Wrestling with the Legacy of Ozu in Tokyo Sonata

In his late post-WWII prime, Yasujirō Ozu left such an indelible mark on the genre of family gendaigeki that it’s impossible, to me at least, to watch any modern family drama and not see his legacy. That viewpoint of automatically defaulting everything to Ozu is lazily reductive and often misconstrued, but in Tokyo Sonata (2008, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa), I do see explicit and implicit homages to Ozu, in both style and theme. Tokyo Sonata is a flawed but still fascinating attempt to acknowledge then break free from Ozu’s influence, to update Ozu for the 21st century, and to marry the violently different styles of Ozu and K. Kurosawa.

Tokyo Sonata, just in the title, unmistakably acknowledges the many “Tokyo xxx” films by Ozu, especially Tokyo Chorus (1931). 47 minutes into the film, during the conversation between Megumi and Takashi about Takashi’s enlistment, there’s suddenly a very Ozu-esque graphic match cut of two talking heads looking just slightly off-camera (see .gif). But that only happens once. There’s another obvious inheritance from Ozu: the ellipsis of Kurosu’s death. The latter retains the power of the device, but both one-off loans are rather awkward to me. I’m more intrigued by Kurosawa remixing Ozu’s trademarks, such as the group shots of people at the dinner table. In Ozu’s version of the shot, it is planimetric, symmetrical, and clear and clean. Kurosawa inherits the former traits, but films the family from afar, frequently framing or obscuring them with props, at one point even slicing them apart with diagonal lines. It’s a postmodern update of the family shot, of the family unit in fragments. Ozu already boxed the diners with his academy frame, but Kurosawa takes the oppression further and brings his horror roots into the room. The result is both pleasing and disturbing, like the state of the Japanese family unit in the 21st century.

Aside from space, another way to consider Tokyo Sonata’s relationship with Ozu is through time. All of the things I mention above – the graphic match, the ellipsis, the group shot – occur in the first hour of the film. Kurosawa starts with the Ozu mode, sometimes even openly acknowledging Ozu, before moving away from it. In the second hour, we begin to see devices that are wildly discordant with Ozu, such as a backwards time jump and a dive into the absurdist. Kurosawa brings it all together in a grand emotional finale, in the form of a diegetic piano recital. Ozu has used diegetic music for emotional purposes as well, so the scene is indeed a return to the Ozu mode, but in ways not quite seen in Ozu’s cinema. It’s so directly and overtly melodramatic, and not to mention features Western music. Much like a three-movement sonata, the film introduces the idea of the Ozu mode, before departing from it then returning to it in fresh, new ways. But if you ignore the finale (which is short, sudden, and quite out-of-place anyway), the general trajectory of the film is a gradual departure from Ozu, which correlates with Ozu as a relic and signifies a direction towards the new and modern in Japanese cinema and society.

Finally, Tokyo Sonata’s relationship with Ozu exists not just visually, but also thematically. It is a family gendaigeki after all, but is a more unabashed and even violent take on the genre. Kurosawa continues some of Ozu’s themes, particularly the exposé of the patriarch, but turns down all the knobs of subtlety. In Equinox Flower (1958), we see Ozu condemning the patriarch in quite explicit ways (by his standards). But in its takedown, Equinox Flower still leaves some polite space (most notably in its final shot), is more elegiac than angry, and holds onto hope for reconciliation. On the other hand, Kurosawa is relentless in pushing his patriarch to the extreme, casting him aside, rendering him useless, even making him a domestic abuser. Again, Kurosawa’s horror roots are seeping through, as Ryuhei descends to cartoonish, monstrous villainy. Though both directors are emasculating hypocritical patriarchs, Kurosawa’s version is a more violent take for violent times.

If there is no escape from Ozu, then it’s better not to try. Instead of mockery (The Family Game) or embarrassed deflections (Hirokazu Kore-eda), Kurosawa goes for unafraid references, and even attempts an explicit evolution of Ozu. Whether or not he’s successful is left to the viewer, but at least the intention is clear and noble.