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Cinema Ozu (16): The Day We Meet Again Will Never Come

Feature #25
Until the Day We Meet Again / Mata au hi made
(1932)
Status: film considered completely lost
Script: fully preserved
Prints: none known to survive
Region1 DVD: N/A

After this final Ozu film of 1932, only two more are completely lost, with a couple of others missing portions. I agree with David Bordwell that this 10-reeler is one of the most tragic silent film losses in Ozu's canon. The primary reason for this is that it seems to more directly relate to The Manchurian Incident than any other Ozu film of this era. For those unfamiliar, the next two paragraphs constitute a brief primer on the significance of "The Incident" that informs the relevance of this film.

On the 18th of September, 1931, a Japanese-owned railway in Manchuria was blown up with dynamite. The Japanese used this to justify a subsequent invasion of Manchuria that is considered one of the fundamental inciting incidents of the Pacific conflict in World War II. Japan blamed the event on Chinese dissidents at the time, though most studies have shown irrefutable evidence that the Japanese did it themselves. They even managed to screw up their first attempt.

The Incident is alternately referred to as the Mukden Incident (after the place it happened in Manchuria), as well as either the 18 September Incident or the Liutiaogou Incident (in China). The Manchurian Incident is the preferred name in Japan. Akira Kurosawa's post-war No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) directly engages the controversy, with a group of students planning to protest what they see as the unwarranted invasion of a foreign power. Boy does that sound familiar in the here and now. No Regrets, I should add, stars later Ozu collaborator Setsuko Hara in one of two Kurosawa pictures (the other was The Idiot).

Now back to Until the Day We Meet Again, a movie that was controversial on account of forced interpretation.

The story went something like this: a son of privilege (Joji Oka, who would also show up in Dragnet Girl) is disowned for loving a prostitute (Woman of Tokyo and An Inn in Tokyo's Yoshiko Okada). He hasn't told his family yet, but he's also been drafted into the army to fight in the invasion of Manchuria. The prostitute informs his family just as he's set to hop on a train to ship out, but they arrive at the train station just as it departs. The movie closes with the hooker going back to drumming up business.

Okada plays a "hooker with a heart of gold" again in Ozu's next film, Woman of Tokyo. Previous (and future) Ozu regulars pop up in this picture as well, from I Was Born, But...'s Mitsuko Yoshikawa as "another girl" (I'm assuming another prostitute) and Tokyo Chorus' Choko Iida as a "maid". Iida will go on to perform in a number of additional Ozu pictures, most notably The Only Son. "Bad girl/spoiler" Satoko Date plays a "girlfriend" who I assume is the girl that the protagonist is supposed to be seeing. Shinyo Nara plays the young man's disapproving father. Nara plays a pivotal role in Woman of Tokyo and will serve as the voice of reason in A Mother Should Be Loved.

The "Ozu's All Stars" cast adds some more novelty to the film and deepens its loss. The fact that many players here recur in the next two or three films further expand the loss. Until the Day We Meet Again began what is commonly referred to as Ozu's "Fallen Women Trilogy", of which the latter two titles (Woman of Tokyo and Dragnet Girl) survive in full. It'll take some work, but I'm endeavoring to complete articles on both of them for posting later today. Neither is available on DVD in the US.

At the time, a debate raged among critics over what the Ozu/Kogo Noda script indicated about the filmmakers' own feelings about the Manchurian invasion. Bordwell notes that those who thought it was against the war would cite the bleak ending with the lonely hooker sitting on a bench, whereas pro-war arguers would point to the son leaving for war without mending ties with his father. I'm of the third faction that feels that either of these readings is inconsistent with Ozu's style of not preaching, but instead, presenting a more open canvas to interpret as you will. It's as if Ozu intended to say "these things happen" rather than "these things happen as a result of X, and Y is why it's wrong/right!". Frankly, that's how most Japanese films of the era treated the subject, but people were digging for definitive "with us or against us" dirt.

Next is Woman of Tokyo, which defies the modern convention of what constitutes "feature length". What would you do if you found out that your sister was selling herself to pay the bills? I've finally managed to construct a way to not spoil the ending, so stay tuned.

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but even more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.