Among the most celebrated of all Japanese film directors, Yasujirō Ozu began his studio career in 1923 at the Shochiku Film Company and would remain employed there until his death 40 years later. As the only major film studio operating in Tokyo following the Kantō earthquake of 1923, Shochiku was uniquely positioned to produce films tackling urban life in modern Japan. Inspired by the work of Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch, Ozu would quickly blossom into one of the company’s signature talents, tackling contemporary subject matter with a quietly thorny comedic sensibility. The most popular and enduring of Ozu’s silent films, I Was Born, But… follows Ryoichi and Keiji Yoshi, a pair of schoolboys recently relocated to the suburbs of Tokyo, where they’re forced to suffer the wrath of local bullies and assaults on their salary-man father’s dignity. I Was Born, But… would set the stage for Ozu’s subsequent career as the great chronicler of 20th century Japanese family life and prove to be the director’s major breakthrough with film critics, named the best release of 1932 by film magazine Kinema Junpo and later appearing on their list of the greatest Japanese films of all time. 35mm from Janus Films

Preceded by a very special short subject recently preserved by CFS!
“Doll Messengers of Friendship” (1927) – 9 min – 35mm

Against a backdrop of mounting xenophobia in the US, Rev. Sidney Gulick embarked on an unconventional act of private diplomacy to reset his country’s rocky relationship with Japan: a doll exchange between the countries’ schoolchildren. Industrialist Eiichi Shibusawa oversaw the Japanese response, welcoming the American dolls and reciprocating with a beautiful contingent of dolls for the US. Though Gulick and Shibusawa’s approach was cute and cuddly, the underlying plea for reconciliation was deadly serious—and tragically short-lived. This neglected episode in East-West relations is commemorated in the short film “Doll Messengers of Friendship.” Never released theatrically, “Doll Messengers” was made to be shown as a motion picture adjunct to the Japanese dolls’ tour of the US. This surviving fragment has been preserved from a 35mm tinted diacetate print, the only extant copy of the film. Preserved by Chicago Film Society with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.