Japan in around 1960 is encapsulated in Yosujiru Ozu's film "The End of Summer". The civilization of Osaka is people with geishas and career girls, salary-men and elders in kimonos. Grace and delicacy in small gestures is very much alive in ordinary circumstances, even in Westernized bars where the salary-men drink scotch and smoke Marlboros. It is a strange land, almost cartoon-like, where a large proportion of the interactions seem almost telepathic. BEautiful piece of work; but not for keeping in the library, methinks.


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