Good Morning

Look closely at any shot of a living room or kitchen in the color films of Yasujirō Ozu, and you’re likely to find a rice cooker somewhere in the setting. The device is a fixture in Ozu’s works, which capture, with enchanting lyricism, the transformations of Japanese family life with the arrival of technological modernity and a culture of consumerism. In Good Morning (Ohayô), Ozu's hilarious Technicolor reworking of his silent I Was Born, But…, these shifts are relayed through the perspectives of two young boys in suburban Tokyo. While the adults gossip and quibble over the latest devices on the market—washing machines, fridges—the kids are hellbent on acquiring a television set, and engage in a variety of minor rebellions, including a vow of silence, when their parents refuse to indulge them. Prominently placed amid all this tumult, the electric rice cooker symbolizes class status and worldly aspirations, a modest emblem of the life of convenience and automation coveted by the characters.