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Festival Year Festival Section
2005 Light from the East: Celebrating Japanese Cinema
Shochiku 110 - Naruse 100 -- Prog. 6

Film Title OYA
Alternative Title 1 [GENITORI]
Alternative Title 2 [PARENTS]
Alternative Title 3
Country Japan
Release Date 1 August 1929
Production Co. Shochiku
Director Hiroshi Shimizu, Tadamoto Okubo

Format   Speed (fps)
35mm   24
     
Footage   Time
3110 ft.   35'

Archive Source National Film Center, Tokyo
   
Print Notes Didascalie in giapponese sottotitolate in inglese / Japanese intertitles, English subtitles.

Cast
Atsushi Arai, Eiko Takamatsu, Mitsuko Takao, Ryotaro Kijima, Kazuji Sakai, Tokie Miura, Mariko Aoyama
 
Other Credits
scen: Ayame Mizushima; f./ph: Shojiro Sugimoto
 
Other Information
 
Program Notes
Oya tells the story of a man too poor to raise his daughter, who abandons her in the grounds of a shrine; he eventually absolves his sin on his deathbed by presenting the daughter with the insurance policy he took out in her name. Tadamoto Okubo (1894-?), credited on the film in a different typeface as co-director, is best remembered as the person whom Yasujiro Ozu acknowledged as his filmmaking mentor. None of the documentation about this film lists Okubo’s name, however, and it is highly doubtful that he was actually involved in the making of this film.
The Bureau of Postal Life Insurance, which was founded in 1916, commissioned Shochiku to produce this narrative film in order to promote life insurance to the public. This film is also one of the so-called “girls’ films” made at the Kamata studio employing girl-star Mitsuko Takao and female scriptwriter Ayame Mizushima. Highly valued as a versatile director who could handle any kind of project, Shimizu readily accepted promotional film commissions such as this, and always managed to make films that were both promotionally effective as well as artistically distinctive. Following this film, Shimizu directed two more promotional films, Kiro ni tachite (Standing at a Crossroads; 1930), also for the Bureau of Postal Life Insurance, and Kagayaku ai (Shining Love; 1931), for the Ministry of Education. – FUMIKO TSUNEISHI