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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.

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.

Michael Kerpan wrote: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 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.

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).

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

whaleallright wrote: Wed Sep 30, 2020 6:52 am 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.