Tokyo Story

Japanese Poster

This slow paced insight into Japanese life, eight years after the Japanese surrender, typifies the work of director Yasujiro Ozu. Tokyo Story (1953) is very simple tale, an aging couple travel to Tokyo for the first time to visit their grown up children leaving their youngest daughter back home in the provinces. They make this journey because they feel their getting old and that time is running short. When they arrive at their destination they find that the children, who have very busy lives, make little attempt to spend time with their parents, shunting the old couple from one place to another. Only their daughter-in-law whose husband was killed in the war seems to have any time for them.

This mellow film depicts the everyday domestic and professional rituals of middle class life in Japan. Atsuta Yuharu’s camera work is very unfussy using a static camera placed a couple of feet from the ground with only one shot in the film that moves, even then very slowly, a technique that puts others to shame. Seen by many to be one of the best films ever made, this calm and measured work has just been released on Blu-ray.