Ozu's control over the most sensitive and potentially overwhelming emotional material is at its height in this exquisite film about a widowed father and his son who are separated when the father must relocate and the boy is sent to boarding school. Their moments together are etched in joy and impending loss, as when fishing, their identical casting motions unite them. The film was one of Ozu's personal favorites, perhaps, as David Owens notes, "because the situation described was similar to his own: While Ozu grew up in the small town of Matsuzaka near Nagoya, his father carried on the family business in Tokyo.... At a time when so many families were fractured by the hardships of the war, this theme was an especially important one to Japanese authorities. The film would, it was thought, counsel patience and fortitude and offer the solace that separation was inevitable, thus more tolerable. But Ozu himself was not at all concerned with the themes or topics that interested the government. He wanted only to make his own very personal films. Several of his scripts were rejected by the censors because they were not topical or timely. Ozu thus spent most of the war avoiding work." (Please note: The print is descended from the only surviving negative, which shows signs of deterioration and some excessive noise on the soundtrack.)