# What Did the Lady Forget? (淑女は何を忘れたか)
**What Did the Lady Forget?** (淑女は何を忘れたか, *Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka*) is a 1937 Japanese comedy directed by Yasujiro Ozu and produced by Shochiku's Ofuna studio. It was Ozu's second sound film, following *The Only Son* (1936), and it depicts a henpecked Tokyo medical professor, his domineering wife, and the modern-minded niece from Osaka whose visit upsets their marriage.[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=823&key=&key_y=&mode=3¬ation_id=&op=AND&page=0&s_page=&sakuhin_id=830) • [2](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B7%91%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%82%92%E5%BF%98%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8B-752760)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | March 3, 1937 (Tokyo), distributed by Shochiku[3](https://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews16/what_did_the_lady_forget_dvd_review.htm) • [4](https://eiga.com/movie/14498/) |
| Format | Black-and-white talkie, 71 minutes, 35 mm[1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=823&key=&key_y=&mode=3¬ation_id=&op=AND&page=0&s_page=&sakuhin_id=830) |
| Position in Ozu's career | His second sound film, after *The Only Son* (1936); his 37th film[2](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B7%91%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%82%92%E5%BF%98%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8B-752760) • [5](https://www.cinemaclassics.jp/ozu/movie/2894/) |
| Script | Fushimi Akira and James Maki, the latter a joint pen name used by Ozu-centered collaborative writers[2](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B7%91%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%82%92%E5%BF%98%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8B-752760) |
| Principal cast | Sumiko Kurishima (Tokiko), Tatsuo Saito (Komiya), Michiko Kuwano (Setsuko), Shuji Sano (Okada)[6](https://www.justwatch.com/jp/%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB/shukujo-wa-nani-o-wasureta-ka) |
| Critical standing | 8th place in *Kinema Junpo*'s 1937 best-film list[7](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1937_n.html) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Komiya (Tatsuo Saito), a university medical professor in Tokyo's Kojimachi, cannot stand up to his wife Tokiko (Sumiko Kurishima). She decides how he spends his weekends, forcing him to play golf for his health, and dictates his assistant's private life as a tutor. When his niece Setsuko (Michiko Kuwano) arrives from Osaka, her modern-girl energy stirs the professor: he skips the golf trip, stays at his assistant Okada's room, and is caught out when Setsuko appears at his favorite bar. Pressed by Setsuko's provocations, Komiya raises his hand against his wife for the first time in his life, and from then on, the couple's relationship, paradoxically, improves.[10](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/132309) • [6](https://www.justwatch.com/jp/%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB/shukujo-wa-nani-o-wasureta-ka)
Richard Brody, the film critic of *The New Yorker*, summarizes the conflict as one between tradition and modernity, freethinking and emotional inhibition. Tokiko lives according to Japanese custom; Setsuko wears American-style clothing and enjoys smoking, drinking, and driving. The plot pivots on Komiya's lie to his wife about playing golf when he actually visits a geisha house, where he meets Setsuko. Brody notes that the story also involves physical violence and that Ozu finds a disturbing tangle of mixed emotions beneath established formalities, with a bitterly ironic view of progress.[11](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/what-did-the-lady-forget)
## Production
Ozu made the film at Shochiku's Ofuna studio in 1937. The screenplay is credited to Fushimi Akira and James Maki; the encyclopedia *Sekai Dai Hyakka Jiten* explains that James Maki was the collective pen name of the team of scenario writers centered on Ozu, and it reads the script as evidence of Ozu's attachment to Hollywood's sophisticated marriage-and-divorce comedies, particularly those of [Ernst Lubitsch](https://www.edgepedia.org/ernst-lubitsch).[2](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B7%91%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%82%92%E5%BF%98%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8B-752760) The Harvard Film Archive likewise describes the film as "a biting Lubitsch-style satire" of the Japanese bourgeoisie.[8](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/what-did-the-lady-forget-2004-04)
**A first collaboration.** The film is the first on which Ozu worked with the cinematographer Yuharu Atsuta, who would remain his cameraman for the rest of Ozu's career.[5](https://www.cinemaclassics.jp/ozu/movie/2894/) Atsuta had worked as assistant to the cinematographer Hideo Mohara almost continuously since Ozu's eighth film *Days of Youth* (1929), a working relationship that lasted 35 years; on this film Mohara and Atsuta share the cinematography credit.[9](https://umdb.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/dkankoub/publish_db/1999ozu/japanese/02.html) • [1](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=823&key=&key_y=&mode=3¬ation_id=&op=AND&page=0&s_page=&sakuhin_id=830) It was also the first time the studio gave Ozu a first-rank star, Sumiko Kurishima, who plays the leisured wife.[2](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B7%91%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%82%92%E5%BF%98%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8B-752760)
## Themes and style
**Satire of the wealthy.** The film is unusual in Ozu's work for its setting among the leisured class. The Harvard Film Archive's program notes that its bourgeois characters, not Ozu's first but his most opulent, are surrounded by reminders of their wealth: golf clubs, cakes, English homework, and shopping bags. The characters' disagreements revolve around how to spend free time, whether to golf or go to a Ginza bar, implicitly invoking Ozu's blue-collar characters who cannot afford such luxuries.[12](https://rijs.fas.harvard.edu/events/ozu-film-series-hfa-what-did-lady-forget) The DVD Beaver review, drawing on Jonathan Rosenbaum's Chicago Reader critique, calls the film more conventional and commercial than its predecessor *The Only Son*, and uncharacteristic of Ozu in its sharp satire of the rich, with trendy banter and lighthearted boozing suggesting *The Thin Man* as a possible influence.[3](https://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews16/what_did_the_lady_forget_dvd_review.htm)
**Generational and marital roles.** The friction between the traditional aunt and the freethinking niece embodies a gap in the roles of women in society, and the film anticipates the generational themes of Ozu's better-known postwar melodramas.[13](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_did_the_lady_forget) A Japanese retrospective review reads the title as pointing to what ladies forget when marriage turns them into domineering leisured madams, and identifies in Setsuko the vibrant young womanhood Ozu wanted to portray.[7](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1937_n.html) The Kamakura Kawakita Film Memorial describes it as an urban comedy crystallizing prewar Shochiku modernism.[14](https://kamakura-kawakita.org/screening/202211151400/)
## Reception and legacy
*Kinema Junpo* placed the film 8th in its 1937 rankings.[7](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1937_n.html) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 87% Tomatometer from two reviews; Dennis Schwartz graded it an A, calling it "an amusing and poignant spoof on Tokyo's bourgeois," while a 2010 review described it as a slight 71-minute comedy next to the poverty analysis of *The Only Son*.[13](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_did_the_lady_forget) The film was rereleased in theaters on May 4, 1990.[13](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_did_the_lady_forget)
The film's atmosphere anticipates Ozu's later *The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice*, another portrait of a married couple's reconciliation, and its gentle, non-dramatic handling of a marital crisis is characteristic of Ozu's approach to such material.[15](https://filmarks.com/movies/33283/vod) • [4](https://eiga.com/movie/14498/) Ozu made one more picture, this marital comedy, before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War interrupted his career.[16](https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~bjackson/bfs/autumnafternoon22.pdf)
## References
1. [National Film Archive of Japan, preserved film database: 淑女は何を忘れたか](https://nfad.nfaj.go.jp/det.php?data_id=823&key=&key_y=&mode=3¬ation_id=&op=AND&page=0&s_page=&sakuhin_id=830)
2. [Kotobank: 淑女は何を忘れたか (Sekai Dai Hyakka Jiten; Digital Daijisen Plus)](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B7%91%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AF%E4%BD%95%E3%82%92%E5%BF%98%E3%82%8C%E3%81%9F%E3%81%8B-752760)
3. [DVD Beaver: What Did the Lady Forget? (Yasujiro Ozu)](https://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews16/what_did_the_lady_forget_dvd_review.htm)
4. [映画.com: 淑女は何を忘れたか 作品情報](https://eiga.com/movie/14498/)
5. [Shochiku Cinemaclassics: 映画監督 小津安二郎 作品一覧 淑女は何を忘れたか](https://www.cinemaclassics.jp/ozu/movie/2894/)
6. [JustWatch: 淑女は何を忘れたか (1937)](https://www.justwatch.com/jp/%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB/shukujo-wa-nani-o-wasureta-ka)
7. [日本映画レビュー──1937年: 淑女は何を忘れたか](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1937_n.html)
8. [Harvard Film Archive: What Did the Lady Forget? (2004)](https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/what-did-the-lady-forget-2004-04)
9. [デジタル小津安二郎, University of Tokyo](https://umdb.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/dkankoub/publish_db/1999ozu/japanese/02.html)
10. [allcinema: 淑女は何を忘れたか (1937)](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/132309)
11. [Richard Brody, "What Did the Lady Forget?", The New Yorker, June 25, 2015](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/what-did-the-lady-forget)
12. [Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard: Ozu Film Series at HFA, What Did the Lady Forget?](https://rijs.fas.harvard.edu/events/ozu-film-series-hfa-what-did-lady-forget)
13. [Rotten Tomatoes: What Did the Lady Forget?](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/what_did_the_lady_forget)
14. [鎌倉市川喜多映画記念館: 淑女は何を忘れたか](https://kamakura-kawakita.org/screening/202211151400/)
15. [Filmarks映画: 淑女は何を忘れたか 配信まとめ](https://filmarks.com/movies/33283/vod)
16. [Buffalo Film Seminars, Autumn Afternoon 22 (Ozu program notes)](https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~bjackson/bfs/autumnafternoon22.pdf)
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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) › Comedy-drama films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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