Climb­ing the com­pa­ny lad­der means a lot of bootlick­ing in I Was Born, But…

“Life’s tragedy begins with the bond between par­ent and child.” That epi­graph, found at the open­ing of Yasu­jirō Ozu’s first talkie, The Only Son, could eas­i­ly appear before any of his 54 fea­ture films.

Fathers and sons, daugh­ters and fathers, moth­ers and daugh­ters – few film­mak­ers have so repeat­ed­ly evinced the per­pet­u­al dis­ap­point­ments that form between par­ents and their prog­e­ny, whether it’s the dashed hopes an impov­er­ished silk-mill work­er holds for her tit­u­lar­ly sin­gu­lar child in The Only Son, or the per­ma­nent split an arranged mar­riage wedges between a father and daugh­ter in Late Spring. Time and time again Ozu posi­tions the famil­ial bond as a con­tract des­tined to be mis­man­aged and bro­ken, with no crack run­ning deep­er than that forged by failed expectations.

And so it goes in his 1932 silent fea­ture, I Was Born, But…, a film that inter­ro­gates the hier­ar­chi­cal lad­der of bootlick­ing at the back­bone of white-col­lar work­places and the impact such salary-man­dat­ed brown-nos­ing has on fam­i­ly morale. Per­haps best known as the inspi­ra­tion for Ozu’s decades-lat­er colour remake Good Morn­ing, I Was Born, But… trans­forms the eco­nom­ic down­turn of ear­ly 1930s Japan into the stag­ing ground for a comedic inver­sion of fam­i­ly tropes – instead of a dis­ap­point­ed par­ent, the nar­ra­tive cen­tres around two children’s dis­il­lu­sion­ment upon wit­ness­ing their oth­er­wise respectable father’s self-abas­ing behav­iour towards his boss. What they fail to see, how­ev­er, is how they trade in the same social sig­ni­fiers dur­ing their inter­ac­tions with their peers.

On paper, the Yoshis read as the quin­tes­sen­tial low­er-mid­dle-class Japan­ese fam­i­ly. There’s the fam­i­ly patri­arch and bread-win­ner Ken­nesuke (Tat­suo Saitō); the dot­ing moth­er and house­wife Haha (Mit­suko Yoshikawa); and the two young broth­ers Kei­ji and Ryoichi (Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sug­awara), sep­a­rat­ed only by a cou­ple of years and tied togeth­er by their mir­ror-image goofery and res­olute respect for their father. But change is afoot. We join the fam­i­ly as they’re part-way through migrat­ing to the sub­urbs of Tokyo – a move born of the eco­nom­ic down­turn fac­ing much of met­ro­pol­i­tan Japan after a series of bank­ing crises and the rip­pling inter­na­tion­al impact of The Great Depression.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, that move isn’t the cure-all Mr Yoshi hopes for. I Was Born, But… opens with a tight close­up on a wheel stuck in the mud, turn­ing end­less­ly in place. Cut­ting to a medi­um long shot, Ozu reveals two sullen boys sat atop a ram­shackle truck full of shod­di­ly roped togeth­er pos­ses­sions, scowl­ing at the truck’s attempts to free itself. Despite the addi­tion­al weight their loaf­ing adds to the load their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the truck’s spin­ning is evi­dent. The lat­er rev­e­la­tion that this entire move is one moti­vat­ed by cor­po­rate wheel-greas­ing – less an idyl­lic break from city life than a chance for Mr Yoshi to roost clos­er to his boss, Mr Iwasa­ki (Takeshi Sakamo­to), and there­fore improve his career prospects – fur­ther con­tex­tu­alis­es the boys’ con­tempt for kowtowing.

That rudi­men­ta­ry per­cep­tion of the world – trucks are designed to pro­vide tran­sit, fathers are designed to lead by exam­ple – inevitably shapes the boys’ inte­gra­tion into the sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ty. It doesn’t take long for the pair to run into the local lads, a mix of ages and eco­nom­ic back­grounds who move around in one cohe­sive unit. Here, the biggest boy acts as the leader, his brute strength and size sig­ni­fy­ing a more archa­ic form of author­i­ty and its laddering.

But it’s the wealthy, well-dressed boy Taro (the son of Mr Yoshi’s boss, no less) that actu­al­ly pulls the strings. For­ev­er at the ear of his larg­er com­pa­tri­ot he coax­es him into boff­ing Kei­ji on the head, swip­ing his toy in the process as two small­er goons swoop in and steal his bread. In that moment we have a potent delin­eation of pow­er; the bread, rep­re­sent­ing the essen­tials nec­es­sary to all, and the toy, rep­re­sent­ing greater afflu­ence and dis­pos­able income. With­out pay­ing their dues and expect­ed respect, the new­com­ers aren’t wor­thy of either.

Those same pow­er plays are present in the first meet­ing between Mr Yoshi and Mr Iwasa­ki, albeit premised on sub­lim­i­nal cues rather than fisticuffs. Ozu per­pet­u­al­ly pins Mr Yoshi’s line of sight to Mr Iwasaki’s off-screen pres­ence, his hat held limply in hand (cov­er­ing his groin, no less) with his body tilt­ed for­ward. That plays in stark con­trast with Mr Yoshi’s stern demeanour at home, a space where Kei­ji and Ryoichi yield to their father with the same def­er­en­tial body lan­guage that he does his boss. When the pair are caught bunk­ing off from school, they low­er their heads till their chins touch their chests before falling to their knees, sprawled and jel­ly-like in total capit­u­la­tion. When their father lat­er catch­es them run­ning from the school gates, they bow and tip their caps in a show of reverence.

The film’s cen­tral con­flict emerges much lat­er when the gang of boys – the two Yoshi broth­ers now well-estab­lished in the peck­ing order – sit in on a show­ing of home movies at Mr Iwasaki’s house, curat­ed for his clos­est sub­or­di­nates. At one point dur­ing the screen­ing – a series of videos that reaf­firm Mr Iwasaki’s wealth, depict­ing grand stat­ues and days spent play­ing ten­nis on a pri­vate court – Mr Iwasa­ki reach­es for a cig­ar, dart­ing a glance to the side to see which of his under­lings will prof­fer him a match first. Of course, it’s Mr Yoshi.

But the break­ing point is far more excru­ci­at­ing. The tail end of the screen­ing reveals Mr Yoshi’s dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent demeanour in the office, Ozu cut­ting between over-the-shoul­der per­spec­tive shots and reac­tion shots to con­vey the change in tone. Worse than being meek, Mr Yoshi is shown to be the class clown, gurn­ing his way through the company’s dai­ly cal­lis­then­ics to rau­cous laugh­ter, on-screen and off. At first his sons laugh too, before attempt­ing to con­tex­tu­alise what their father’s per­for­mance means, their eyes swing­ing left and right to meet the reac­tions of the room. Their father’s child­ish buf­foon­ery dimin­ish­es his stature in their eyes from patri­arch to crony, no dif­fer­ent than one of their peers. The role of the court jester may cur­ry favour but it los­es respect.

“Why do you have to bow so much to Taro’s father?” It’s a rea­son­able ques­tion, but one Mr Yoshi strug­gles to answer. Deflat­ed in the dark of his own home he resorts to drink­ing instead, no longer the jester, no longer the author­i­tar­i­an head of the house­hold. ​“I know how they feel,” is all he can sum­mon up. ​“It’s a prob­lem these kids will face all their lives.” But despite these sus­pi­cions, the next day he urges them to break the cycle of obse­quious­ness, hop­ing that his slav­ish per­sis­tence in ris­ing the ranks might enable them some greater wealth and influ­ence: ​“Don’t become mis­er­able ankle pol­ish­ers like me boys”.

As to whether such change is pos­si­ble, Ozu leaves things ambigu­ous, clos­ing on a scene where Kei­ji and Ryoichi urge their father to go and wish his boss a good morn­ing. The game might nev­er end, but the two broth­ers are begin­ning to learn the rules.