Happiness According to Ozu:
A Scene from Late Spring

April 21, 2007

Near the end of Late Spring is a scene that describes two distinct versions of happiness. Throughout the film we have watched as Noriko (Setsuko Hara) and her father (Chishu Ryu) tip-toe around the idea of marriage. Finally at the conclusion the two set out there contrasting visions of happiness. The following is a commentary on this critical scene.

As so often with Ozu, the transition to a new scene is done by a series of still life videos. Father and daughter are in Kyoto for a final trip before her wedding. These images encourage us to meditate on the rocks in the garden.. and given the themes of the film it is hard not to connect the solitary or coupled rocks to the characters in the film and the human endeavor to find companionship.

At the beginning of this scene we watch father and daughter packing up their things and getting ready to leave Kyoto. The father wishes they had made more trips like this.. and then notes: "This is our last trip together." It is a comment that might be seen as a bad move, given his daughter's obvious discomfort with leaving him. But it sparks a moment of human honesty.. and this ability to catch human beings being honest with each other is one reason I keep coming back to Yasujiro Ozu.

Quickly the father picks up a book to put in his bag. We know the father is a scholar.. so there is nothing out of place when we note that the book is Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietszche. We note the identity of the book only because of the slight purposeful tilt given to it by the father.

The daughter is moved by the idea that this is their last trip together.. and some of the final days she will get to spend with her father. Her hope is to keep things the way they are:

I want us to stay as we are. I don't want to go anywhere. Being with you is enough for me. I'm happy just as I am. Even marriage couldn't make me any happier. I'm content with this life.

We could call this the passive theory of happiness. Noriko has grown used to her father and feels happy with the life she has grown into. It is what she has always known and nothing about marriage seems to offer a similar sense of happiness.

After Noriko's defense of contentment, her father gets to step in and develop his own ideas about happiness. His first move is to root his conception of happiness in the realities of life:

I'm 56 years old. My life is nearing its end. But your life as a couple is just beginning. You're starting a new life, one that you and Satake must build together. One in which I play no part. That's the order of human life and history.

That is a strong point against Noriko's version of happiness. Contentment with the way things are sounds good.. but it is flawed since it does not confront the fact that her father will not always be there. Her father points out that this is the way life and history proceed.

The father next sets out an alternative version of happiness. This is not a happiness that is passively experienced, but one that must be actively constructed:

Marriage may not mean happiness from the start. To expect such immediate happiness is a mistake. Happiness isn't something you wait around for. It's something you create yourself. Getting married isn't happiness. Happiness lies in the forging of a new life shared together. It may take a year or two, maybe even five or ten. Happiness comes only through effort.

We could call this the active theory of happiness. The passive contentment of Noriko with her accustomed life cannot accommodate this active version. How she feels about getting married is beside the point.. the deeper point is that marriage offers the chance to apply yourself to the creation of something new and different.. and at the end of that process is something that can truly be called happiness.

The father winds up his argument about happiness with a reference to his relationship with Noriko's mother. He tells his daughter that often he found her mother crying by herself in the kitchen. His use of such intimate details is to point out to his daughter that the route to happiness is not easy.. in fact it is difficult and wrenching.

The father's argument about happiness does not stir any more resistance from Noriko. She looks up at him with tears in her eyes.. and apologizes for her selfishness. The father meanwhile expresses kindly how he wants her to be happy.

That glimpse of a text by Nietszche lets Ozu point out the intellectual roots of this conception of happiness. Nietszche is the preeminent philosopher of the will. The Overman.. as developed in Thus Spake Zarathustra.. is marked by the ability to create his own terms for happiness. The application of the philosophy of the Overman to gentle Noriko may strike one as odd.. but may be only because of Nietzsche's current reputation. His ideas, though extravagantly stated, point out a possible direction for an individual (and perhaps for a nation).

The scene ends.. and we leap forward in time to the day of Noriko's wedding. The transition presents us with an informal scene of three children. This is fitting since children will surely be part of the life Noriko and her husband will create. We also have just a moment to apply the active version of happiness to these young lives.. and project them into the future. Earlier we have seen them playing baseball.. and signs of western influence are littered throughout the film. The process of building happiness, we might conclude, will occur in the midst of daunting external changes.