Noriko, The successor to ‘Family as Illusion’: Focusing on the representation of women in Ozu Yasujiro's Noriko Trilogy

Abstract

In this study, I critically reconsider the issue of how women are represented in Ozu Yasujiro's Noriko Trilogy-Late Spring(1949), Early Summer(1951), Tokyo Story(1953). When Ozu deals with the family community in his films, he deliberately removes the authoritative patriarchy derived from ‘Ie’ system and consciously omits the problems of the past, leaving only the nostalgia of the ‘traditional family.’ At this point, the traditional family can be said to be space as an ‘illusion’, which Japan must recover again after the war and humane warmth exists. In this space, women can only be wives or mothers, not individuals. Moreover, the purpose of education for women was to train the ideology of ‘good-wife and wise-mother’ that fosters the next generation of citizens and supports the husband and family. ‘Modern girl’, who has appeared in Japanese society since the 1920s, conflicts with this ideology. So Ozu represents Noriko as a contradictory figure-a modern girl with traditional values to solve this problem. Noriko seemingly refuses to marry and stands on her own, but she cannot escape the familyhood. In Late Spring, and Early Summer, Her freedom is to the level that society can tolerate, and where she should be is always at ‘home.’ Noriko in Tokyo Story appears to maximize the positivity of the ideal Japanese woman. The family community has been dissolved or already dissolved in the Noriko trilogy. It is Noriko's marriage that resolves the anxiety and conflict that arise here. Although Noriko's current family has been divided, she is incorporated into another patriarchy, maintaining the ‘ideal family’ that Ozu pursues. In this process, ‘individual’ Noriko disappears and only Noriko, the successor of ‘good-wife and wise-mother’, remains in the family.