Scenes from: An Autumn Afternoon (1962) 秋刀魚の味

I was pleased to see this post used as a reference in a Turkish magazine, Japon Sinemasi (website).

Ozu Ishikawadai Turkish Japanese cinema magazine

About a year ago I started binge-watching Yasujiro Ozu’s post-war domestic dramas. The cast of each film hardly seems to change from one film to the next, and the plots are all fairly simple, so it’s easy to get them mixed up.

Maybe my favorite from this group of films is An Autumn Afternoon 秋刀魚の味 (Sanma no aji / “The Taste of Mackerel Pike”), Ozu’s final film.

Like many of this series, the film is languorous, spending ample time on the visual details of architecture, place, lighting, and visual depth.

The gentle darkness of early evening…

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu baseball lights Tokyo

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu early evening Tokyo city

The iconic Morinaga & Co. 森永製菓 “Ginza Globe” 「銀座の地球儀」, during its reincarnation from around 1953 to 1983. The globe can be seen advertising “Morinaga Milk Caramel” 「森永ミルクキャラメル」 in the first photo.

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Ginza Globe Morinaga candy

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Ginza Globe Morinaga candy Ginza

After work drinks, perhaps in Ginza…

(In the second photo we see a sign, “TORYS BAR” – not sure if it’s 100% related, but there’s reference to a bar with the same name, located in Kamata, in Seicho Matsumoto’s serialized 1960-1961 novel, “Inspector Imanishi Investigates”『砂の器』 . TORYS may have been a chain from that time period.)

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu after work drinks

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu after work drinks woman skirt

And surprisingly candid conversation about World War II (the Pacific War).

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Japan Pacific War regrets

The urban fabric of trains and apartment buildings…

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu train suburb apartment complex

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Tokyo danchi quilts

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Tokyo suburb apartment complex

The commuting life from Ishikawadai Station 石川台駅 (map) with the elegant Shima Iwashita 岩下志麻.

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Ishikawadai station Tokyo

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Ishikawadai station Tokyo waiting

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Ishikawadai Japanese beauty

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu Ishikawadai station Tokyo waiting train

Work life…

An Autumn Afternoon red and white smokestacks industrial

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu after work drinks 2

And the eternal struggle to find one’s place in this world.

An Autumn Afternoon Ozu climbing hill urban view Tokyo

And one last amusing detail:

I'm impressed. Even back in 1962 Japan used electronic buttons to summon waitresses. From "An Autumn Afternoon": pic.twitter.com/C27qh15Kwx

— the tokyo files (@thetokyofiles) December 26, 2013

Other films from Director Yasujiro Ozu:

Early Summer (1951)
Tokyo Story 東京物語 Tōkyō Monogatari (1953) – Quote: “What a treat to sleep in my dead son’s bed.“
Good Morning 『お早よう』 (1959)
Late Autumn 秋日和 Akibiyori (aka “A Calm Autumn Day”) (1960); advertising balloons can be seen from the top of an office building in Late Autumn; see post “Ad Balloons on the Ginza: Float, Young Advertisers! (1890-1989)“