Tokyo Story

The first single-authored study of Yasujiro Ozu's moving family drama, Tokyo Story (1953), is universally acknowledged as one of the most significant Japanese films ever made, and regularly cited as one of the greatest films of all time in polls of world-leading critics and filmmakers. Telling the story of an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, the film contrasts the behavior of their children, who are too busy to pay their parents much attention, and their widowed daughter-in-law, who treats them with kindness, offering a profound and poignant insight into generational shifts in the culture of post-War Japan. Alastair Phillips combines a close analysis of the film and its key locations - the city of Tokyo, the coastal resort of Otami and the train station at Osaka - with a discussion of its representation of Japanese society at a time of great change. Drawing upon Japanese and English language sources, he situates the film within a range of contemporary critical and industrial contexts, and examines the multiple international dimensions of Tokyo Story's long after-life in order to understand its ongoing contribution to global film culture.