Yasujiro Ozu

Equinox Flower

Equinox Flower

Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.

Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1958
  • 118 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese

Available In

Collector's Set

Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu

Eclipse 3: Late Ozu

DVD Box Set

5 Discs

$55.96

Equinox Flower
Cast
Shin Saburi
Wataru Hirayama
Ineko Arima
Setsuko Hirayama
Kinuyo Tanaka
Kiyoko
Teiji Takahashi
Shotaro Kondo
Keiji Sata
Masahiko Taniguchi
Miyuki Kuwano
Hisako Hirayama
Chishu Ryu
Shukichi Mikami
Chieko Naniwa
Hatsu Sasaki
Nobuo Nakamura
Toshihiko Kawai
Credits
Director
Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay
Kogo Noda
Screenplay
Yasujiro Ozu
Based on the novel by
Ton Satomi
Cinematography
Yuharu Atsuta
Music
Kojun Saito
Art direction
Tatsuo Hamada
Editing
Yoshiyasu Hamamura

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Deeper into Ozu

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Deeper into Ozu

Six writers celebrate the 120th anniversary of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s birth by highlighting underacknowledged elements of his artistry and lesser-known gems in his oeuvre.

Ozu in Berkeley

Repertory Picks

Ozu in Berkeley

As part of a two-month series highlighting Yasujiro Ozu’s late-career work, the Pacific Film Archive is showing Equinox Flower, a family drama about a conservative father and his rebellious daughter, who refuses to accept his plans for her arranged

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The Signature Style of Yasujiro Ozu
The Signature Style of Yasujiro Ozu
With his singular and unwavering style, Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu disregarded the established rules of cinema and created a visual language all his own. Precise compositions, contemplative pacing, low camera angles, and elliptical storytelling a…
From the Eclipse Shelf: Equinox Flower
From the Eclipse Shelf: Equinox Flower
In 1958, in the midst of his most fecund cinematic period, Yasujiro Ozu made his first color film, the splendid Equinox Flower. Like so many of Ozu’s films, this poignant drama is about the subtly difficult emotional landscape navigated by parents …

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Yasujiro Ozu

Writer, Director

Yasujiro Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu has often been called the “most Japanese” of Japan’s great directors. From 1927, the year of his debut for Shochiku studios, to 1962, when, a year before his death at age sixty, he made his final film, Ozu consistently explored the rhythms and tensions of a country trying to reconcile modern and traditional values, especially as played out in relations between the generations. Though he is best known for his sobering 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story, the apex of his portrayals of the changing Japanese family, Ozu began his career in the thirties, in a more comedic, though still socially astute, mode, with such films as I Was Born, But . . . and Dragnet Girl. He then gradually mastered the domestic drama during the war years and afterward, employing both physical humor, as in Good Morning, and distilled drama, as in Late Spring, Early Summer, and Floating Weeds. Though Ozu was discovered relatively late in the Western world, his trademark rigorous style—static shots, often from the vantage point of someone sitting low on a tatami mat; patient pacing; moments of transcendence as represented by the isolated beauty of everyday objects—has been enormously influential among directors seeking a cinema of economy and poetry.