The Approach of Autumn
The film is also known by its original title Aki tachinu.©1960 Toho Co., Ltd.
After the death of his father, Hideo moves from Nagano to Tokyo together with his unresponsive mother. There he meets Junko, the only child of a single mother who is the mistress of a wealthy businessman. They share the same grudge against their parents: Hideo”s mother runs off with a man she met in a bar she used to work for. Hideo now has to move in with his working-class uncle and aunt and is expected to do his bit in the family business. His surrogate brother and teenage cousin Shotaro is the only one who looks out for him by taking him out on motorcycle rides.
Hideo grows up in a world that is completely alien to him, not only because he needs to get used to a new city, but also because there are different moral codes and rules of behaviour he has to master. Tokyo, filmed in magnificent CinemaScope, is a force unto itself in the eyes of Naruse, a city that can tear the Japanese family apart. The Approach of Autumn is the first film Mikio Naruse produced himself.
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Mikio Naruse
With a programme of fourteen of his most distinctive films, Eye Filmmuseum demonstrates that Mikio Naruse ranks among the great of Japanese cinema. Naruse was fascinated by the lives of ordinary Japanese men and women, whose stories he narrated in compelling and sober films. His immersive films take us behind the scenes of disciplined families and geisha culture. Naruse mainly highlighted the plight of women: independent, courageous and strong-willed, but ill-fated.
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