331 Late Spring

[FilmSnob]

There's a mention of PEN Club meeting in Late Spring that I always found so unnecessarily specific. But could this be a reference to PEN International, an association that promotes freedom of expression and supports writers who are harassed, imprisoned, or even killed for their views?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEN_International

A critique that sly Ozu managed to slip past the Occupation sensors? It might be my new favorite line in the film.

[Michael Kerpan]

Not sure when the Occupation started to steadfastly oppose "too much" democracy in post-war Japan. The process had certainly started by the time Late Spring was made.

[movielocke]

Not sure when the Occupation started to steadfastly oppose "too much" democracy in post-war Japan. The process had certainly started by the time Late Spring was made.

Wasn’t it after the republicans won big in the 1946 congressional election, and in 47-48 they made sure that japan labor reforms Dems had been pushing were crushed (I think there was a bloody and brutal coal strike in japan where republicans sent the occupation army in to slaughter the strikers to put a stop to unionization in Japan). They also slowed down a lot of other democratic reforms.

The one Japanese history class I had in college said that shift in policy caused the occupation to also stop their dismantling of the war machine industrial zaibatsus (like Mitsubishi etc) and put a lot of war criminal corporate executives (that republicans were familiar with from pre war) back in control of same zaibatsus. As a result, other than Sony, most of start up companies with new leadership started in 45-46, were eradicated or absorbed by the newly empowered war machine zaibatsus.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The PEN Club was (and is) the Japanese branch of PEN International; it held its first postwar congress in 1947 and reaffiliated with the international organization in 1948. Its new president at the time was the future Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari. I don't know if it was obscure enough at the time for the reference to simply slip past the generally thorough Occupation censors, though.

[Michael Kerpan]

movielocke -- that's what I vaguely recalled (more or less). Too bad for Japan that we basically short-circuited real reforms (leaving the status of women almost unchanged, among other things).

[whaleallright]

Republicans: fucking things up for people all over the world since... as long as anyone here's been alive.

[Michael Kerpan]

Republicans: fucking things up for people all over the world since... as long as anyone here's been alive.

To be fair, this sort of thing was pretty bipartisan in that era.