Another wonderful post by Jonathon Delacour, about a visit to filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu’s grave. Reading Jonathon’s pilgramage tale, I’m determined that soon I too will make it down to Kamakura to see the grave. Living in greater Tokyo there isn’t a day that goes by that some scene — usually involving trains, or salarymen tipsily exiting a nomiya with a swaying red lantern sign out front, or sliding doors, or perspiring people futilely fanning themselves — doesn’t remind me of a shot from an Ozu film. Sitting as I am now on my tatami mat floor I’m reminded that my first encounter with a tatami mat was through Ozu’s famed low-angle camera placement (as if the camera were resting on the mat floor).
Delacour’s post also brought back for me Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-ga, one of my most treasured films that I saw in Hawaii back in 1986, and which first instilled in me the now-realized dream of one day living in Japan. (Will someone please release this on DVD? Criterion?)