Friday Review interview with Donald Richie : When did your interest in Japanese cinema begin ?
Ever since I went to Japan in 1947, I have been watching Japanese films. Even before I had met Kurosawa and Ozu in person, I was well-acquinted with Japanese cinema. I was then the film critic of the newspaper "Stars and Stripes". After the war, I joined "Japan Times". By then , I had fallen deeply in love with Japan. Moreover, I was not much interested in returning to Ohio, my homeland for several reasons.
In 1968, I returned to the U.S to join the New York Museum of Modern Art as film curator. Six years later, I flew back to Japan. I like the Japanese. They are orthodox as well as progressive.
I took only two months to write my book on Kurosawa. I stayed at the Hot Spring Resort at Kyosho in southern Japan to work on it. It took me much longer to finish my book on Ozu. I admired Kurosawa, but loved Ozu. It is difficult to write about someone or something you love. Your emotions stand in the way of your intellectual evaluation.
Ozu himself had believed that his subjects were too abstruce for the West to follow ....
True. Ozu had once said that. But on another occasion, he had told his cameraman that foreigners will one day rave about his style.
Why did the Japanese like Ozu ? Because they could see themselves in Ozu's films. Stylistically, he was unparalleled. I took Satyajit Ray for a screening of Ozu's "Tokyo Story" in Japan. I heard Ray sobbing as the reels rolled on.
Ozu has been a great influence on film makers in several countries. He has inspired some Kerala film makers. I am currently compiling a package, titled "Ozu's children", consisting of the works of such film makers as Jim Jarmusch and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, who had been profoundly influenced by Ozu.
A still from Yasujiro Ozu last movie An Autumn Afternoon (1962) 
Had not Ozu, for whom oriental culture was as precious as his breath, been little incomprehensible for the westerner ?
So had been the belief. But I have proved that it is not so. My book shows how much I have understood Ozu. Infact, foreigners understand Ozu better than many young Japanese of today
do.Compared with Ozu, Kurosawa was less popular in Japan....
Ozu was quintessentially Japanese, so people liked him. Kurosawa was also a genius.
I first met him in 1947. He was then shooting "Drunken Angel". Once I was with himon the sets. He was fiddling with a faulty pen. Yet, he would not give that upand use a new one.
Toshiro Mifune (actor in most of Kurosawa films), who was with us, called me aside and said, " I am that pen. See how carefully and painstakingly he works on it."
What is your assessment of contemporary Japanese cinema ? (as in 1998)
There are a few good serious film makers, who include Mitsuo Yanagimachi("Fire Festival") , Hirokazu Kore-Eda ("AfterLife") and Makoto Shinozaki ("Okaeri"). But they are quite a small group. People seem to prefer Hollywood movies to native ones.
But during the time of Ozu or Mizoguchi, there was an audience for serious cinema....
Ozu and Mizoguchi belong to the pre-TV era. Cinema was then the sole means of entertainment. They lapped up the movies and thus production companies ran profitably. As the money was coming, the companies gave an Ozu or Mizoguchi a carte blanche.
courtesy : Friday Review - The Hindu Daily 1998.
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