The Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro

Histories of the Everyday

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by Woojeong Joo

Type: Studies
Subject: Director > Yasujirô Ozu
Keywords: Yasujirô Ozu, director, Japan
Publishing date: 2017
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Collection: Edinburgh Studies in East Asian Film
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 288 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-7486-9632-1

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Book Presentation:
A re-interpretation of the master of Japanese cinema from a socio-historical perspective

One of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked during a period of immense turbulence for Japan and its population. This book offers a new interpretation of Ozu’s career, from his earliest work in the 1920s up to his death in 1963, focusing on Ozu’s depiction of the everyday life and experiences of ordinary Japanese people during a time of depression, war and economic resurgence. Firmly situating him within the context of the Japanese film industry, Woojeong Joo examines Ozu’s work as a studio director and his relation to sound cinema, and looks in-depth at his wartime experiences and his adaptation to post-war Japanese society. Drawing on Japanese materials not previously examined in western scholarship, this is a ground-breaking new study of a master of cinema.

Case studies include:
• Ozu’s shōshimin films
• Ozu’s wartime films, including the script of The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice
• Postwar script of The Moon Has Risen
• Tokyo Story

About the Author:
Woojeong Joo received his PhD degree from University of Warwick. He worked at University of East Anglia as a postdoctoral research assistant for AHRC funded project, ‘Manga to Movies’, and is currently teaching in Japan-in-Asia Cultural Studies Program at Nagoya University, Japan.

Press Reviews:
Joo is a perceptive viewer of Ozu’s films, particularly skilled at the structural analysis of narrative and character.[...] a major contribution to the field.– Michael Raine, Western University, Monumenta Nipponica

Woojeong Joo’s new study of Ozu is one of the most precise and nuanced accounts of the director’s cinema to date…an admirable book.'– Alexander Jacoby, Sight and Sound

This is a groundbreaking publication that is going to make a significant contribution to English language scholarship on one of the most important directors in international film history. Woojeong Joo’s patient and attentive focus on the shifting stylistic and contextual elements of Ozu’s vast filmography uncovers a textured and highly nuanced tapestry of Japanese social experience. This book is a wise riposte to Paul Schrader’s misleading dictum that ‘in the everyday nothing is expressive, all is coldness.’ Far from it, Joo argues. For Ozu, the everyday was the key location where form, feeling and history found their most meaningful and enduring coalescence.– Dr Alastair Phillips, University of Warwick

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

See the complete filmography of Yasujirô Ozu on the website: IMDB ...

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