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Cinema Ozu (Appendix B): Tokihiko Okada, Actor

Okada is now considered a legend from Japan's silent era, even though he was in just over 20 films (all produced between 1920 and 1933). His first picture with Ozu was That Night's Wife. I would contend that Wife and Tokyo Chorus feature not only two of Okada's best performances, but among the most complex and internalized on display among Ozu's surviving early work (if not Japanese silent cinema as a whole). Okada would then immediately collaborate with Ozu on two back-to-back productions, the mega-budget, mass-market New Year picture Young Miss, and The Lady and The Beard.

He made a couple of movies with Yasujiro Shimazu and then returned to work with Ozu on the disappointing Beauty's Sorrows and then Tokyo Chorus, which would be his best-remembered and most-acclaimed role (under Ozu or any other director).

The tragedy of Okada is that he died of tuberculosis in 1934 just as his fame and success were truly exploding. He was on-track to become an even bigger success, and likely would be as well-remembered for a long life and career as guys like Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai. The silver lining is that his daughter Mariko Okada, born in 1933 (just a year before his death), would go on to become a legend and success in her own right.

She is still widely-considered the greatest actress in Japanese cinema history. As revered as Meryl Streep is in the US, she is held in yet higher esteem, from my understanding. Now 77, she has worked with the greats, including Chishu Ryu, Mifune, and even Ozu in Late Autumn and An Autumn Afternoon, his second-to-last and final film, respectively.

Her life, career, and success are so poetic that it'd be hard to invent a story that's more remarkable.

Have you ever found yourself breathless and watery-eyed in a moment of discovery? That is where I found myself putting these pieces together.

Until I began this project, I was completely oblivious to this micro/macrocosmic narrative that exists alongside portions of Ozu's filmography. Just as Tokyo Chorus was the defining take-off moment for Ozu's career as a director, this "aha moment" is like the first major find in an archaeological dig for me.

Cinema Ozu articles related to Tokihiko Okada:
(8): That Night's Wife
(9): The 3 Lost Films of 1930
(10): The Lady and the Beard
(11): Beauty's Sorrows & Relative Tragedy
(12): Landmark Tokyo Chorus

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.