Roblog

I watched Wim Wenders’s 1985 documentary Tokyo-Ga this week. It chronicles his trip to Japan in search of the Tokyo of film director Yasujirō Ozu, whom Wenders idolises. Will he be able to catch glimpses of Ozu’s city, or will it have been buried under the frantic rebuilding of postwar Japan? Along the way he meets Chishū Ryū, who starred in 14 of Ozu’s films; Yūharu Atsuta, Ozu’s cinematographer; fellow German director Werner Herzog; and countless others. Wenders’s open-minded and slow-paced journey is all the more remarkable for being filmed at a time of great western anxiety about Japan. Well worth a watch.