Family on Film Post-World War II Japan: Kurosawa and Ozu

The Post World War II films of Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) and Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) share a traditional trope of what is constituted as family in United States Occupied Japan (1945-1952), and their films transcend their production year to still illustrate a Japan of the 21^st century. By studying what is “family” in Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, Late Spring, and Tokyo Story, we see family is defined not only in a traditional Japanese sense, but also the the audience, film student, and critic can see how Kurosawa and Ozu extended the idea of family into community, politics, military, and economics as a metaphor to the defeated Japan in which they were living. In the films from Kurosawa and Ozu during the US Occupation of Japan, family in many contexts becomes a major theme as Japan tries to bring back Japanese tradition under the thumb of the only foreign country ever to control them.