# Good Morning (お早よう)
**Good Morning** (お早よう, Ohayō) is a 1959 Japanese color comedy directed by Yasujiro Ozu and produced by the Shochiku studio, in which two suburban Tokyo boys stop speaking entirely after their parents refuse to buy them a television set. It premiered in Japan on May 12, 1959, runs 94 minutes by Shochiku's count, and is generally recognized by film historians as a loose remake of Ozu's own 1932 silent film *I Was Born, But . . .*[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/) • [2](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/east-asian-film-remakes/remake-but-media-infantility-in-ozu-yasujiros-good-morning/D3433BB99E826FA4C518CCBDE13244B8)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Japanese title / release | お早よう (Ohayō), released May 12, 1959 by Shochiku[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/) |
| Director and writers | Directed by Yasujiro Ozu; screenplay by Ozu and Kogo Noda[3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning) |
| Position in Ozu's career | His 50th film and his second in color[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning) |
| Running time | 94 minutes (Shochiku); 93 minutes as listed by Criterion[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/) • [3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning) |
| Source relationship | A loose remake of Ozu's 1932 silent *I Was Born, But . . .*[2](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/east-asian-film-remakes/remake-but-media-infantility-in-ozu-yasujiros-good-morning/D3433BB99E826FA4C518CCBDE13244B8) |
| Setting | A new suburban housing district on the outskirts of Tokyo[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/) |
| Home video | Criterion Collection Spine #84; the 2017 Blu-ray carries a new 4K digital restoration[3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning) |
## Spoilers
### Story
The film is set in a cluster of small new houses in a Tokyo suburb, where several families live in close proximity and small frictions pass back and forth over the fences. The central household is the Hayashi family: father Keitaro (Chishu Ryu), mother Tamiko (Kuniko Miyake), their two first-year middle-school sons Minoru (Koji Shidara) and Isamu (Masahiko Shimazu), and Tamiko's younger sister Setsuko (Yoshiko Kuga). Nearby live the boisterous Haraguchi family, the only household in the neighborhood that owns a television, and two unmarried neighbors, Heichiro Fukui (Keiji Sada) and Setsuko, who are attracted to each other but cannot bring themselves to say so.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/) • [3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning)
Two things preoccupy the children. One is a fad game in which a finger pressed to the forehead produces a fart, a running gag that gives the film much of its boisterous humor. The other is television: whenever sumo wrestling broadcasts begin, the boys crowd into the Haraguchi house to watch instead of studying. When Tamiko scolds Minoru and Isamu, the boys answer that the family should simply buy a set; when their father shouts at them for talking back, they counterattack and then launch their strike, refusing to speak to any adult.[1](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning)
The silence spreads its consequences through the neighborhood, and the film uses it to make its central point about talk. The boys complain that adults chatter constantly about nothing, greetings and weather and gossip, while failing to say the things that matter. Ozu himself framed the theme this way: "Human beings love idle prattle, but when it comes to saying something important at critical moments, they get tongue-tied. I wanted to make that the subject of a film." The Japanese title points at the same target: the boys, scolded for talking too much, retort that grown-ups are just as talkative with ritual phrases, so the seemingly empty "ohayō" (good morning) becomes a symbol of the argument that useless words are in fact necessary to human relationships.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning) • [5](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1959_n.html)
## Remaking I Was Born, But . . .
*Good Morning* reworks material from Ozu's 1932 silent comedy *I Was Born, But . . .* (Otona no miru ehon: Umarete wa mita keredo). Both films follow two young brothers who go on strike against their parents and both examine media and authority through the children's eyes. In the silent film, the boys' disillusionment comes through the projection of a small-gauge film; in the 1959 film, television mediates between the private and public spheres, and it is public viewership that gets domesticated into home consumption.[2](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/east-asian-film-remakes/remake-but-media-infantility-in-ozu-yasujiros-good-morning/D3433BB99E826FA4C518CCBDE13244B8)
The differences register how much Japan had changed in the 27 years between the two films. The 1932 film centers on a family still adapting to a new neighborhood and on the father's humiliation before his boss; in the lighter climate of 1959 the central family is firmly settled, and serious problems such as unemployment and ostracism are reserved mostly for the neighbors. Where the earlier boys stage a hunger strike, the later boys simply stop talking.[6](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/a%20family%20affair%3Cbr%3E%20the%20films%20of%20yasujiro%20ozu/2023/09/09/good-morning/)
## Television and consumerism in 1959
The film arrived at a specific economic moment. Japan was in the midst of a sumo wrestling craze, and television sales were booming as fans bought sets to watch the matches; 1959 was also the year in which Japanese movie attendance experienced its first steep drop, with television widely identified as the culprit. Ozu's film shows both sides of that reorganization of leisure: the boys flock to a neighbor's set, while the adults' conversations revolve around acquiring the same commodities their neighbors have, washing machines above all.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning) • [7](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hphpq)
Scholars have read the tight spacing of the new suburb as part of the satire. When one household owns a washing machine or a television and the next does not, the lack of space between the houses makes the financial difference visible, turning proximity into consumerist competition. The television set, described in one study as "the most American of objects," becomes the main cause of strife in the film.[8](https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/178770/AnnalesB673Timonen.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1)
## Style and production
Ozu made the film with his longtime collaborators: screenplay co-writer Kogo Noda, with whom he had worked since 1927, cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta, and composer Toshiro Mayuzumi; Yoshiyasu Hamamura edited. The visual style keeps the hallmarks of his earlier work, the low-angle "tatami shots," cuts instead of dissolves, and a static, immobile camera, but the humor is more boisterous than in his dramas, built around the flatulence gag and the boys' wordless high-signs.[3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning)
The color palette is a marked feature of the film. Viewers and critics note the strong blues of sky against green hills and the sharp reds, greens, and blues of the interiors, and Ozu reportedly wanted to take full advantage of the color stock available to him. It was only his second film in color.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning)
Ozu said the story had originally been conceived with a bitter edge, but that, as he got older, box-office considerations prompted him to make it a sidesplitting comedy. The fart material drew on an experience from the making of his 1932 film *The Lady and the Beard*, when his overworked crew amused themselves during five consecutive overnight shoots by pushing each other's bellies and passing gas.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning)
## Reception and home video
*Good Morning* was little seen outside Japan during Ozu's lifetime, but his films have gained wider international recognition since his death, and the film now holds a 94% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Richard Brody of *The New Yorker* wrote that Ozu's "sense of generational conflict in a society at risk from within is here at its sharpest and most anarchic," and Jonathan Rosenbaum called it perhaps the most delightful of Ozu's late comedies. Criterion has described it as the wildcard in Ozu's career, the film that looks least like his others and one of the few told through children's eyes rather than an old man's.[9](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_morning) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning) • [3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning)
[The Criterion Collection](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-criterion-collection) issued the film as Spine #84, first on DVD in 2000 and on Blu-ray on May 16, 2017, 58 years and four days after the Japanese theatrical debut. The Blu-ray carries a new 4K digital restoration with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack, Ozu's 1932 *I Was Born, But . . .* with a 2008 score by Donald Sosin, a fragment of the 1929 silent *A Straightforward Boy*, a new interview with film scholar David Bordwell, and a video essay on Ozu's humor by critic David Cairns.[3](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning) • [10](https://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/yasujiro-ozus-good-morning) • [11](https://www.criterionforum.org/review/good-morning-the-criterion-collection-blu-ray)
## References
1. [お早よう, Shochiku film database](https://www.shochiku.co.jp/cinema/database/03241/)
2. [Rea Amit, "A Remake, But … : Media Infantility in Ozu Yasujirō's Good Morning," in *East Asian Film Remakes* (Cambridge University Press)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/east-asian-film-remakes/remake-but-media-infantility-in-ozu-yasujiros-good-morning/D3433BB99E826FA4C518CCBDE13244B8)
3. [Good Morning (1959), The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/624-good-morning)
4. [Margarita Landazuri, "Ohayo (aka Good Morning)," Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/651426/ohayo-aka-good-morning)
5. [日本映画レビュー──1959年](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1959_n.html)
6. [Good Morning, BFI Southbank programme notes, A Family Affair: The Films of Yasujiro Ozu](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/a%20family%20affair%3Cbr%3E%20the%20films%20of%20yasujiro%20ozu/2023/09/09/good-morning/)
7. [*The End of Japanese Cinema: Industrial Genres, National Times, and Media Ecologies*, JSTOR](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hphpq)
8. [Timonen, *The Brothers and Sisters of the Ozu Family* (University of Helsinki)](https://www.utupub.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/178770/AnnalesB673Timonen.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1)
9. [Ohayô, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/good_morning)
10. [David Reviews Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning, CriterionCast](https://criterioncast.com/reviews/blu-ray-reviews/yasujiro-ozus-good-morning)
11. [Good Morning Blu-ray Review, Criterion Forum](https://www.criterionforum.org/review/good-morning-the-criterion-collection-blu-ray)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1950s*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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