There Was a Father (1942)

Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.

Director:

Yasujirô Ozu

Writers:

Tadao Ikeda, Yasujirô Ozu

Stars:

Chishû Ryû, Shûji Sano, Shin Saburi

Cast

Credited cast:
Chishû Ryû	...	Shuhei Horikawa
Shûji Sano	...	Ryohei Horikawa
Shin Saburi	...	Yasutaro Kurokawa
Takeshi Sakamoto	...	Makoto Hirata
Mitsuko Mito	...	Fumiko Hirata
Masayoshi Ôtsuka	...	Seiichi Hirata
Shin'ichi Himori	...	Minoru Uchida
Haruhiko Tsuda	...	Ryohei as a child
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Shôtarô Fujimatsu
Chiyoko Fumiya
Masao Hayama
Kanji Kawahara	...	Teacher of junior high school
Teruo Kisaragi
Shôichi Kofujita	...	(as Shôichi Kotôda)
Masami Kubota

Storyline

A father and his son, a son and his father. Horikawa is a widower, a teacher, and a good father to Ryohei, who's about 10. After a tragedy, Horikawa resigns from teaching and takes Ryohei from Tokyo to the town of Ueno, enrolling him in junior high; to the lad's sorrow, he will be a boarder. Horikawa returns to work in Tokyo, their separation is complete. Jump ahead more than ten years: with dad's help, Ryohei has finished college and has a teaching job in Akita. Horikawa considers living with his son, which Ryohei wants, but the elder's notions of duty and hard work preclude it. Ryohei arranges a ten-day vacation with his father. Heartbreak comes quietly, nearly hidden by dignity.

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Plot Keywords:

teacher student relationship | crying | train | dignity | duty | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

November 1982 (USA)

Also Known As:

There Was a Father

Company Credits

Production Co:

Shochiku

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Contains only 353 shots. The average shot length is 14.8 seconds.

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Connections

Referenced in I Lived, But... (1983)

User Reviews

Unusual Ozu film

Most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu take a very restricted time period: a few days at the most. "There Was a Father" is unusual in that the time span is actually quite long: it stretches over a number of years (this is also the case with "The Only Son"), as it chronicles the relationship of a widower with his son. The father, a schoolteacher (played by Chishu Ryu), struggles to make sure that his son has advantages that he never had; in this case, the son is appreciative of all that the father has done, and the relationship is one of the most heartwarming of all familial relationships in Ozu's work. "There Was a Father" represents one of the most beautiful depictions of a good parent in all of world cinema.