There Was a Father – Yasujiro Ozu 1942

This  lovely, gentle film by Yasujiro Ozu was released in the spring of 1942. A widowed teacher tries to do the right thing for his son. After a student drowns on an school outing, he quits teaching,  enrolls his son in a boarding school and takes a factory job in Tokyo. Years later, the son, now a school teacher in a rural community, visits his father and muses that he might quit his job and come to Tokyo. The father rebukes him for thinking of shirking his duty. In the end, the son remains loyal.

Although the war is hardly mentioned, the exemplary self-sacrifice of the characters was well received by government censors and the film was approved.

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