Late Spring

Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) is one of the most sympathetic portraits of the depths a family will go through in order to secure a life for their children. Yet, more problematically, the film is a portrait of the unwilling family forced into securing a path for the children that neither actually wants. This appeasement of the community, then, underscores the negative power of diplomacy and individual submission.

Widowed professor Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) spends his days devoted to his studies, entrusting his daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara) with the household duties and cleaning. Unfortunately, his daughter is coming to the end of her mid-20s, a significant fact because she soon won’t be attractive to potential suitors. Yet she herself has seemingly distilled any desire for a spouse from her being, instead finding contentment looking after her father and his work. The constraints of family in this way offer for her a circuitous escape from marriage through non-action but, as Shukichi soon learns from his sister, such non-action will leave her without any chance of livelihood when he expires. As such, he must broach the undesired and push her out from her sheltering sanctuary.

What Ozu achieves in this film is a revealing glimpse into the character of Shukichi and Noriko. Both father and daughter have become complicit in their duplicity, relying on the other at the expense of true internal growth. The father has not been forced to remarry so that a potential spouse will have to look after him, and the daughter has avoided the pains of separation and fears of intimacy. Moreover, Noriko regards remarriages with disdain, as not being honorable to one’s true spouse, so her belief undermines Shukichi’s efforts to find himself a mate.

Where this film excels is its very human conceits of pushing away any prospect of love for the easy safety of family. Ozu understands and fully realizes the fidelity father and daughter show to each other, but lets them realize that such devotion is detrimental to their future success in the community. As such, Ozu fashions a story where maturity and growth are forcibly impressed on his characters, even as they themselves try to deny this imprint. Indeed, it is the outer conflicts of worry and gossip from the community that tries Shukichi’s hand, forcing him into deceit with his daughter by explaining his own impending marriage in order to secure her flight from the household.

Beneath these struggles, though, always lies the unmistakable impression of melancholy. Both father and daughter are losing something essential in this endeavor, and their truly final encounter together, going to see a Noh performance, is rife with misgivings and internal disappointment. Noriko will be sacrificing her domestic happiness and selfhood for a husband she’s not yet seen, one who “looks like Gary Cooper, around the mouth, but not the top part." This submission into ordinariness, while honorable, is not attractive, and Shukichi likewise loses his ability to concentrate fully on his discipline and is instead forced into looking for his own spouse.

As Late Spring builds toward its close, we see how communal and familial expectation lead to the shattering of these two individuals, neither of whom desired such a change. Yet their willingness to please the community gossip forces them into the predicament, and so the film closes on Shukichi peeling an apple until he finally submits to his solitude and grief, unable to suppress it any longer. A quietly devastating film.

Late Spring: 10/10