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I Was Born, But... (大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど)

I Was Born, But... (大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど, Otona no miru ehon: Umarete wa mitakeredo, literally "An Adult's Picture Book: I Was Born, But...") is a 1932 Japanese black-and-white silent comedy-drama directed by Yasujiro Ozu (小津安二郎) and produced by Shochiku Kinema at its Kamata studio1. It follows two schoolboy brothers who move to a Tokyo suburb, become leaders of the local children, and then lose faith in their salaried father when they see him fawning before his company's executive. The film was ranked first in Kinema Junpo's annual best-films poll for 1932, the first Ozu film to reach that position2, and Ozu later loosely remade it as the sound comedy Good Morning (1959)3.

Key factDetail
ReleaseJune 3, 1932, distributed by Shochiku Kinema1 • 4
FormatBlack-and-white silent film, 35 mm, aspect ratio 1.33:11 • 5
Running time91 minutes per Shochiku's records; the National Film Archive of Japan's film record lists 90 minutes4 • 1
Principal castTatsuo Saito (father), Mitsuko Yoshikawa (mother), Hideo Sugawara (elder son), Tokkan Kozo (younger son), Takeshi Sakamoto (the executive Iwasaki)1 • 3
Key staffOriginal story by James Maki (ゼェームス槙), script by Akira Fushimi, cinematography and editing by Hideo Mohara (also romanized Hideo Shigehara)1 • 3
RecognitionFirst place, Kinema Junpo Best Ten for 19322 • 6
Place in Ozu's careerHis 24th of 54 completed films7

Spoilers

Story

The Yoshii family moves to a new residential development on the outskirts of Tokyo, where the father (Tatsuo Saito) has settled near the home of his company's executive Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto) in the hope of career advancement; to his sons he remains strictly authoritative9. The two brothers, Ryoichi (Hideo Sugawara) and Keiji (Tokkan Kozo), fight with the local boys, skip school, and eventually use tricks to become the gang's leaders9.

The turn comes when the children boast about whose father is the most important. At a home-movie screening at Iwasaki's house, the brothers see their father flattering the executive and even imitating animals to amuse him9. Furious and humiliated, they refuse food and skip school in protest. The protest fades, their mother (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) mediates, and the father, watching his sleeping sons, regrets having disappointed them for the family's sake; the next morning father and sons leave for work and school together as always9.

Production and release

The film was made at Shochiku's Kamata studio in 1932 from an original story credited to James Maki, a pen name used for adapted Western-style material, with a script by Akira Fushimi and cinematography by Hideo Mohara1 • 3. Trade notices from April 1932 show the film completed and awaiting release under the series heading "an adult's picture book" (大人の見る絵本)8.

Ozu left one recorded comment on the film, published in a 1958 issue of Kinema Junpo: "I started to make a film about children and ended up with a film about grownups; while I had originally planned to make a fairly bright little story, it changed while I was working on it... The company hadn't thought it would turn out this way. They were so unsure of it that they delayed its release for two months."7 The film opened on June 3, 19324.

Tone and interpretation

Shochiku's own synopsis describes the structure as a shift from the humorous episodes of the children's world in the first half to a bitter, comic rendering of salaried-worker sorrow in the second9. The studio's English description calls it "a critical and perceptive look at Japanese society from children's point of view"6. A later Japanese film-studies account describes the film as treating, through a child's eyes and with a light touch, the serious question of why a respected father becomes servile before workplace hierarchy10.

Scholarly writing has also noted the film's visual texture. One study of Ozu's silent period points to the train that repeatedly races across the background of the frame, giving a story about the conflict between the children's world and the adult world, and between labor and capital, an impression close to exhilaration11. Another line of criticism compares Ozu and his cameraman's style to that of new documentary photographers of the period who saw photography as recording how people live12.

Reception and standing

The film brought Ozu immediate critical acclaim. In the early 1930s, after the praise for Tokyo Chorus (1931), I Was Born, But... (1932) made him, for the first time, the number-one film in Kinema Junpo's annual poll, and critics placed him among the leading handlers of petit-bourgeois film and at the peak of Japanese cinema2. It was the first of his films to top the magazine's poll, a position quickly repeated by Passing Fancy (1933) and A Story of Floating Weeds (1934)7. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's essay calls it Japan's most treasured silent film7.

Later remakes and restorations

Ozu reworked the material decades later as Good Morning (1959), a Technicolor comedy about two boys who go on a television strike3. A 4K digital restoration was shown at the 2023 Tokyo International Film Festival as part of the 120th-anniversary program for Ozu's birth, and Shochiku's film page lists a world premiere at the 36th Tokyo International Film Festival13 • 6. The National Film Archive of Japan's restoration work on the film combined a 16mm master positive owned by Shochiku with a 35mm print believed to be the prewar release, held by NFAJ, to produce the version closest to the original release14. The film is distributed on home video and streaming in digitally remastered editions15.

References

  1. 大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど, National Film Archive of Japan film collection database
  2. Eizogaku 104: 31-50 (2020), Japanese Society of Image and Arts Sciences
  3. I Was Born, But . . . (1932), The Criterion Collection
  4. 大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど, Shochiku Cinema Plus
  5. 大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど, KINENOTE
  6. 大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど, Shochiku Cinemaclassics (Ozu filmography)
  7. I Was Born, But..., essay by Brian Darr, San Francisco Silent Film Festival
  8. 関連文献・資料, 小津安二郎ネットワーク (Ozu Yasujiro Network)
  9. 〖作品データベース〗大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど, Shochiku film database
  10. 晩春+大人の見る繪本生れてはみたけれど, CiNii Books bibliographic record
  11. 静岡大学人文社会科学部研究報告 (Shizuoka University humanities report), on the train motif in Ozu's silent films
  12. Yasujiro's I Was Born, But..., conference paper, analepsis.org
  13. 小津安二郎 生誕120年記念企画, 2023 Tokyo International Film Festival guide
  14. NFAJ Annual Report 2023, National Film Archive of Japan
  15. 大人の見る繪本 : 生れてはみたけれど, CiNii Books bibliographic record (2010 Shochiku DVD)

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Early and silent cinema › Silent feature films › Released 1927 to 2012

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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I Was Born, But... (大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど)

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