TIFF Spotlight Japan Review: Equinox Flower (1958)

Cast: Shin Saburi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Ineko Arima
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Country: Japan
Genre: Drama | Comedy

Editor’s Notes: This review of Equinox Flower is apart of TIFF’s Spotlight Japan series which runs from January 19th to April 6th at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For more information, visit TIFF.net. If you’ve already seen the film we’d love to hear your thoughts on it; please tell us in the comments section below or in our new Next Projection Forums.

Master director Yasujiro Ozu’s Equinox Flower (1958) is a beautiful film.  The story centers on a family whose oldest daughter, Setsuko (Ineko Arima) is near the age where she should be married.  Thoughts of her marriage have entered the mind of her father, Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) because he and his wife Kiyoko (Kinuyo Tanaka) have returned from the wedding of one of his friend’s daughters.  During a gathering of fathers, old friends from school, the marriage of daughters is discussed and a humorous theory is introduced that strong men have daughters and strong women bear sons.  The joke is referred to throughout the film and is normally verified as truth.  Hirayama begins thinking about arranging his Setsuko’s marriage because he is unaware that she is seeing anyone.   About the same time, an old friend that did not attend the wedding, Mikami (Chishu Ryu) visits him at work and says his daughter has run away and is living with a man.  He is worried and asks Hirayama to look in on her where she works, because he does not have the nerve.  Not long after, he is visited by another family friend Hatsu Sasaki (Chieko Naniwa) telling him she and her daughter Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto) are in town because she is having tests done at the hospital.  She also worries for her daughter’s future and is trying to set her up with a doctor.

Ozu is clearly on the side of the young in this picture.  Despite being 55 when he made the film, he shows sympathy toward the younger generation and their want to marry whom they wish instead of participating in the tradition of arranged marriages. 

All of this is conveyed to Hirayama yet he seems very dispassionate about it all.  He seems to be used to being a counselor of sorts and just doles out advice, saying that the happiness of the girls is what is most important.  Then he is visited by his daughter’s boyfriend, Taniguchi (Keiji Sada) who asks for permission to marry Setsuko.  Hirayama is unnerved by this because it is very out of tradition.  He says he will consider it, but goes home and opposes the marriage, knowing nothing about the man and worrying about his daughter.

What transpires throughout the rest of the film is really Ozu’s critique on traditionalism in the modern era.  Hirayama gives progressive advice to his friends and their children when he speaks to them, but holds on to his outdated ideals when dealing with his own daughter.  He shrugs off his friend’s problems by telling them that kids are different now and the older generation has to deal with it, but refuses to heed his own advice and does not see the hypocritical nature of what he is doing.  He sees a difference between what is happening to him versus what is happening to them.  He does not consider that Setsuko would run away from home and marry Taniguchi, because he is against the marriage so it won’t happen, despite the fact this has already happened to one of his friends.

Ozu is clearly on the side of the young in this picture.  Despite being 55 when he made the film, he shows sympathy toward the younger generation and their want to marry whom they wish instead of participating in the tradition of arranged marriages.  He is showing the evolution of Japanese culture by adopting some aspects of the West while preserving many other aspects from their own history.  This is seen by Hirayama wearing a business suit to work but his wife is always dressed in a traditional kimono.  Setsuko and his other daughter, Hisako (Miyuki Kuwano), wear dresses and skirts and are never seen in kimonos, yet Yukiko (who is Setsuko’s age and very good friends with her) is always seen in a kimono.  Yukiko is trapped by tradition and yearns to break free and marry when and whom she wants, but her mother is always trying to set her up with seemingly any man who walks into her line of sight.

The central theme of the film is parenting and how a parent should be content with their child’s happiness instead of conformity to tradition.  Several people, most notably Mikami who is so worried about his daughter having run off, come to this realization long before Hirayama.  It is not until after Setsuko is married (a result of a trick played on him by Yukiko getting him to admit that if she’s found a good man she should marry him regardless of what her mother says…turns out she made the whole thing up and completely undermined his whole position for opposing the marriage, which Yukiko tells Setsuko immediately) that he realizes that all of his advice to his friends was what he needed to take to heart.

Equinox Flower was Ozu’s first film in color, despite it being common by 1958 for features to be shot in color.  Ozu was known to be a holdout concerning new forms of filmmaking.  He insisted on making silent films until 1935 (The Only Son being his first talkie in 1936).  However, unlike Chaplin who made his last silent film in 1936, Ozu refused to move on to talkies because he did not feel he had gotten everything he could have out of the silent form.  He didn’t think, like Chaplin, that talkies were a fad that would pass, he just wanted to explore them more.  Then for the next 20+ years he stayed in black and white, presumably for the same reasons.  When he did finally use color stock for this film, he makes it look like he’d been using it for years.  The colors are rich and detailed and avoid being hyper-colorized like many films from the time.  Everything looks natural and vibrant.  Ozu paints each scene with precision and warmth.  The sets look like real places as a result, lending to the authenticity of the film.

The colors are rich and detailed and avoid being hyper-colorized like many films from the time.  Everything looks natural and vibrant.  Ozu paints each scene with precision and warmth.

Equinox Flower also revives Ozu’s sense of humor.  Known best for his masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953) which is a somber piece about parents feeling unwanted by their grown children and being shuffled from house to house unable to incorporate into their children’s lives, he makes this film in a much lighter vein, similar to his early family comedies.  That is not to say there is not a certain amount of drama in the film.  When Hirayama is bent on opposing the marriage and decides he will not attend the wedding, he and his wife have an incredibly intense conversation about his inflexibility and obstinate nature.  This exchange is particularly surprising and dramatic because up to that point, Kiyoko is always smiling and pleasant.  She is the ray of optimism and open love in the family, so when she lets her husband of many years know how he is behaving and chastises him for it, her point is well made because of its contrast to her typical demeanor.

Yasujiro Ozu only made five more films after Equinox Flower, and while it is not a masterpiece it is close.  Ozu manages to bring out the humor and tension in a family and sets his main character of Hirayama as a sage to those around him who is unwilling to listen to himself when it comes to his own family.  He makes his points through his characters and their interactions without using flashy camera work.  He uses his trademark shot, keeping the camera the approximate height of a person kneeling at a table so the audience can feel as though we are sitting at the tables with the characters.  It is a form of inclusion that should be lost on Western audiences but somehow is not.  By having us sit there, we are part of the story more than if he was moving the camera all around the characters, getting tight close-ups and maneuvering the camera up and down stairs.  Instead, Ozu makes the best use of a static camera of any director.  In most films, a static camera would be boring and detract from action but Ozu’s characters are so complete and his scenarios so vivid that anything but a static camera would bring the film down, possibly even undo it completely.  In keeping still, Ozu makes us focus on the story and the characters and he makes sure those are interesting enough that we don’t notice that the camera is always across the room and sometimes lower than the characters.  Equinox Flower (1958) shows a great director in peak form delivering a wonderful film that can speak to audiences in Japan as well as it can to those in the West.  It provides a localized setting for a universal lesson in parenting and understanding.