Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People Read Free Page A

stop. No point in showing Setsuko Hara blowsy; no point in revealing Chishu Ryu drooling and incontinent. We already know. We sense the years ahead. Ozu need show us nothing more.
    With Shozo, however, the disaster has already occurred. He has become disreputable, the way that accident victims appear. I remember an ex-landlady idly turning over the pages of a photography book and discovering a picture of survivors from the Hindenburg , dazed, clothes burned away. How horrid, she said, then, peering more closely: And what a way to appear in public!
    A snort, a gurgle from the next room. Miss Kuroda knows all these signs as though they were a language. Oh, dear, she says: He's woken up. And here I was hoping he would sleep for an hour.
    A shuffling sound. Then he reappears, kimono disheveled, sash dragging. A loose fish. Is surprised to see me. Blinks. Thinks I come every day. Is told it is the same day. Oh.
    - Not long for this world. (This she says in front of him, and his trembling makes it seem that he is nodding in shocked agreement. Actually, he appears not to hear.)
    I look at him and think of the brave days of Meiji when he was probably a fine figure of a man.
    - Now, Father, do sit down. Don't just stand there. You'll tire yourself. See? Mr. Donald has brought us these nice pears. I'll peel you one.
    She sets to work, her strong, manly fingers expert, the peel unwinding in one long strip. He waits, the corners of his mouth moist.
    Of what does he remind me? A baby watching candy being unwrapped? A dog watching its dinner being made? Me, under the Christmas tree, watching tissue paper being removed—or me at a later age watching clothes being taken off?
    - There now, isn't that nice?
    Prettily quartered, the pear is set before him. His hand hesitates, then conveys a chunk to his mouth. His eyes close. He seems to smile.
    - Juicy, she says, wiping his lips with her handkerchief. Then she straightens his kimono, reties his sash, makes him presentable.
    He blinks, gums the fruit, smiles at me. Thanking me—with his mouth, not his eyes. They are far away, looking at things long past, the blank eyes of someone who has seen everything and still continues to look.
    The view is suitably autumnal, with a bright blue sky, the red of the ripe persimmon, and the light yellow of bleached grass. The pears are the very last of the season. And I remember the view half a year ago, the pale sky of summer and the deep green of the grass.
    She had sat there, on the same cushion. We had been gossiping about a younger woman in the neighborhood who had lost her patron—apoplexy. She laughed lightly, then suddenly frowned.
    - And what will happen to me once he goes? she wondered.
    I misunderstood, thinking she might be referring to too little money, too much freedom. But this wasn't what she meant.
    - What shall I do? Nani o shimashoka? (Precisely—and she could as well have asked: Who shall I be?)
    Old Mr. Kuroda slowly swallows, staring at 1900. His daughter looks at her hands, spreads her fat fingers. And I gaze at them both, caught for an instant in the sunshine of a late autumn.
    Mono no awaré , the pathos of things. You accept it, you even in a small way celebrate it, this evanescence. You are to observe what is happening, and be content that things are proceeding as they must, and therefore should. Very traditional this, and quite a nice idea. I wonder if it was ever anything more.
    Old Shozo Kuroda looks into the sun, his eyes blinking, his lips still working, his mouth curved as though in a smile. There is no simple cut to "The End," no surge of music to indicate a final cadence. Life, not being art, knows no such conventions.

Yasujiro Ozu
    Though I had met Ozu several times before, at Shochiku parties mostly, I had never watched him work. Very few had—Ozu did not like visitors. But with a kind friend's help, the director was prevailed upon to let the foreign critic visit the set.
    One of the