Review: Early Summer (1951)

In Yasujiro Ozu’s film, and as in our lived experience, the passage of time is made palpable when loss, either in the form of a severance of bonds or simply the irrevocable departure from one period to the next, is imminent. To submit to the volatile nature of time, and thus to accept that there are limits to men’s power, help mitigate our anxiety in the face of the inevitable. In Japanese culture, such is the commendable attitude when it comes to loss and death: fear and grief, as long as we are humans, may not be suppressed but may be transcended. As a lifelong exponent of Japan’s traditional ethos, Ozu, in his post-war films especially, endorses implicitly the transcendence of human emotions as the optimal response to life’s vicissitudes and, above all, the physical and psychological ravage of war. On the cusp of an immense societal change, the Japanese public did not react favourably to Ozu’s philosophy, whose emphasis on the primacy of quietude was invariably misconstrued as a reactionary’s intransigence against the dawning of modernisation. 

It is true that Ozu never concealed his wariness of the new thoughts and values that came hot-foot and wholesale into the nation after the War. In his film, the character who is the most ready to subscribe to Westernised ideas is often roundly and unceasingly mocked at. Shortcakes may be partook and orchestra concerts may be attended without attracting so much as a raised eyebrow or a teasing comment, since these fairly innocuous diversions can hardly vitiate the robust edifice of a traditional Japanese household, within which the young people, despite their growing but tentative detachment, both in thoughts and spirits, from the older generation, are still liable to orient their lives around conventional affairs. There is regularly an ironic twist in Ozu’s film where a strong-minded son or daughter is compelled, in the end, to budge and settle into a life in conformity with societal expectations. Marriage has rarely anything to do with love at all: Ozu himself admitted that romance, for him, is ever peripheral to the establishment of human relationships. In the wake of her engagement to her neighbour, Noriko, the heroine of Early Summer (1951), tries to convince her friend that love was not the catalyst for her sudden decision. It was purely by accident, she explains, as that with a person looking for something all over the place and then realising that it has been right there in front of him all along. That means you did love him, her friend decides. Noriko is mystified: Did I? Did I love him?

As though evoking the joy and passion of the season (“early summer”), Ozu’s 1951 feature is consistently buoyed by a youthful energy which, in his post-war films dealing with similar domestic themes, seems reduced to only a few occasional paroxysms. Never had Ozu taken such an empathetic view on the trials of youth. The characterisation of Noriko sets itself apart from that of the more docile, taciturn “Norikos”, all played by Setsuko Hara, on which Late Spring and Tokyo Story center: the Noriko of Early Summer is decidedly more confident in her own voice and opinions, more steadfast in her refusal to follow others’ order, and more readily receptive of what the new world has to offer. In a particularly telling sequence, the family – Noriko’s elderly parents, her autocratic, rather bigoted brother and his staid, kindly wife – are seen lamenting Noriko’s choice of husband; snippets of their conversation reach Noriko, who is eating alone in the kitchen; the camera closes up on her face, which shows hardly any visible signs of displeasure. Without a single word of protest, Noriko’s dogged assertion of her independence nonetheless finds the most powerful means.

But it is wrong to suppose that Early Summer is Ozu’s celebration of youth culture and women’s right for independence. The director had his reservation as of whether modern age will necessarily augur a better future for the nation and its people, or the traditional values and morals will all be sacrificed without the guaranteed return of greater good. A similar doubt is shared by Noriko in the final moments of the film, wherein she breaks down in tears after apologising for her willfulness in making her own decision without first consulting her parents. The old couple console themselves with the hope that Noriko and her husband will move back to Tokyo in a few years’ time (Noriko follows her husband to northern Honshu, where he is posted) and the family will again be reunited. Both know at the back of their mind that such hope is very likely only illusory, but time, always so capricious and unreliable as a measure for reality, also gives occasion to infinite dreaming.