The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Direction
Ozu's 'tatami shot' — low, still, watching life unfold.
Acting
Setsuko Hara's smile that hides an ocean of grief.
Editing
Those pillow shots: empty rooms, trains, smoke — pure emotion.
Director
Yasujirō Ozu
Chishū Ryū
Shukichi Hirayama
Chieko Higashiyama
Tomi Hirayama
Setsuko Hara
Noriko Hirayama
Haruko Sugimura
Shige Kaneko
So Yamamura
Koichi Hirayama
Kuniko Miyake
Fumiko Hirayama
Kyōko Kagawa
Kyoko Hirayama
Eijirō Tōno
Numata
Nobuo Nakamura
Kurazo Kaneko
Shirō Ōsaka
Keizo Hirayama
Hisao Toake
Osamu Hattori
Teruko Nagaoka
Yone Hattori
Mutsuko Sakura
Oden Restaurant Woman
Toyo Takahashi
Woman Next Door
Tōru Abe
Railway Staff
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ozu wrote this mourning his own mother; he died exactly ten years later on his birthday, a lifelong bachelor who lived with his mom.
The 'shitamachi' setting captures vanishing pre-war Tokyo — Ozu's elegy for a Japan already disappearing.
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