film writing question and need the explanation and answer to help me learn.
You must read the study guide before reading this assignment.
Answer this question and answer each part of it in 5 or more paragraphs. The first paragraph is an introduction, and the last paragraph is a conclusion. It is good to express your main point in the beginning.
(Use examples of the films and the book from the files I upload)
1. How do two of Ozu’s films, Late Spring and Tokyo Story, depict the postwar age in Japan?
Requirements: 900
APU Japanese Film midterm essay STUDY GUIDE
Professor Thorsten F 2023-24
Today’s date: November 2, 2023
DUE: Nov. 6 (Monday) 10:30 a.m. (Japan time) submitted to Moodle.
The take-home exam (report) has two questions (on another handout). You answer one. Choose one question and answer each part of it in 5 or more paragraphs. The first paragraph is an introduction, and the last paragraph is a conclusion. It is good to express your main point in the beginning.
This report is not a research paper. You must use only the classroom materials.
Your grade is based on: organization, coherence, clarity, conciseness, content and fit. Content is most important: does your essay answer the question? Lack of fit may cause you to fail this assignment. Your essay must fit the lectures, films, and readings of this class. It cannot be off-topic.
Format: Usually 12-point, Times New Roman, Calibri or some other basic font is best. Double-space. Word or pdf. I prefer pdf. Aim for 800-1000 words. If you need a few more words, it cannot be more than 1200 but extra words will not improve your grade. Don’t put in anything cute, fancy, or irrelevant (color, mixed fonts, photos, etc.).
Question: Do I need a bibliography?
Answer: Yes, and you may copy-paste the bibliographic information you need from the syllabus and slides. Include the sources you cite from: readings, slides, films.
Question: What is the citation method?
Answer: Chicago Manual of Style with in-text citations.
Question: I learned APA. May I use a different citation method?
Answer: No.
Question: Will you provide guidance for my writing?
Answer: No. If you need help with writing, there should be APU staff for this, or find another person to help you. Use spell-check and grammar-check.
Question: If I get a low grade and cannot graduate, can you change it?
Answer: No.
Question: If I get a low grade, can I write the essay again?
Answer: No.
Question: If I get a low grade, can I do some other extra work?
Answer: No.
Question: What is the minimum time needed for this assignment?
Answer: If you are already well-prepared and studied hard before looking at the questions, you should be able to get a high grade with three hours of work: ninety minutes of writing, and ninety minutes of editing. You have four days, but do not procrastinate.
Quotations
You must use short, interesting, relevant quotations (and simple citations) from 2-4 class readings. As an option, you may also use quotations from the PPT slides and films.
Good examples of quotations (but don’t use these) with citations:
Zizek’s point, in the words of Amoore and De Goede, is that violence makes a “visible tear in the fabric of daily life” (Amoore and De Goede 514).
Less overt violence such as stopping money flows in Pakistan is making people “more vulnerable to the more overt forms of visible violence manifested in drone attacks” (Amoore and De Goede 508).
Bad example (don’t use this either):
The Twilight Zone episode features a ship “retiring after this final voyage” (Berns et.al. 11). WHY: This quotation is boring! No need to quote.
How to cite from slides:
We have many slides, so please include the date in your citation (Thorsten 11/2/23).
If you use a quotation (not from me) from the slides that isn’t in the reading, or paraphrase an important passage, use the citation for the PPT slides and refer to the author in your sentence. You may use “qtd” which means “quoted in.” Ex: Johnson claimed that Mizoguchi was the most skilled cameraman of all time, surpassing Kurosawa and Ozu (qtd Thorsten 10/10/23).
If you use my own words from the slides, try not to use a casual sentence.
If you want to use a quotation from the slides that is in our required reading, cite from the reading, not the slide.
Citations: All quotations and paraphrasing of unique passages require citations. Citations show where the information comes from (name of author and page). General information known to all or easy to find do not require citations. These sentences do not require citations:
Beppu is located in Kyushu.
Tokyo Monogatari was produced in 1953.
Bibliography: Use the format I have provided on the syllabus and slides. This is the only material you may copy-paste.
Many kinds of answers are possible. Your answer should demonstrate an informed and intelligent answer to the question. Your answer should reflect your original ideas, based on the information you have gained from the readings, discussions, and viewings we have had in this class. Be specific! Use concrete examples whenever possible.
You won’t get any extra points by answering more than one question. You will likely lose points if you try. Answer the question you can analyze best, even if it is less interesting to you than another question.
You may include 1-2 “I” sentences that mention your personal connection to the topic if it is extremely relevant and non-technical.
Question: An essay that passes (C to A+) is 60 to 100 points. What are some typical problems in the passing essays?
Answer: 1) Students do not read the instructions carefully. 2) Students have too many unnecessary sentences and words, especially in the introduction. 3) The analytical parts are too vague. 4) Students do not use quotations properly. 5) Students have too much irrelevant, long description.
Grading:
In most cases, you will receive a number only. There will be no comments or markings on your paper.
A+ range (90-100): This student demonstrates a thorough and insightful comprehension of the material. He or she provides an original, analytical, clear, and informed essay that “converses” with the key ideas presented in the class lectures and readings. This student also provides specific examples, effective quotations, and knows how to organize ideas and write clearly and concisely.
A range (80-89): This student demonstrates a very good mastery of the material used in this course, including effective use of quotations, but some points in the essay may need some improvement.
B range (70-79): This is similar to A, but a few parts need improvement.
C range (60-69): This student adequately passed the essay, and grasped some of the main ideas, but probably needs to study more. This student typically writes vague essays that are difficult to follow and/or contain overly generalized points.
Upper F (50-59): This student passes by making some effort to write the essay, but the work is decidedly inferior, overly general, and leaves an impression that the student did not do the reading, barely paid attention to lectures and did not reflect on the themes. IT IS POSSIBLE FOR THIS STUDENT TO PASS THE CLASS.
Medium F range: (21-49): This student probably did not write the essay as required. It shows that the student failed to study adequately or did not follow the assignment. The student might write long opinions only without connecting those opinions to our study material. This student may have made minimal effort but received too many minus points from penalties. IT MIGHT BE POSSIBLE FOR THIS STUDENT TO PASS THE CLASS, BUT THAT WOULD REQUIRE AN EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH GRADE ON THE FINAL.
Lower F range (1-20) The test is ungradable. In some cases, the student appears to have memorized (or copied) some general facts from the dictionary or from Wikipedia or another unapproved source rather than synthesizing the broader themes gained from required lectures and readings. An essay is ungradable if much of it does not “fit” our class. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THIS STUDENT TO PASS THE CLASS.
ZERO PAPER: A paper receives a “0” for light plagiarism or other academic dishonesty. Significant plagiarism will be referred to an APU committee. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THIS STUDENT TO PASS THE CLASS.
How to study for and write an essay exam: 1) Before receiving the test questions, study the slides and notes you took in class, making sure you understand them; 2) study all the readings again, concentrating on main ideas; 3) compare the ideas in notes, readings and viewings and ask yourself what you think about them. Perhaps you can practice by writing some brief summaries of key points. Understand the examples given by the authors/directors/sensei and ask yourself if you have your own examples; 4) Decide which question to answer in five minutes or less (but not more than one day) and start organizing your paper and writing as soon as possible.
Special penalties:
-10 Lateness: Your grade will go down ten points for each day of lateness.
-10 to -25 Borderline plagiarism
-25 to -75 Lack of fit (the paper seems to be written for another class, refers to topics not in our lectures and readings or seems to use sources not in our official readings, etc.)
-25 to -75: Using quotations and citations from readings not on our syllabus
PLAGIARISM OR USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE or any other academic dishonesty WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 1 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuLate Spring:Home withOzuBy Michael AtkinsonESSAYSÑAPR 17, 2012MSHAREaybe it is something to dowith the sensualseductiveness of cinema: as new-millennium Americans, we carenothing for Japa nese poetry, littlefor Japanese painting and fiction,and certainly too much forJapanese cartoons, and yetYasujiro Ozu, the leastsensational filmmaker of all time,remains on our docket, calm asever, brimming with semispokendisappointments, visuallyblocking out Nippono-bourgeois
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 2 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozulife maps with guileless wisdom.By all rights, an Asian artist ofsuch sublime restraint shouldhave been long forgotten in ourethnocentric, hyperventilating,digital-viscera mind-set, but herehe still is, evoking newscholarship, igniting theatricalretrospectives all over again,being lovingly andenthusiastically bronzed onhome video, one precious film ata time.An enormous amount ofliterature has been generatedabout OzuÕs work, but a few lineitems need to be reaffirmed: He isone of the very few cinema giantsyou could never accuse ofpretension (Jean Renoir, LuisBu–uel, and Robert Bresson arethe others). He remains moviesÕmost disciplined creative voiceÑamatter of no small magnitude in amedium naturally prone to the
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 3 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuinfantilization of noise, speed,and bright colors. Each film is araw lessonÑnearly perfect andresounding, if not terriblydifferent from twenty othersÑintended to realign in our heartswhat cinema is good for.ItÕs a clichŽ now to posit Ozu asthe Òmost JapaneseÓ of thatnationÕs great directors, but it stillseems true. His focus on thesocietyÕs transitional struggles,quotidian living spaces, andenjoyable norms was not onlyunflagging (more than fifty filmsin a thirty-five-year career) butembodied in the very shape of hiscompositions and in thereasoning behind his cuts. ItÕs notJapaneseness per se that drawsus, though; why would it, afterall? It is something morefundamentalÑa quintessentialaspect of the medium, a breath-catching nexus of time elapsed
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 4 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuand empathies shared. It just sohappens that OzuÕs Zen-infusedsensibility translates on film tosomething like the art formÕsnascent formal beauty: patientlywatching little happen, and themeditative moments around thenonhappening, until it becomescrashingly apparent that lives areat stake and the whole world isstruggling to be reborn.Like many Ozu movies, LateSpring (1949) is a triumph ofsympathetic, respectful clarityand a surgical strike at the heart,but it also stands alone as aturning point in his developmentas a sociopolitical artist. It is, firstof all, the magisterial archetypefor the shomin-gekiÑthe Òmodernfamily dramaÓÑa genre Ozuhelped define and that remainshis kingdom to reign. (To genre-ize Ozu at all seems peculiar, sointense is his formal signature.
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 5 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuEven so, drama is the odd wordout here; the textures of Japaneselife and the rhythmic bolero ofOzuÕs stories deliberatelysubsume the dramatic in favor ofthe internal.) But the family inthat equation wasnÕt exactly whatit had been before the war, andLate Spring is the first of his filmsmade after those horrors to try toimagine what Japanesedomesticity might look like inthis new world. Comparatively(and by an Ozu measure), Recordof a Tenement Gentleman (1947)and A Hen in the Wind (1948)Ñhis first two postwar worksÑarescabrous portrayals of a corrupt,demilitarized, firebombedlandscape that swallows thevulnerable. It was as if Ozuneeded to drain the warÕs pusfrom his psyche. With LateSpring, he dresses the wound andmoves toward his true aestheticprotocol; life during the
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 6 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozureconstruction is viewed by wayof the quiet tensions ofgenerational conflict.The low-intensity but painfulclash between domestic Japanesetraditionalism and modernismand feminismÑbetween theinsecure old and the restlessyoungÑis OzuÕs range to patrol,and here it is realigned afterwartime and complicatedimplicitly by signs of encroachingAmericanization. (Was Ozu thefirst filmmaker to use the Coca-Cola logo as a symbol forrampaging Yankee capitalism? Hecertainly beat Jean-Luc Godardand Billy Wilder to the punch.)Indeed, postwar society(suggested further by discussionsof treated anemias and glimpsesof the Saturday Evening Post) letsOzu raise the stakes. What hadsimmered as a timeless stew ofgeneration-gap disconnect in his
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 7 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuearlier films became, with LateSpring, a thunderously specificsocial dynamic. In the thirties,society was changing andwesternizing at a familiar pace,but in the postwar world, as Ozusuggests in his inimitablyrespectful way, the old-fashionedlifestyle was under siege bycommercialism, permissiveness,antimasculinism, andindependent wives anddaughters. Suddenly, the struggleto guide youth with ancientvalues wasnÕt just a manageablematter of course but a projectdoomed to failure by progressitself.Still, OzuÕs scenario isnÕt agenerational throw-down. Whathe depicts in this, his inauguralseasonal film, the first ideogramin a dozen-year exploration ofparent-child relationships, is analtogether subtler dilemma.
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 8 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuLoving, grown, contemporary-minded daughter Noriko(Setsuko Hara) lives with hergentle, if slightly distractable,professor father (Chishu Ryu); anirritating aunt (HarukoSugimura) suggests the youngwoman should marry, and soon.(The matter of the fatherÕscaretaker-requiringÒeccentricityÓ is mostly taken forgranted, although his capabilitiesas a scholar seem under questionwhen he confuses Franz Lisztwith economist Friedrich List.)Believing he is doing the rightthing, and in order to allow hisdaughter to detach from him andhis daily needs, the father beginstalking about taking a new,younger wife. Despite NorikoÕsself-relianceÑan Ozu earmarkfrom the thirties that became anaxiom in Late SpringÑtheacquiescent, ever-smilingheroineÕs desires are never
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 9 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuconsidered; she explicitly askswhy her contented life cannotjust go on as it has been.But can it? What would be thebest path for her to follow? Farfrom a Manichaean take on theoppressive power of lingeringsocial norms, Late Spring is ahushed battlefield where no oneis right or wrong. We watch theinfliction roll out inexorably,wishing there were a cheesy,American-style resolutionsomewhere on the horizon inwhich all of the well-meaningcharacters could be happy. ButthatÕs not Ozu. Ozu is the naturalenergy of NorikoÕs generous grin,dispensed selflessly in all socialsituations, until she realizeswhere her life is helplesslyheadedÑand the blood-coolingshock of seeing that resilientsmile finally drop.
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 10 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozuJustly praised for his temperate,rigorous form, Ozu is actuallysomething of a calculatingwhammy master, and Late Springsaves its crushing blows for thevery last shots and the simplepeeling of an apple. But OzuÕsmethodology in Late Spring,which would become an almostritualized discipline in hissubsequent films, expresses somuch more than mere characterand narrative: the famous still-life cutaways (themselves a codexof Zen commentaries andsignifiers) and tatami-mat-highpoint of view; the compresseddepth of the familyÕs rooms(Noriko and company pass in andout of sight through doorways wecannot see, suggesting hauntinglayers of quotidian complexity);the fastidious commemoration ofthe uniquely careful Japaneseliving spaces (that no culture hasthought as much about the
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 11 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozucomposition and physicalmeaning of their dwellings is apoint not lost on Ozu); the vividmanner in which thearchitectural precision expressesthe controlled tone ofrelationships. ThereÕs an acutesense of home here, happilyinhabited, that is unaccented andyet fuels NorikoÕs tragedy.(Contrast it to the ill-fitting urbanrooms suffered by the elderlycouple visiting their ruinouschildren in Tokyo Story, from1953, or the inverse discomfitureof the visiting actor in the homeof his former lover in 1959ÕsFloating Weeds. OzuÕs palette mayseem uniform from film to film,but it often yields very differentatmospheres.) Late Spring can beseen as OzuÕs first absolutelycrucial work, a step towardunderstanding the ripple effectsof the postwar age amongordinary citizensÑor, if thatÕs not
6/17/23, 20:52Late Spring: Home with Ozu | Current | The Criterion CollectionPage 12 of 12https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/421-late-spring-home-with-ozupossible, then at least capturingthem in compassionate amber.This piece originally appeared inthe Criterion CollectionÕs 2006release of Late Spring.Michael Atkinson writes regularlyfor the Village Voice and Sight andSound, and teaches at Long IslandUniversity. His books include ExileCinema (SUNY Press) and BlueVelvet (British Film Institute),which was reissued in a newedition in 2021.
