Yasujiro Ozu is a recognized master of Japanese cinema in the international film world, and his films are often used as a window into Japanese culture. Recently, the Shanghai Translation Publishing House introduced and published the "Ozu Yasujiro's Complete Diary", which is a collection of Ozu Yasujiro's existing personal diaries, with a total of more than 400,000 words, collecting and arranging as many as 32 volumes of director Ozu,000 volumes, spanning from 1933 to 1963, close to the complete diary. After the book was published, it attracted the attention and discussion of many readers.
Born in Fukagawa, Tokyo, Ozu joined the Shochiku Film Kamata Studios in 1923 as an assistant in the photography department. In 1927, he first directed "The Blade of Confession" and began his career as a film director. In 1932, he made his first work that can be called a masterpiece, "I was born, but...", which won the first place in the top 10 best films of the "Film Newspaper" that year. Completed in 1941, 1942 and 1949, "Toda Brothers and Sisters", "When my Father Was Alive" and "Late Spring" were rated as the first, second and first of the top ten films of the year by the "Film Shunbao". In 1953, he released his masterpiece "Tokyo Story". In his later years, he wrote the script with his partner Takao Noda in Tateshina.
From the age of thirty to sixty, Yasujiro Ozu used his diary to record the true silhouette of his life and art. Under the changes of history, how a sincere and individual filmmaker, how to go deeper and deeper on the road of art, and eventually become a world-class artist, this "Whole Diary" takes readers and fans to get close to Ozu's life, explore the stories and secrets. In addition to the main text of the diary, the appendix of "The Whole Diary" is full of information, including the editor's proofreading of Ozu's diary, the list of movies mentioned in the diary, the names of the studio staff where Ozu worked, etc., which can be described as a must-collect treasure for Ozu film lovers and directors.
Yasujiro Ozu was born on December 12, 1903, and died of cancer on the same day sixty years later. The overlap between the date of birth and the day of death, as well as the age at which Ichiko's reincarnation is completed from the perspective of Chinese culture, cast a faint layer of legend over Ozu's life. It seems to be in response to a sentence he said: "What I want to shoot is not a story, but esoteric themes such as reincarnation and impermanence." ”
Ozu directed fifty-four feature films in his lifetime, thirty-seven of which survive. In addition to the iconic "Tokyo Story", other masterpieces include "Late Spring", "Good Morning", "Floating Grass", "Autumn Andyo" and so on. In 1958, he won the Minister's Award for Arts, Culture and Sports and the Purple Ribbon Award for "The Other Side of the Flower", the Academy Award in 1959, the Asian Film Festival Best Director Award for "Autumn Sun And" in 1961, and the first Japanese film director to receive this honor in 1963.
"If I were to define why cinema was invented, I would answer: it was to produce a work like Ozu's."
The above passage comes from the German director Wim Wenders, who is famous for "Paris, Texas" and "Under the Berlin Sky". As a big fan of Yasujiro Ozu, he went to Tokyo to make a documentary "Looking for Ozu" to pay tribute to his idol. Wenders' friend Peter Handke, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, is also a fan of Yasujiro Ozu and especially loves Tokyo Story.
Ozu's film style is subtle and timeless, and the aftertaste is considered to be his unique "Ozu tone", which has influenced countless directors. The famous Taiwanese director Hou Xiaoxian also paid tribute to Ozu for filming "Coffee Time".
Hou Xiaoxian once said: "Ozu, who has been alone all his life, has a real sense of humor, and he puts the trivial things around him in front of our eyes like a trick, so that we can see the subtle knowledge after the sadness, lead the impermanence, and go on the road in confusion." ”
Kore-eda, a Japanese director who has become a hit in China with works such as "Sea Street Diaries" and "Thief Family", is Kore-eda, and has always been compared with Ozu, and is even considered to be a Japanese filmmaker who has inherited Ozu's mantle to a certain extent.
Fans all over the world know that Yasujiro Ozu's films have almost only one theme: family. In particular, the thirteen feature films filmed in the later stage, "Late Spring", "Mai Qiu", "The Other Shore Flower", "Autumn Day And", "The Taste of Saury" revolve around the daughter's marriage, "Sokata Sisters", "The Taste of Tea and Rice", "Early Spring" explore the love of husband and wife, "Tokyo Story", "Tokyo Twilight", "Good Morning", "Floating Grass", "Autumn of the Little Hayakawa Family" depict the relationship between the family, especially between parents and children.
In addition to the theme, Ozu's "unchanged" is also reflected in some interesting places, such as these 13 works are written together with his old partner Takao Noda; his royal actors Seto Hara and Kasato play almost the same father and daughter roles in many works, and even the names of the characters are similar; the camera is always placed in a low position; there are few moving shots, and every set and every prop in the lens is pursuing "just right" precision... So much so that his originally joking sentence "I open a tofu shop, I only make tofu" has become one of the representatives of the "craftsman spirit".
Recently, Jia Zhangke commented at a seminar on Ozu Yasujiro that the Ozu I knew in the past was actually an "aestheticized Ozu", and reading "Ozu Yasujiro's Complete Diary" made me enter Ozu's aesthetic world into his private secular world and daily world, and experience a kind of "unity of contradictions". As if there are two sides of the same coin, the Ozu presented in the film work and the Ozu depicted in the diary are sometimes divided and sometimes consistent, and there are many clues in the creation of the film, which can also be learned through the diary.
According to reports, the "Ozu Yasujiro's Complete Diary" launched by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House this time, the entire publication cycle is as long as five years, it is the first time that Chinese the world has been introduced and published, and the text is highly scarce. The whole "Whole Diary" can be said to be a precious and comprehensive document, and it is a must-read book for Ozu enthusiasts and researchers. The text is compiled by Ozu research expert & best friend Masaru Tanaka, which is rigorous and rich, and carefully translated by Ozu film and culture scholar and Chiri translator Zhou Yiliang.
The book is accompanied by the editor's proofreading record of the original text, the precious information such as the names, directors, starring actors, and release times of domestic and foreign films that Ozu has seen or mentioned in his diary, a detailed list of staff members that Ozu has worked with in several major studios, a list of films directed by Ozu (in Chinese and Japanese), oz-related works published in Japan, and the editor Masumi Tanaka's overall introduction, compilation ideas, and editing process of all Ozu Yasujiro's diary materials, and the understanding and reflection between Ozu's diary and his creation at different stages. The nearly eight-hundred-page hardcover edition is suitable for reading and collection.