CULTJAPAN!

An Autumn Afternoon is 1962 drama and the final movie directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Known in Japan as Sanma no Aji (literally, “The Taste of a Pacific saury”), the film stars Chishu Ryu as the patriarch of the Hirayama family who oversees the wedding of his daughter, played by Shima Iwashita.

Shuhei Hirayama is an aging widower with a married eldest son, Koichi (Keiji Sada), and two unmarried children – a 24-year-old daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita) and a younger son Kazuo. Since marriage Koichi has shifted out with his wife, leaving Kazuo and Hirayama in Michiko’s care.

Hirayama and his fellow classmates Kawai and Horie go to a class reunion where one of their teachers, Sakuma, nicknamed the “Gourd”, is in attendance. The friends tease Horie who has married a much younger wife. They reminisce about the past and Sakuma has too much to drink, and Kawai and Hirayama have to bring him home. They meet his spinster daughter Tomoko, who is now too old to marry.

Koichi borrows 50,000 yen from his father to buy a refrigerator, but plans to use the excess money to buy second-hand golf clubs. His wife Akiko is in disagreement, but finally relents. However, she decides ill-temperedly to use some of these extra money to buy for herself a white leather purse as well.

Sakuma tells his former pupils that it is owing to his own selfishness that his daughter is now an old spinster. Troubled by Sakuma’s daughter’s example, Hirayama decides on an arranged marriage for Michiko. He asks Koichi if his colleague Miura, whom Michiko is fond of, is interested in Michiko. Unfortunately, Miura is already engaged. Koichi and Hirayama break the news to a visibly upset Michiko, and later ask her if she is willing to go for a matchmaking session with a candidate Kawai has selected. Michiko agrees.

In one of the ellipses Ozu is famous for, the film forwards to Michiko’s wedding day. (Michiko clearly has agreed to marry, though her bridegroom is never shown.) Michiko prepares to wed in a traditional dress. (The actual ceremony is never shown.) Hirayama goes to a bar to celebrate her wedding afterwards and ends up drunk. When he returns, Koichi and his wife go off, leaving behind Kazuo who duly goes to bed, and a melancholic Hirayama sitting in the middle of the night.

Get An Autumn Afternoon on DVD

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “An Autumn Afternoon“.