what he said.
When I heard that story,
I thought, ''That's so like him.''
And the reason I thought that is
if you read his screenplays carefully,
you'll see that every one of them is
consistent with this ''I can wait'' idea.
To cite an example -
Well, there are many examples.
But he would bring other things
into this ''I can wait,''
things like justice and kindness.
These situations play
an important part in his films.
I think about Ozu like this:
He had his own conception
of what justice is.
He placed great importance on this
and tried to show it in his films.
Artists can actually only speak
about what they have inside themselves.
So Ozu's true self shows up
in many different forms in his films.
I Was Born, But...,
The Only Son,
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family,
Tokyo Story,
Late Spring, Early Summer.
If you read those screenplays carefully,
you'll find one consistent thought
running through them all:
kindness first, then justice.
And when you apply these to a situation,
the result is friendship.
This kind of thinking
is everywhere in his work.
In February  1946,
Ozu returned toJapan.
He moved to Noda, where his mother
and younger brother were living.
He then made
Record of a Tenement Gentlemen,
and after that, A Hen in the Wind.
Please don't go. Stay here.
- Move.
- Please don't go.
You're tired.
Rest.Just for today.
Let me go.
What if something
should happen to you?
Toshiko!
I couldn't forget Ozu's name once I'd seen
A Hen in the Wind after the war.
TADAO SATO - FILM CRITIC
I was 1 7 then. I'd just gotten out of
a youth infantry division.
After the war, I didn't know much
about what was going on in society.
It's the story of a husband
who's gone to war and come back.
He finds out that,
due to financial difficulties,
his wife has gone into prostitution
for one night to save their sick child,
and he's devastated by that fact.
The film never preached about
what married couples ought to do.
Without expressing it
overtly through dialogue,
it communicated that
the husband had no right
to blame his wife for what
she'd done while he was at war.
You go to war,
and you have to kill people.
A man who's killed people
has no right to blame his wife
for one night of prostitution.
There's no dialogue to this effect.
But there are subtle things:
the fundamental relationship
between two people,
what kind of person
has the right to blame another,
these fundamental matters.
Without using dialogue,
he seemed to be hinting at those things.
On this subject,
I see it a bit differently.
Certainly the war was the cause
of the wife's actions,
and this led to trouble
for the couple.
But as for the question
of exactly what war is,
I felt Ozu's way
of approaching it
wasn't too well thought-out.
I'm partly responsible for that, too.
I mean, I wrote the script with him.
I wrote it, but I still feel that way.
But that was his way
of filmmaking, wasn't it?
He wasn't straightfotward.
That was part of how
he looked at things.
Yes, that's true.
That's why I never tried to clear things up
with him while writing the script.
Still, I think if he had made an effort
to think more deeply about war,
he might have been able
to make an even better film.
KOGO NODA
In 1949,
he returned to his writing partnership
with Kogo Noda.
They hadn't worked together
since An Innocent Maid.
After writing Late Spring,
they continued working together
until Ozu's last film,
An Autumn Afternoon.
In Late Spring, Ozu vividly portrays
a daughter leaving home.
So you've decided
to marry Noriko off?
She'll make a good wife.
I wish I'd had a son.
It's no fun having a daughter.
You raise her,
then you have to give her away.
If she doesn't get married,
then you worry.
And if she does,
it's no good