The Only Son (1936) - film review

Japan, 1923.  Otsune is a poor widow who struggles to bring up her only son Ryosuke in the rural town of Shinshu.  One day, Ryosuke’s teacher Ookubo visits Otsune and persuades her to allow her son to continue his studies after he leaves elementary school.  Otsune knows that she will have to make many sacrifices to pay for her son’s education, but she agrees to do so on the understanding that her son will work hard to become a great man.  Thirteen years later, Otsune travels to Tokyo to visit her son and is disappointed to learn that, far from being a great man, he is merely a night school teacher.  He lives on the brink of poverty, in a crowded slum with his wife and newborn baby.   Is this what Otsune sold her house and land for?  Is this what she has spent years toiling in a silk factory for?  Her son, the educated man, now a penniless teacher...

The Only Son, Yasujirô Ozu’s first sound feature, is often overlooked but it surely deserves to be considered one of the director’s more important works.   The story it tells could hardly be simpler, yet it is a beguiling piece of cinema with immense charm and a universal appeal.  You would think that, since Ozu had been a master of silent Japanese cinema for a decade, sound would add little to his films.  In fact, Ozu uses sound as imaginatively and deliberately as he uses the camera, as this film bears out.  The soundtrack not only brings added reality to what see on the screen but it also amplifies the poetry of Ozu’s art.

The Only Son has a subtle complexity that belies its narrative simplicity.  In common with much Japanese cinema, the characters rarely show their emotions, but beneath the placid calm we can easily sense the maelstrom of feelings that are in play.  How easily we identify with Otsune’s sense of betrayal when she learns that her son has failed to make anything of his life.  And how easy it is to sympathise with Ryosuke’s shame when he realises what his mother has had to sacrifice to pay for his education.  But there is also a certain amount of ambiguity.  Even when the drama has played itself out, we cannot be sure whether Ryosuke has managed to redeem himself in his mother’s eyes, or whether she still regards him as a failure.  Who knows what conflicting emotions assail a mother’s heart?  

In common with much of Ozu’s work, the landscape is an essential element of this film.  The keenly felt feelings of regret and disillusionment that ripple through the narrative are somehow heightened by the grim desolation of the slum setting.  This is not the Tokyo that immediately comes to mind.  It more closely resembles the bleak location of an Italian neo-realist drama, with poverty and deprivation etched deeply into every shot.  Yet, as stark as this setting is, there is also a poetic resonance, a suggestion perhaps that the situation is not as hopeless as it may seem.  As his mother acknowledges, Ryosuke is still a young man, he has his whole life in front of him.   Whilst an air of tragedy pervades the last few lingering shots, we can be sure that everything will come right in the end.  Ryosuke will learn from Otsune’s example of self-sacrifice and will work hard to fulfil his own sacred duty as a parent. 

© James Travers 2010

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