. Both Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman referred to the occupation as a “colonial-inspired pursuit” to establish “long-term US foreign policy interests” in Japan. Considering both the US president and the individual with the highest degree of decision-making power within the occupation saw the presence in Japan within a colonial context makes it far from a stretch.
2. The video only covers the period of the allied occupation - doesn’t make any claims beyond - and directly references censorship rules imposed by the US authorities that Japanese filmmakers had to navigate. Which is essentially what the video is about.
Although I appreciate that the classical term “colonialism” maybe less obvious than in traditional examples - a stretch, it certainly is not.
With all respect, I think - considering what the video intended to achieve - the first attempt was more than enough.
Your opinion, and the time you took to express it, is certainly appreciated though. Thank you.
As far as the film itself goes--there is no reference to colonialism, US or otherwise; in fact it's a good feeling film about the contemporary culture, a la late 1940s Japan. As far as Coca Cola and the Balboa Cafe goes, there is no sense of that as affecting the characters or the plot. MOREOVER, American culture was well advanced way before the war years; e.g., baseball, US films, etc. etc. Keep in my also that Ozu was doing great films DURING THE WAR!!!
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory
To be fair, I never claim there are direct references to colonialism in the film. Only certain choices were made to circumvent the allied occupation censorship.
🤔 By omitting even the briefest discussion of how the United States came to occupy Japan, you make it sound as if the Japanese were meek, feckless victims overrun by a powerful and evil nation looking for societies upon which they could impose their superior race, culture and religion. Japan lost a war of their own making. A war in which *they themselves* sought to impose their assumed superior race, culture and religion on other nations. Wars have consequences, especially for the losers. Your comments need some Japanese historical context.
I see your point, my friend. It may have been more helpful if I briefly mentioned that the occupation was not a direct seizure of land - but a result of war.
Because the video is really just about how Ozu had to use his subtle approach to filmmaking to manoeuvre around occupation censorship, I wanted to provide context on the nature of the occupation when it was in effect - rather than why it occurred in the first place. But, you’re right, a little background on pre-occupation Japan would have placed the situation in a broader historical context.
... and the de-nazification of Germany, was that also a racist endeavour? Perhaps Ozu himself was a bit uncomfortable with interracial relationships (a genius, but still a man of a certain time and place)
Of course the occupation itself was not a racist endeavour - it was a response to a war. The racist elements are almost a systematic collateral effect of having one ethnicity dominate another. Remember, General MacArthur didn’t just see Nazism as Japan’s problem, but it’s “pagan and oriental” sensibilities.
I agree, Ozu was likely a person of his time, he probably had his own dated views on relationships. But as we see in his later work, he was willing to show Japanese women dating Western men - as it was an unavoidable and common reality of the time.
The main point of this video was showing how Ozu “got around” the censorship practises of the time. How he reconciled his desire to depict intimate everyday interactions at a time when so many realities were forbidden onscreen.
@@EastAsianCinemaHistory Yes, very well put. I annoys me when people try to excuse the racism of the allied occupation in Japanese towards normal people by bringing up the evils of the Japanese Empire. You don't "de-nazify" a country by being racist yourself. Two wrongs don't make a right.
What does attempting to remove the indigenous religious of Japan in favour of “civilised Christianity” have to do with “de-nazifying” it? 😅
So, how about the students holding up a picture of Gary Cooper and combing a fellow student's hair to look like him all the way back in Ozu's first extant feature--Days of Youth of 1929? Where's the American colonialism that he's commenting on there. But he does the same thing in 1949 and that has to be American colonialism. Perhaps the moment in Late Spring is just like Days of Youth--nothing whatsoever to do with race. And so too, all the English and western culture in Late Spring, just like the pendants of US Universities, poster of 7th Heaven, English brand names and illusions to Harold Lloyd in Days of Youth, and for that matter like almost every other Ozu movie, whether it's from Imperial times, American occupation or postwar independent Japan. This kind of symptomatic meaning (to use the term of the great Ozu scholar David Bordwell in his book "Making Meaning") seems to me to often fall into a kind of circular logic.
Good point. But the video doesn’t argue that the fandom of Hollywood stardom in Japan began during the Allied Occupation era, but was adjusted in accordance to its censorship practises and broader policies. Though, I have to admit, this section is by far the more contentious part of the video.
But remember, this video’s primary focus is on actual material flagged in Ozu and Noda’s screenplay by the Allied Occupation Censorship board, and official paralleling AO censorship documentation that explain the motivations behind particular censorship practises - not to mention both policy and central AO documents (outside the censorship board) related to the general ambitions the AO had for Japan that informed these censorship motivations. Although interpretation plays a hefty part - the video’s foundation is empirical, and outside of the film’s text alone.
So, I think reducing it to Bordwell’s critique of what was mostly Western film scholarship/criticism in ‘Making Meaning’ doesn’t quite work here. Especially when one of the problem’s Bordwell highlighted is how film textual criticism often neglects external, non-interpretive, factors - like censorship. This video - at least fundamentally - is not dealing with the type of “hidden” meaning issue that Bordwell writes about - but how Ozu adapted his approach around the AO censorship. Yes, there are some speculative components - to which I’m open about - but it doesn’t hinder the legitimacy of the primary arguments.
However, you’re still correct, there’s definitely the early - pre-WW2- influence of Hollywood stardom, and it’s broader/global influence on things like beauty standards that should be considered as well - it’s an important point and thanks for making it 👍🏻. But, you can definitely see the differences in ‘Days of Youth’ and ‘Late Spring’.
‘Days of Youth’ was purely fandom - dealing with the almost superficial spectacle and performative phenomena of Hollywood’s cultural influence. But in ‘Late Spring’ it was a far more detailed and rooted in legitimate beauty standards. I mean, I don’t remember anywhere in ‘Days of Youth’ where East Asian eyes were suggested to make a man look less attractive?
This echoed the well documented data we have - both in regards to censorship and broader agendas - that the AO was both pushing a Western “way of life” supremacy narrative, and curbing anything that could be interpreted as compromising that goal.
But like I said, this was one of the more contentious parts of the video - added more for additional context - and doesn’t really compromise the overall point.
There's a difference between showing you're a fan of a celebrity and using racial characteristics to determine what is, or not, attractive. By claiming that a Japanese man is attractive because he looks like Gary Cooper is fine ... the problem is when his "Japanese eyes" are suggested to be his only unattractive feature.