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Paper short abstract:

In a pivotal scene from Ozu’s masterpiece "Banshun," a widower and his daughter attend a performance of the noh play "Kakitsubata." This paper argues that critics have consistently misread how Ozu uses the poetry and themes of the noh play to effectively counterpoint the action.

Paper long abstract:

In Ozu Yasujirō’s 1949 film "Banshun" (Late Spring), a fifty-six-year old father (Professor Somiya Shūkichi, played by Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried twenty-seven-year old daughter (Somiya Noriko, played by Hara Setsuko) are attending a Kanze School noh performance of "Kakitsubata" (The Iris). The scene, which lasts about seven minutes, occurs at the mid-point of the movie, and is pivotal in every respect; while watching the play the father exchanges a nod of greeting to another woman who is in attendance, and his daughter Noriko jumps to the conclusion that he intends to remarry. She is visibly devastated, and because of the exchange decides she will leave her father and accept a marriage proposal that she had previously been rejecting. It is generally agreed that this is one of the most beautifully edited sequences in all of Japanese cinema: without a word of dialogue, the interactions of the characters occur almost as though in mime. The scene is not silent, however: we hear and see the noh play being performed throughout. Unfortunately for non-Japanese speaking viewers, there are no subtitles for the noh, and so how the play might be commenting on the action is left latent (given the difficulty of noh poetry, it is probably left latent for most contemporary Japanese viewers as well). Perhaps because of this, most critics have treated the play’s performance as merely a visual accompaniment to the action, with little or no meaning (some have gone so far as to say the choice of play was accidental). This paper will correct that misreading, showing how Ozu effectively uses the themes and poetry of the noh play to allegorically comment on, and emotionally counterpoint, the scene.