Morning for the Osone Family (1946)

"Just as he wishes, I'll return as ashes"

Morning for the Osone Family was director Kinoshita Keisuke’s first film after the end of WWII. He had a lot to say about the disastrous and destructive Japanese war machine and the people crushed under its weight. The film rarely left the Osone’s home as the war played out in the household of the Osone family.

The Osone deceased patriarch had been a professor and pacifist. The mother raised her three sons and daughter to be educated as the father had wished. Eldest son, Ichiro, writes articles for the paper, one of which lands him in jail. Taiji, an artist, is drafted. He would rather die for his art than the ambitions of the military. Daughter Yuko’s engagement to Minari Akira is called off by her military uncle who comes to live with them. The gung ho and corrupt colonel turns the household upside down forcing everyone to accept his patriotic criticisms as the war rages around them.

Sugimura Haruko gave a phenomenal performance as a mother powerless to stop the war and stop her sons from dying. I’d seen her in numerous Ozo films, but here she really shone as a loving mother who cared for her children and mourned them as the war machine took its toll on her little family. Director Kinoshita held nothing back in his criticisms of the war and most of his vile spewed forth via Sugimura. Ozawa Eitaro played the militant uncle who represented the worst abuses of the military. His plate was never empty, always enjoying the best of everything while the enlisted soldiers went hungry. He bragged how Taiji would be beaten into submission in order to become a soldier. He felt no remorse and no responsibility for the atrocities committed abroad and at home. If there is a rule to war it’s that young men die. It makes it more bearable when they know that they are dying for a greater cause and not for the unbridled ambitions of the elite. Fury over the unimaginable loss of life and the needless suffering so many endured erupted often quietly onto the screen.

Clocking in at under 90 minutes with nearly all of the scenes set in the Osone house, the atmosphere became claustrophobic with air raid sirens blaring and the colonel filling the rooms with his hot air. Mother and daughter contributed to the war effort and to keeping the family going even as the war took so much from them. From Christmas 1943 until Christmas 1945, it was a long dark night before morning would break on the Osone family returning their hope for a better day.

14 April 2025

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