#tomio aoki

[muhammadgiovanni]

Tomio Aoki in Mikio Naruse’s “生さぬ仲” (No Blood Relation) 1932.

[moviesiveseenandwanttoremember]

Yasujirō Ozu’s “突貫小僧” (A Straightforward Boy) November 24, 1929.

[yxsu]

Okaeri, Makoto Shinozaki, 1995.

[rachelmygod]

Tokkan kozô (Yasujiro Ozu, 1929) 

[moviesiveseenandwanttoremember]

Yasujirō Ozu’s “大人の見る絵本　生れてはみたけれど” (I Was Born, But...) June 3, 1932.

[rachelmygod]

Snail face!

Tokkan kozô (Yasujiro Ozu, 1929)

[ofimaginarybeings]

A Story of Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu, 1934)

Tomio Aoki in A Story of Floating Weeds 

Cast: Takeshi Sakamoto, Choko Iida, Koji Mitsui, Rieko Yagumo, Yoshiko Tsubouchi, Tomio Aoki, Reiko Tani. Screenplay: Tadao Ikeda, Yasujiro Ozu. Cinematography: Hideo Shigehara. Art direction: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Hideo Shigehara.

The Japanese film industry didn’t switch to sound until 1931, and Ozu waited till 1936 to make a talkie. But he remade the silent A Story of Floating Weeds with sound and in color in 1959, when it was released as Floating Weeds. In the silent version, Takeshi Sakamoto plays Kihachi, the head of a troupe of traveling players who find themselves in a village where Kihachi has a former mistress, Otsune (Choko Iida), with whom he had a son, Shinkichi (Koji Mitsui). The now almost-grown son has always known Kihachi as “Uncle,” because Kihachi has kept his parentage secret, not wanting him to follow in his footsteps as an actor. But when Otaka (Rieko Yagumo), an actress in the troupe and Kihachi’s most recent mistress, discovers the secret, she decides to take revenge by asking a younger actress, Otoki (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), to seduce Shinkichi. The revenge backfires when Otoki falls in love with the young man. As usual, Ozu’s sympathetic view of human relationships carries the film, giving depth to the somewhat slight story. And the glimpses of the world of the traveling players is both fascinating and funny. The lovely cinematography is by Hideo Shigehara, who filmed and sometimes edited many of Ozu’s pre-war movies.

[ofimaginarybeings]

An Inn in Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu, 1935)

Takeshi Sakamoto and Tomio Aoki in An Inn in Tokyo 

Cast: Takeshi Sakamoto, Yoshiko Okada, Choko Iida, Tomio Aoki, Kazuko Ojima, Chishu Ryu, Takayuki Suematsu, Screenplay: Masao Arata, Tadao Ikeda, Yasujiro Ozu. Cinematography: Hideo Shigehara. Art direction: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Kazuo Ishikada. Music: Keizo Horiuchi.

Does any filmmaker have a clearer, less sentimental view of the moral conundrum of childhood than Yasujiro Ozu? We tend to think that because children are innocent they are naturally good, when in fact their egotism leads them into trouble. In Ozu’s I Was Born, But… (1932) and Good Morning (1959), the naive self-centeredness of children causes problems both for them and for their middle-class parents. Much the same thing happens in An Inn in Tokyo, one of Ozu’s late silent films, but the consequences are more serious. Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) is a single father down on his luck, trudging along the road through an industrial district in search of work, accompanied by his two small sons, Zenko (Tomio Aoki) and Masako (Takayuki Suematsu). Kihachi is a loving father – there’s a wonderful scene in which he pretends to be drinking sake that Zenko is serving him, after which the boys pretend to eat the food they can’t afford – but he's perhaps a little too indulgent. The boys capture stray dogs which they turn in to the police because there’s a small reward, part of a rabies-control effort. But when Zenko collects the reward, he spends it on a cap he has wanted, instead of the food and shelter they need. Later, when Kihachi goes to a job interview, he tells them to wait for him by the side of the road with the small bundle that contains all of their possessions. But after a while they decide to follow him, and squabble over which one is to carry the bundle. Zenko takes off, leaving his younger brother behind, but Masako abandons the bundle, and when they go back to retrieve it, it’s gone. And when they are left with only enough money for either food or lodging for the night, Kihachi unwisely leaves the decision up to the boys, who naturally choose the immediate gratification of food – leaving them out in the cold when it starts to rain. The movie is often compared to the neo-realist films of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini that were made more than a decade later, and it has the same graceful sensitivity to the plight of the underclass that De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) demonstrates. Life improves for a while for Kihachi and the boys when he meets an old friend who helps him get a job. But in the end he is undone by his own kindness: He has met a young woman with a small daughter on the road, and when the little girl falls ill with dysentery, Kihachi resorts to theft in order to help her pay the hospital bills. In a heartbreaking ending, he turns himself in to the police. The performances are quietly marvelous, and while the restored print still shows the ravages of time, it’s still possible to appreciate the cinematography of Hideo Shigehara, who collaborated frequently with Ozu in the pre-War period.