Kinuyo Tanaka's son is sick, her husband, Shuji Sano, is still in the army, and the hospital demands payment in advance. She's just sold her last good outfit to make the month's rent in the inflationary, black-market sinkhole that Post-War Japan is. So she sells the only thing she has to sell, and her son gets better. Then Sano returns, and she tells him what she did. His attitude being the masculine "You can't sell what's mine!" He walks out -- he's got money, sliding back into his Pre-war job, where there's plenty of money.
I think that Ozu is playing with subtexts here about Post-War Japan. When his character says "Okay, I know I did a very stupid thing. Can we get over it and move on with our life together?" I think he's talking about the last twenty or so years of Japanese history like it's an Oops! moment. That's why the shift in his symbols. In Ozu's early comedies, there is a lot of industrial parts on the ground where the children play, symbols of Japan's growing industrial might and a hopeful future. Here, what there is of it is absolute junk. The apartment in which Tanaka lives with her boy, waiting for her husband to return, is a thing of shreds and patches, but there's running water and there's electricity. Across the street are empty gas tanks that slowly and erratically fill as the movie progresses. "Come," says Sano at the end, "Let's put the past behind us, and live our lives with love and joy."
And Ozu made comedies about families coping with a changing Japan for the rest of his career, with occasional pauses to remake FLOATING WEEDS.
I think that Ozu is playing with subtexts here about Post-War Japan. When his character says "Okay, I know I did a very stupid thing. Can we get over it and move on with our life together?" I think he's talking about the last twenty or so years of Japanese history like it's an Oops! moment. That's why the shift in his symbols. In Ozu's early comedies, there is a lot of industrial parts on the ground where the children play, symbols of Japan's growing industrial might and a hopeful future. Here, what there is of it is absolute junk. The apartment in which Tanaka lives with her boy, waiting for her husband to return, is a thing of shreds and patches, but there's running water and there's electricity. Across the street are empty gas tanks that slowly and erratically fill as the movie progresses. "Come," says Sano at the end, "Let's put the past behind us, and live our lives with love and joy."
And Ozu made comedies about families coping with a changing Japan for the rest of his career, with occasional pauses to remake FLOATING WEEDS.