• 父ありき (There Was a Father)

3/7/23 (Tues)

I had déjà vu watching Ozu’s 1942 film, one of only two that he directed during the war, and learned that it was initially planned as a companion piece to his similarly themed The Only Son a few years earlier. He had apparently abandoned the follow-up due to unreasonable demands from censors but must have later overcome his qualms; ironically the film was reportedly censored again by US Occupation authorities after the war, so the version today may lack more militaristic parts from the original (which was probably fine with Ozu). It is not a propaganda piece in its current form, with no talk of war other than a brief mention of a physical for the draft, and the “Japanese” values that it promotes are not unique to the war. Like its earlier companion piece, There Was a Father centers on a single parent who makes significant sacrifices for his only son’s sake that result in a painful separation for both when the son is sent away for education and a better life. It is also similar in boasting a strong central performance, here by Ozu stalwart Ryu Chishu.

A much-loved mathematics teacher, a widower with a grade-school son, is traumatized after a student under his care dies on an outing and decides to quit the profession. He enrolls his child in a boarding school in Nagano and goes alone to Tokyo to seek work. The son, who idolizes his dad, is devastated to be left alone but accepts his fate. Fifteen years later, the son is a college graduate and now teaches in Akita, while his father is a factory clerk in Tokyo. The son, still dreaming of living with his father, plans to give up his job and go to Tokyo, but his father tells him that he must stay to fulfill his duty to his community and students. The son takes a long vacation to be with his father, where they joyously go fishing together as in old times. Unfortunately, after the father is feted in a reunion with his former students, he takes sick and dies. In a nice coda, the son is shown returning sadly, accompanied by his new wife, with his father’s ashes back to Akita. He suggests to her that they have her father and brother come live with them, finally getting the family life he has always longed for.

There’s not a lot of drama in the drama. All is very low-key with largely suppressed emotions, especially in the absence of major female characters. Everyone seems to accept his fate stoically, showing only tinges of regret. Horikawa’s decision to stop teaching must have been wrenching for him, for example, but we only get hints of that in his blank expression at the funeral; it’s seen only obliquely in his calm announcement to his friend. The son placidly accepts his father recommendation to marry a former teacher’s daughter despite not having seen her since she was a child, simply trusting his father’s judgment. That’s taking filial obedience pretty far. The Japanese censors presumably saw this attitude as positive for morale despite any overt militarism in the story itself. That was especially evident in Horikawa’s lecture to his child about doing his duty in Akita, which was long-winded for Ozu and lacking in normal parental emotion. I have to believe that was written with the censors in mind.

No big conflict emerges here in the plot, either physical or mental, and other than the early off-screen death of the student, time seems to pass uneventfully. I kept waiting for something to happen. There’s a nostalgia factor when the teachers are in the reunion with their former students, now grown with children of their own, but that’s hardly exploited. The inevitable separation of parents and children is a perennial theme for Ozu, but here it is the child who wants desperately to get together while the parent prevents it for abstract reasons of societal responsibility.

Ryu’s understated approach to the role of the father is central to the film. His restraint from expressing overt emotion perfectly encapsulates a certain Japanese masculine ideal, represented by his admonishment to his son that men don’t cry. Sakamoto Takeshi as a fellow teacher and Tsuda Haruhiko, who plays the son as a ten-year old, were also memorable. A pleasant enough film.