The personal interpretation of Ozu's films has been encouraged by two misleading circumstances: one, that we simply happen to know much more about Ozu than we do about earlier traditional artists, and two, that Ozu, unlike a Zen poet or painter, must use living human beings as his raw material. The characters on screen are experiencing life…. But the characters who are emoting on screen may be no more or less representative of the film-maker than a nonhuman shot of a train or a building. The characters' individual feelings (sorrow, joy, introspection) are of passing importance: it is the surrounding form which gives them lasting value. (p. 26)

Much of Ozu's approach is derived from Japanese culture itself, and it is the traditional elements which make him the "most Japanese of all directors." The most appropriate analogy for the cultural elements in Ozu's films is Zen art. Zen is not an organized religion with physical and political concerns like Shintoism or Christianity, but a way of living which has permeated the fabric of Japanese culture….

Perhaps the basic principle of Zen art is the first koan of Zen, mu, the concept of negation, emptiness, and void. Emptiness, silence, and stillness are positive elements in Zen art, and represent presence rather than the absence of something…. Mu is the character used to refer to the spaces between the branches of a flower arrangement; the emptiness is an integral part of the form. (p. 27)

Like the traditional Zen artist, Ozu directs silences and voids. Silence and emptiness are active ingredients in Ozu's films; characters respond to them as if they were audible sounds and tangible objects. Although such responses are usually quite subtle, a rather obvious use of active silence occurs in Early Summer: Setsuko Hara has just told her parents of her intention to marry, a decision which displeases them. After a polite argument the parents, despondent, go upstairs. In the next shot the father is staring into the camera while in the background the mother does some busywork and speaks to him. She makes a trivial remark, and he replies, "Ah." She makes another remark, he again replies, "Ah." The mother leaves the room and Hara walks noiselessly through the background. The father again says, "Ah." The silence has become electric, much more meaningful than anything the mother could have said. (p. 28)

But most of all, mu is expressed in Ozu's "codas." His films are structured between action and emptiness, between indoors and outdoors, between scene and coda. The conflicts are always explicated in indoors, usually in long dispassionate conversations. The settings may vary (home, office, bar, restaurant), but the story is rarely forwarded by anything but indoor conversations (and the one or two exceptions in each film are thematically crucial). These indoor discussions are set off by "codas": still-life scenes of outdoor Japanese life, empty streets and alleys, a passing train or boat, a distant mountain or lake…. Each of the codas sets off an Ozu "paragraph."… There are no chapters, only paragraphs and codas…. In Western art one would naturally assume that the codas are inserted to give weight to the paragraphs, but for Ozu, as for Zen, it is precisely the opposite: the dialogue gives meaning to the silence, the action to the still life. (p. 29)

"Nostalgia" in Ozu's films, such as the scene when the father in An Autumn Afternoon revisits the bar where the barmaid resembles his dead wife, is not so much a longing for the past in Western terms but is more likely an "expansion" of the present so familiar to Zen art. When Ozu focuses on a wall clock, watching the seconds tick futilely away, it is partially to contrast film time and psychological time,… but it is also to create the mood of total timelessness integral to Zen art….

Ozu achieves the "eternal now" in the same manner as cha-no-yu, [the Zenta ritual] through ritual. Each possible event in an Ozu film can be reduced to a predetermined, limited and precise number of shots. If the tea bowl is of a certain color or texture, a certain type of conversation will ensue; if an Ozu character is in a certain location, a certain type of conversation will ensue. (p. 31)

In Zen painting the technique ritual evolved into an alphabet of brush strokes. There were a certain number of brush strokes used to represent natural objects; they were learned by rote, practiced piecemeal, and were meaningless until assembled. Similarly one may speak of Ozu's alphabet, a set of predetermined shots from which he would never depart. (p. 32)

Ritual in Oriental art is not structured around a single cathartic event (like the blinding of Oedipus, for instance), but is cyclic, with little rise and fall, revealing the timeless Oneness of man and nature…. The continuation is based on the infrastructure of ritual. A certain pattern of shots is repeatable within an Ozu paragraph, a certain pattern of Ozu paragraphs is repeatable with an Ozu film, and a certain number of Ozu films are repeatable within an Ozu career. The ritual is not separate from the form, which is not separate from the content. (p. 33)

The greatest conflict (and the greatest resulting disillusionment) in Ozu's films is not political, psychological, or domestic, but is, for want of a better term, "environmental." That the aged cannot communicate with the young, that the parents cannot communicate with their children, that the craftsmen cannot communicate with the office workers—these are all dimensions of the problem that the modern Japanese cannot communicate with his environment. During a disillusioning saké-drinking bout a character in Late Autumn says, "It is people who tend to complicate life. Life itself is very simple."… These statements reflect a breakdown in the traditional attitude toward nature in Zen art. How can man complicate life? How can the fish complicate the water? This for Ozu, is the great threat of modernization: it threatens the traditional Oneness, and when that unity wobbles the rest of the structures—home, office—come tumbling after. (p. 35)

Ozu responds to the disunity in Japanese life by evoking the traditional verities of Zen art in a contemporary, cinematic context. He is naturally more predisposed to the older generation because they are closer to traditional culture and because time itself evokes aware, the mood of autumn…. In the tradition of Zen art, Ozu does not forge an artificial synthesis between the old and the young, man and nature, but situates these elements within the larger context of the furyu [the four basic moods of Zen] which affects and encompasses everything. The runaway, après-guerre daughter of Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo Boshoku, 1957) manifests the same "sympathetic sadness" which permeates her respectable, misunderstanding father. The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice is one of the least successful of Ozu's later films because he breaks his rule of situating seeming conflicts within the larger context of the furyu. (pp. 35-6)

The final shots of Ozu's films, like the codas, are reaffirmations of nature. These shots may depict something as traditional as a mountain, or it may incorporate such contemporary elements as a boat on a river, or a smokestack. These scenes are the final codas, the final silences and emptiness. (p. 37)

[Taken] as a whole Ozu's techniques are so similar to traditional Zen methods that the influence is unmistakable, and one must consequently assume that Ozu's personality, like that of the traditional artist, is only valuable to the extent that it expresses his thesis. His personality, like those of his characters, merges with an enveloping sense of mono no aware, and—the ultimate achievement of Zen art—finally becomes undistinguishable from it. (p. 38)

In Ozu, the stylization is near complete. Every shot is from the same height, every composition static, every conversation monotone, every expression bland, every cut forthright and predictable. (p. 41)

A potential disparity between man and nature underlies Ozu's films. He suggests that the flow of man and nature may be separate rather than unified, which, within the context of his traditional structure, certainly does create a schizoid reaction. This disparity becomes obvious when Ozu juxtaposes similar codas after contrasting family scenes. A shot of a snow-capped mountain inserted after a discussion by several parents plainly suggests the unity to which they aspire, but the same shot inserted after a parent-child quarrel suggests that the traditional unity may have little meaning within the postwar family structure. The codas cannot only be a positive statement on the unity of man and nature, but also a wry commentary on the lack of it.

For the most part, disparity in Ozu's films is conveyed by a strange human density which seems inappropriate to the clinically observed environment, and which, at the moment of decisive action, reveals itself to be a spiritual weight. Throughout his films there is an undercurrent of compassion which, although not overtly expressed, seems inherent in the treatment of the characters by each other and more importantly by their director. The viewer senses that there are deep, untapped feelings just below the surface. (pp. 43-4)

In a similarly ambivalent manner Ozu simultaneously evokes both laughter at and sympathy for his characters. Even when he makes fun of his characters, as in the drinking scene in Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatori, 1953), Ozu also evokes sympathy for them. His unblinking camera impresses the viewer with its fairness, its willingness to watch all of a man's conduct, both ludicrous and noble, without comment…. The nagging sense of disparity grows and grows.

In this mild form disparity is often reflected by a thoroughgoing sense of irony. In films of transcendental style, irony is the temporary solution to living in a schizoid world. The principal characters take an attitude of detached awareness, find humor in the bad as well as the good, passing judgment on nothing. (pp. 44-5)

Disparity, therefore, is a gradual process, each progressive step eating away at the solid veneer of everyday reality. At first, it is a "sense" of compassion which teases the viewer, making him believe that emotions are present but giving him no tangible proof. Finally, it is a decisive action, a totally bold call for emotion which dismisses any pretense of everyday reality. (p. 46)

Stasis is the end product of transcendental style, a quiescent view of life in which the mountain is again a mountain. (p. 49)

Complete stasis, or frozen motion, is the trademark of religious art in every culture. It establishes an image of a second reality which can stand beside the ordinary reality; it represents the Wholly Other. In Ozu, the image of stasis is represented by the final coda, a still-life view which connotes Oneness. It is the same restrictive view which began the film: the mountain has become a mountain again, but in an entirely different way. Perhaps the finest image of stasis in Ozu's films is the lengthy shot of the vase in a darkened room near the end of Late Spring…. The vase is stasis, a form which can accept deep, contradictory emotion and transform it into an expression of something unified, permanent, transcendent. (pp. 49, 51)