I Was Born, But… (1932)

Admirers of Yasujirō Ozu, one of Japan’s greatest directors, will certainly enjoy I Was Born, But…They find much that is unexpected in this early Ozu film, possibly the best of Ozu’s early silent movies.

While the unmarried and childless Ozu has made plenty of films about the gulf between parents and their children, his films usually focus on grown-up children. This time the children Ryoichi (Hideo Sugawara) and Keiji (Tomio Aoki) are schoolboys.

Indeed the two boys provide the focus of the movie, which might tempt us to view it as a coming-of-age movie. I think the boys are too young for it to be that exactly. It is at any rate an important moment in their growing up, a crisis in which they will lose some of their childhood illusions.

The boys dominate the movie kinetically. They are fine actors, as comically expressive in their body language as in their faces. They are constantly shifting restlessly, sometimes in unison, often out of synch with one another. Either way their movements are marked and draw attention to themselves.

That is not to say that this is a children’s movie. Ozu said of it, “I started to make a film about children, and ended up with a film about grown-ups”. This may explain why he gave the film the secondary title of ‘A Picture Book for Adults’. Nonetheless the more adult concerns of the movie only really take over during the last half hour of the film.

This early Ozu film is also notable for its mobile camerawork, something notoriously missing from the mature Ozu movies. In Tokyo Story, there is just one scene where the camera moves slightly, and it lasts for a couple of seconds.

In I Was Born, But… the camera often moves. It follows the children around, imitating their lively movements. Ozu applies a fair amount of sharp editing, allowing parallels to be drawn between the world of children and adults. This also provides a chance for plenty of reaction shots, thereby reducing the need for too many intertitles.

Later Ozu films are notable for placing the camera at ground level, as if to imitate the position of someone sitting on a tatami mat. Here the camera is sometimes placed lower down to indicate a child’s-eye view of the world, and sometimes higher up to offer an adult perspective.

Nonetheless the Ozu admirer will find many of the comforting themes and techniques used in his more famous movies. Some of the themes that Ozu will return to in later works include the frustrations of the workplace, and the gulf between the generations. In this case it is the children who will be disappointed with their father, rather than the parents who are disappointed by their children.

There are a few of Ozu’s trademark ‘pillow shots’, where the camera cuts to an innocent item between scenes to mark the passage of time. Here it is usually washing lines. Ozu’s steaming kettle, a familiar feature in his movies (is it always the same kettle?) is there. Ozu also films one or two scenes through a doorway to create a three-dimensional effect. We see less of these in I Was Born, But… than we do in his later movies, but they are present.

Surprisingly enough the movie’s release was delayed by an anxious studio, which feared it might be too dark in tone. While Ozu’s films are more wistful than depressing, this is one of his more comical works.

The action centres for once on a working class family,  the Yoshis. They have recently moved into a new house to be nearer the workplace of the boys’ father, Chichi (Tatsuo Saitō). The change may have been made for the children’s sake, but Chichi’s colleagues cynically imagine that he moved nearer to work to curry favour with the boss.

The Yoshi family live in the suburbs. One regular motif is the trains that pass by, and sometimes hold up the family on their way to school. The house has a yard with a dog that nobody ever walks.

Ozu usually offers sympathetic parts to his actresses, but this time the boy’s mother Haha (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) has a subordinate role. She never leaves the house, and is usually seen smiling, or carrying out housework. It is only towards the end of the movie that she emerges to try to soothe the hurt feelings of her children and husband.

The movie begins with an image of a truck’s wheel stuck in the mud. This serves as the perfect symbol for much of what follows. The two boys have been displaced from their original home, and feel stuck in a town where they are bullied. Their father is stuck in a low-level job where he must kowtow to the boss, and the likelihood is that his sons will be doing the same to his boss’s son one day.

Ryoichi and Keiji soon discover there are dominant figures at school just as there are for Chichi at work. Chichi has high hopes of them getting an E for Excellence at school, just as he did. Much good it has done him, since the respectable and occasionally strict father at home is obligated to act in a manner that is deferential and buffoonish at work.

Instead the boys experience the problem faced by new children everywhere – they are picked on by bullies. Asked by their father how they like school, their answer is simple: “We like the walk there and the walk home…But the part in-between isn’t much fun.”

This kind of answer has been given by children since school began, but Chichi shows his lack of understanding of the world of children from an early stage. Regarding the bullying, he tells the boys, “They can’t if you ignore them”. However life is really not that simple: “But they’ll still beat us up”.

Of course there is a pecking order, even among bullies, and Ryochi and Keiji feel that a smaller child with a note on his back reading, “Upset tummy. Please don’t feed him anything” is fair game for hitting.

The boys attempt various methods to deal with the bullies. At first they skip school: “I’m supposed to get an E in Calligraphy today”. However they are forced to return by their father. Attempts to gain strength by eating sparrows’ eggs prove fruitless. It is only the assistance of a delivery boy who is even bigger than the biggest bully that finally ends the problem, after which the boys become part of the same gang.

Ozu uses ironic juxtaposition to compare the world of the schoolchildren with that of the adults. The pupils are made to perform regimented exercises in the yard, a method that serves to enforce obedience and crush individuality.

The scene then cuts to Chichi’s workplace, where the camera tracks along a line of yawning executives working at their desks. Then the camera returns to the school, where the children are working on their calligraphy lesson, an activity that is equally tedious and futile. Later we see the employees outside performing physical exercises. The children are being prepared for a lifetime of working as subordinate employees.

It is the individuals who stand out as more interesting – the school bully who is constantly out of step with his classmates during the exercises, or Ryoichi and Keiji skipping school and faking their homework.

These scenes prepare us for the poignant third act of the movie where the boys find out the true nature of their father’s position at work. The children argue about which of them has the most powerful father. However while Ryoichi and Keiji are able to force the weaker boss’s son to submit to their will, they are surprised when Chichi touches his hat to the boy. Even the boss’s son must be treated with deference by a humble worker.

Worse follows when the boys go to the house of the boss and see their father there. In his own home, as at work, Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto) is used to seeing his employees behave in an obsequious manner towards him, including Chichi.

This is taken to amusing extremes. The children and adults have gathered to watch a home video, but the projectionists are obliged to hastily speed through an early part of the film that shows Iwasaki meeting with two ladies, neither of whom are his wife.

What shocks Ryoichi and Keiji however are the antics of their father at work, as caught on film. Chichi is caught on camera pulling faces, making silly gestures, and generally clowning around for the amusement of his boss.

While the other adults and children are amused by Chichi’s clowning around, his sons are appalled. Chichi’s behaviour has shattered their image of him as an important man. When they get home, the boys furiously round on their father: “You tell us to become somebody, but you’re nobody.”

An evening of ugliness follows as the boys defy their father. They go on hunger strike when he justifies his behaviour by saying that he acts that way at work so that they have food at home. Ryoichi and Keiji are frustrated that their father is not a powerful executive. They put it down to weakness on his part, and do not understand that the deciding factor in employment relations is money.

Chichi has some justification in acting this way, as it has led to a better life for him and his family. He will never become a business leader because he will never be well-off enough. This is the first inkling the boys have that one day they will have to work for someone who is weaker and less smart than them, but who comes from the right family or financial background.

This is not to say that Chichi does not share his sons’ low opinion of his actions. “Will they lead the same sorry lives we have?” he asks his wife. Later he tells his sons, “How about growing up to be even greater men than your father?”

Of course no hunger strike can last long with two hungry boys. The film ends with Ryoichi and Keiji once more asserting their dominance over the boss’s son, but they also tell their father to greet Iwasaki in the same deferential way when his car pulls up. Perhaps the boys will learn not to be ‘miserable apple-polishers’ like their father, or perhaps economic realities will mean that the same fate awaits them.