Japanese Cinema and the World: The Achievement of Kurosawa, Ozu, and Others

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Hollywood of the 1970s had established the blockbuster, a new formula for the hit, and was drawing in audiences the world over. But the films the world greeted with astonishment were not only Hollywood’s big productions. Earlier than that, in the halls of a European film festival, people had stirred quietly at the works of a certain country. That country was Japan.

In a Japan that had come through the chaos of the postwar years, cinema was enjoying a richness that could be called a golden age. The studios brimmed with energy, many directors vied with one another, and audiences thronged the theaters. The works born from this would, before long, cross borders and inscribe their names in the history of world cinema.

The Astonishment of Venice

In September 1951, at the Venice International Film Festival in Italy, a single Japanese film was chosen for the highest honor, the Golden Lion. It was Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Rashomon’. This was the first time a Japanese film had stood at the summit of one of the world’s major film festivals.

The story, set in the Heian period, had those involved in a single murder each give testimony that contradicted the others. Whose account was the truth—the audience never learns to the very end. How the words people speak warp themselves to suit their own advantage—that universal theme was drawn out through powerful images and an inventive structure.

What is intriguing is that Kurosawa himself had not expected the award at all. He had not even been informed that his film was entered in the festival, and it is said that no one from Japan was present at the venue. The news of the award reached the director in an unexpected way, so the story goes. So distant a thing were the world’s film festivals to the Japanese film world of that time.

This award did not stop at the honor of a single work. It became a door that impressed the existence of Japanese cinema—until then little known in the West—powerfully upon the people of the world. From this point on, film festivals in various countries began to turn their eyes toward Japanese works.

And the Japanese talent the world discovered was not Kurosawa alone.

The Master of Stillness, the Master of Lyricism

If Akira Kurosawa was known for powerful stories and dynamic images, there were directors in the same era who sustained Japanese cinema with entirely different sensibilities. They were Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi.

Yasujiro Ozu was known for works that gazed quietly at the everyday life of the family. Setting the camera at a low position and scarcely moving it, he portrayed the partings and the passing of time that lie within ordinary life. His ‘Tokyo Story’ of 1953 is, on the surface, no more than the tale of aged parents visiting the children who live in Tokyo—yet it is said to be a work that drew out, with deep resonance, the themes of family, time, and loss that touch every life. No dramatic incident occurs. And precisely because of that, the sorrow of life fills the stillness.

Kenji Mizoguchi walked a different path again. With long, flowing camerawork and a beauty attended to in every corner of the frame, he portrayed with rich lyricism the figures of people placed in harsh circumstances—women above all. His works were highly acclaimed internationally as well: his ‘Ugetsu’ of 1953 received the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, and his ‘Sansho the Bailiff’ of the following year, 1954, is likewise said to have received the Silver Lion. Within a span of a few years, Japanese cinema took one major world award after another.

The three men’s styles were utterly different. Kurosawa’s power, Ozu’s stillness, Mizoguchi’s lyricism—yet they were akin in one point: each pursued his own theme and method to the very end. They did not imitate foreign films. From within the climate of Japan and the traditions of its storytelling, each carved out his own expression.

Why Their Singularity Reached the World

Why was Japanese cinema accepted by the world? Here lay a circumstance that, at first glance, seems like a paradox.

It was because the works were universal and, at the same time, profoundly Japanese, so it is said. The affection within a family, the sorrow of parting, the weakness and the karma of human beings—these were themes that reached every heart across borders. But the way they were portrayed was plainly different from Western cinema. Ozu’s low camera and quiet pauses, Mizoguchi’s flowing long takes, Kurosawa’s bold composition and editing. To Western audiences, these were fresh, and at times became the very occasion to reconsider their own filmmaking. Indeed, it is said that the works of Kurosawa and Mizoguchi influenced filmmakers abroad as well.

Even so, the magnitude of what Japanese cinema accomplished in this era stands unshaken. Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and the creators alongside them proved, through their works themselves, that cinema—the art of the twentieth century—is not the exclusive property of any one country or culture. To delve deeply into the climate and the stories at one’s own feet, and thereby, conversely, to reach the world—that paradox they demonstrated with their very being.

In various places around the world, cinema cultivated its own singularity and matured, each giving stimulus to the other. The screen was becoming a common language, joining the hearts of people across borders.

But this art and industry of cinema would, at the turn of the century, meet a wave of change of a different dimension than ever before. A hundred years of history that had burned light onto film was about to be rewritten by an entirely new technology. Next time, I would like to advance toward the revolution in cinema brought by the computer.