Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
                            
Director:  Yasujirô Ozu
Year: 1941
Rating: 7.0
After What Did the Lady Forget in 1937, Yasujirô Ozu did not direct another film till this one, four years later. That was partly due to the studio Shochiku not being entirely happy with the lack of commercial success of his films but more importantly being drafted into the military at the end of 1937. He was to spend two years in China fighting on the front lines - possibly being part of a chemical war unit before his enlistment ran out and he returned to filmmaking. I have not seen Ozu's post war films but I have never gotten the sense that his war experiences ever influenced them in the same way they did with other Japanese directors such as Masaki Kobayashi who directed the trilogy The Human Condition about the war. When Ozu returned, he found a very different set of rules that had been set up by the government regarding what sort of films could be made. His first script that later became The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) was rejected and so he wrote the script to this one with his long-time collaborator Tadao Ikeda. It turned out to be his first hit.



Like many of his films, it is about family and tradition with modernity corrupting the family unit. It may be based on the American film, Make Way for Tomorrow which was released in 1937 though I don't know when Ozu could have seen it - but it follows that film very closely. Make Way is a brilliant film but also one of the saddest I have ever seen - right to the end. Ozu doesn't take it to its logical conclusion but gives it a happy ending of sorts - which may have been why it was a big hit. Make Way sunk like a stone. Though in retrospect how happy it really was is up for debate. On one hand it seems to say the traditional family is floundering but at the same time traditional values for women are still stuck in amber. I know that Ozu is famous for his static camera but it never has struck me as much as it does here. The camera never moves, never follows a character or a situation. He sets it down low and films a scene though there are a few set-ups. It creates a somber heavy mood.



The three generation Toda family appears to be a successful and happy one when they all gather for a celebration and family photo. There are three daughters and two brothers, a son-in-law, a grandson and the patriarch and his wife. On that day they eat well and drink too much sake. Later that night the father has a heart attack and dies. The glue that held the family together becomes unglued as rifts in the family become apparent - especially after it is found that this prosperous businessman was actually deeply in debt. To cover the debts, they have to sell the family home and all the contents within. This in a sense leaves the mother (Ayako Katsuragi) and the youngest unmarried daughter Setsuko (Mieko Takamine) without a place to stay or an income. This sets the scene for the rest of the film as nobody really wants to put them up. The wife of the older brother finds them in the way and the two other daughters don't feel they really have the space for them. Nobody steps up for them until the youngest son (Shin Saburi) comes back a year later from China and has a family intervention.



This seems to fix everything as he promises to take the mother and his sister back with him to China and to find Setsuko a husband in China and she pressures him to marry her good friend Tokiko (Michiko Kuwano). Both gender and class status stays firmly in place. Women find a husband of the same class and marry them. Or found for them. Earlier in the film Setsuko had considered finding a job and that was immediately rejected by the family and even her friend Tokiko because she was from the employer class, not the employee class and being a clerk would shame the family. The fact that Ozu clearly knew what was going on in China and makes moving there the happy ending feels very odd. By the end of the year Japan was at war with the USA and England and there would be few happy endings for a while.  Perhaps treating China as a normal place to go reside was in a sense propaganda that helped get it through the censors.