An Autumn Afternoon

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An Autumn Afternoon
British DVD/Blu-ray cover
Directed by	Yasujirō Ozu
Screenplay by	Kogo Noda Yasujirō Ozu
Starring	Chishu Ryu Shima Iwashita Keiji Sada Mariko Okada Teruo Yoshida Noriko Maki Shinichiro Mikami Eijiro Tono
Music by	Kojun Saito
Cinematography	Yûharu Atsuta
Editing by	Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Studio	Shochiku
Distributed by	Shochiku
Release date(s)	18 November 1962 (1962-11-18)
Running time	113 minutes
Country	‹See Tfd› Japan
Language	Japanese

An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚の味, Sanma no aji^?, "The Taste of Mackerel Pike") is a 1962 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu. It stars Ozu regular Chishu Ryu as the patriarch of the Hirayama family who oversees the wedding of his daughter, played by Shima Iwashita. It was Ozu's last film; he died in the following year. It was shot using Agfacolor.

The credits of the film are placed before a backdrop of sketched or painted fronds instead of the usual sackcloth used in most of Ozu's films since A Story of Floating Weeds in 1934.

Plot

Shuhei Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) is an ageing widower with a 32-year-old son, Koichi (Keiji Sada), who is married, and two unmarried children – a 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita) and a 21-year-old son Kazuo (Shinichirô Mikami). The ages of the children, and what they respectively remember about their mother, suggest that she died just before the end of the war, perhaps in the bombing of Tokyo in 1944-45. Since his marriage, Koichi has moved out to live with his wife in a small flat, leaving Hirayama and Kazuo to be looked after by Michiko.

Hirayama and five of his classmates from middle-school, Kawai (Nobuo Nakamura), Horie (Ryuji Kita), Sugai (Tsūzai Sugawara), Watanabe (Masao Oda)and Nakanishi hold regular reunions at a restaurant called Wakamatsu ('Young Pine'), which is owned by Sugai. They reminisce about old times and banter with each other. For example, Horie is teased about having a new young wife and asked whether he is taking pills to maintain his virility. Their old teacher of Chinese classics, Sakuma (Eijiro Tono), nicknamed the "Gourd", comes to one of these reunions and has too much to drink. When Kawai and Hirayama take him home, they find out that he has fallen on hard times and is running a cheap noodle restaurant in a working-class area. They meet his middle-aged daughter Tomoko (Haruko Sugimura), who missed the chance to marry when young and is now too old.

Sakuma's former pupils decide to help him out with a gift of money, and Hirayama goes back to the restaurant to hand it over. While he is there, Yoshitaro Sakamoto (Daisuke Kato), the owner of a small local car-repair shop, comes in for a bowl of noodles and recognises Hirayama as the captain of the ship in which he served as a Petty Officer during the war. He takes Hirayama to his favourite bar. Hirayama notices that the bar-owner Kaoru (Kyoko Kishida) resembles his dead wife. Kaoru puts on a recording of the patriotic song 'The Battleship March' and Sakamoto marches up and down, holding a salute and singing meaningless syllables in time to the music, in a mocking version of military drill. Later, Hirayama visits the bar alone and Kaoru puts the record on again. Two tipsy customers begin to parody the kind of morale-boosting radio propaganda announcements that would have been introduced by this tune during the war.

Koichi borrows 50,000 yen from his father, ostensibly to buy a refrigerator, but this is more than the refrigerator will cost. He plans to use the extra money to buy a set of second-hand golf clubs from his colleague Miura (Teruo Yoshida). His wife Akiko (Mariko Okada) doesn't want him to, and says that if he is going to indulge himself like this she will spend money on an expensive white leather handbag. Eventually, having made her point, she relents.

The "Gourd" tells his former pupils that it is owing to his own selfishness that his daughter is now condemned to a lonely life as a spinster. Troubled by this, Hirayama recognises his own selfishness in keeping Michiko at home to look after him, and decides to arrange a marriage for her. He asks Koichi to find out if Miura, whom Michiko is fond of, is interested. Unfortunately, Miura is already engaged. Koichi and Hirayama break the news to Michiko. Michiko does not react but retires to her room. Hirayama and Koichi conclude that she is not upset, but a little later Kazuo comes in and asks why Michiko is crying. Hirayama later asks Michiko if she is willing to go for a matchmaking session with a candidate Kawai has selected. Michiko agrees.

In one of the ellipses Ozu is famous for, the film next shows us Michiko being dressed in a traditional wedding kimono and head-dress. She has clearly agreed to marry, but the bridegroom, and the wedding ceremony, are never shown After the wedding, Hirayama goes to a bar with friends while Koichi, Akiko and Kazuo wait for him at home. When he returns, drunk, Koichi and his wife leave. Kazuo goes to bed, and in the final scene of the film, a melancholy Hirayama drunkenly sings snatches of the 'Battleship March'. Apart from a muttered ‘Alone, eh?’ these are the last words we hear from him. A patriotic song called 'The Battleship' was originally composed to be sung in primary schools, probably around the time of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) or the Russo-Japanese War (1904 – 05). So Hirayama may have learned the song as a boy in school. (He would have entered primary school in about 1912.) Our final image of Hirayama, then, is of him singing to himself a song that probably has significance for him on three levels: it brings back memories of his childhood; it brings back memories of the war (when his wife was still alive); and it is associated with Kaoru, whom he may have begun to see as a possible marriage prospect.

Since the ages of the principal characters are given in the film’s script [Ozu Yasujiro Zenshu (Complete Works of Ozu Yasujiro), 2 Vols, Tokyo 2003, Vol 2 pages 473-504], we can work out their dates of birth to within a year. These help us with the characters’ back-stories by telling us what historical events they have lived through and how old they are at the time of the events shown in the film. Sakuma ("The Gourd"), born 1890, is 72. Hirayama and his classmates, born 1905, are 57. Sakuma's daughter Tomoko, born 1914, is 48. Koichi, born 1930, is 32. Akiko, born 1934, is 28. Miura, born 1936, is 26. Michiko, born 1938, is 24. Kazuo, born 1941, is 21.

Cast

• Chishu Ryu as Shuhei Hirayama
• Shima Iwashita as Michiko Hirayama
• Keiji Sada as Koichi Hirayama
• Mariko Okada as Akiko Hirayama
• Teruo Yoshida as Yutaka Miura
• Noriko Maki as Fusako Taguchi
• Shinichirô Mikami as Kazuo Hirayama
• Nobuo Nakamura as Shuzo Kawai
• Kuniko Miyake as Nobuko Kawai, his wife
• Eijirô Tono as Seitaro Sakuma, "The Gourd"
• Haruko Sugimura as Tomoko
• Kyôko Kishida as Madam at "Kaoru"
• Ryuji Kita as Shin Horie
• Michiyo Kan as Tamako, his second wife
• Toyoko Takahashi as Waitress at "Wakamatsu"
• Shinobu Asaji as Youko Sasaki, Shuhei's secretary

DVD Release

In 2011, the BFI released a Region 2 Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray + DVD).^[1] Included with this release is a standard definition presentation of A Hen in the Wind.

References

External links

• An Autumn Afternoon at the Internet Movie Database
• Andrew, Geoff. "An Autumn Afternoon: A Fond Farewell". The Criterion Collection. http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/667-an-autumn-afternoon-a-fond-farewell. Retrieved 17 April 2012.