is a 1947

Japanese film The has a history that spans more than 100 years. Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world; as of 2021, it was the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. In 2011 Japan produced 411 feature films that ea ...

co-written and directed by

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...

. It was made during the

allied occupation of Japan Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States w ...

and shows some of the challenges of life in early post-war Tokyo. The film is notable in the Kurosawa canon as the director's only ''

shomin-geki , literally ''common people drama'', is a pseudo-Japanese word invented by Western film scholars. It describes a genre of Japanese realist films which focus on the everyday lives of ordinary people. In Japanese the correct word for this genre is ...

'', and because of a

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

-breaking scene at the climax. It is in

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

and runs 108 minutes.

Plot

Yuzo and his fiancée, Masako, meet in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

on a Sunday for their weekly date. They are determined to have a nice day even though they only have thirty-five yen between them, but this is easier said than done: they hear about an apartment they hope to rent so they can live together, but find it is too expensive. Yuzo plays baseball with a group of children but accidentally damages a ''

manjū is a traditional Japanese confection. Of the many varieties of manjū, most have an outside made from flour, rice powder, kudzu, and buckwheat, and a filling of ''anko'' (red bean paste), usually made from boiled adzuki beans and sugar. ''Man ...

'' shop. They visit a club owned by someone Yuzo knew in the army, but cannot get in because the manager refuses to believe that someone dressed as shabbily as Yuzo could really know the owner. They go to the zoo, but it starts to rain and they have no umbrella, so they try to see a performance of

Schubert Franz Peter Schubert (; 31 January 179719 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast ''oeuvre'', including more than 600 secular vocal wor ...

's ''

Unfinished Symphony An unfinished symphony is a fragment of a symphony, by a particular composer, that musicians and academics consider incomplete or unfinished for various reasons. The archetypal unfinished symphony is Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 (sometimes ...

'' only to find that ticket scalpers have already bought up all the cheap tickets to sell at a markup. The unlucky lovers go back to the apartment Yuzo is sharing with a friend (who will be away until the evening), but Masako leaves after Yuzo angrily tries to force himself on her; forgetting her purse, they reconcile when she comes back for it. The rain stops, and they go to a café, where they are charged for two ''

café au lait ''Café au lait'' (; ; French for "coffee with milk") is coffee with hot milk added. It differs from white coffee, which is coffee with cold milk or other whiteners added. Variations Europe In Europe, ''café au lait'' stems from the same c ...

'', which are twice as expensive as the coffee they thought they had ordered. Yuzo gives his coat to the restaurant as collateral, promising to pay back the rest of the bill when he can afford it. Yuzo's spirits begin to lift as he and Masako talk about their dream of opening a "café for the masses" with good food and drinks at reasonable prices; they even act out running their shop in an empty lot they pass by. Yuzo then takes Masako to an empty outdoor

amphitheater An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ...

, where he pantomimes conducting a performance of the ''Unfinished Symphony'' they were not able to see earlier in the day. After this, they part ways until the following Sunday.

Cast

Chieko Nakakita was a Japanese actress. She appeared in the early films of Akira Kurosawa and later starred in many films by Mikio Naruse. Biography After graduating from Tokyo Film School (東京映画学校), Chieko Nakakita entered the Toho film studios an ...

as Masako * Isao Numasaki as Yuzo * Atsushi Watanabe as Yamamoto * Zeko Nakamura as the dessert shop owner *

Ichiro Sugai was a Japanese actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1930 and 1971. Sugai often worked with Kaneto Shindo, Kenji Mizoguchi and Kōzaburō Yoshimura. Selected filmography * ''The Water Magician'' (1933) * ''Spring on Leper's Islan ...

as Yamiya, the black-marketeer *

Masao Shimizu was a Japanese actor. His wife was actress Yumi Takano. His first starring role in the film was in ''Momoiro no Yuwaku'' in 1931. In 1947, he formed the Mingei Theatre Company. Shimizu often work with Akira Kurosawa. He appeared in more than 25 ...

as the dance hall manager * Midori Ariyama as Sono, Yamiya's mistress *

Sachio Sakai , born , was a Japanese actor. In 1947, he made his film debut with Akira Kurosawa's ''One Wonderful Sunday''. He often worked with Akira Kurosawa and Kihachi Okamoto. Filmography Films * ''One Wonderful Sunday'' (1947) as Ticket seller * '' Dr ...

as the ticket seller

Production

''One Wonderful Sunday'' is seen as a variation on the ''

'' genre. On the film's climatic

-breaking scene, where the character Masako turns to the camera with moist eyes and earnestly asks the audience to applaud so that Yuzo and her can hear the music they are imagining,

said he wanted to "transform the audience into actual participants in the plot". Although Japanese audiences sat motionless during the scene, creating an "awkward empty space" where Kurosawa intended engagement, the director later happily remarked that audiences in Paris applauded with enthusiasm.

Reissues

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...

has released ''One Wonderful Sunday'' on DVD in North America as part of two Kurosawa-centered box sets; 2008's ''Postwar Kurosawa'', the seventh entry in their

Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three c ...

series, and 2009's ''AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa''.

Reception

Rita Kempley of ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' called ''One Wonderful Sunday'' "stylistically excessive, ndwildly experimental", but wrote it does presage the genius of Kurosawa's later works, "with low

tracking shot A tracking shot is any Shot (filmmaking), shot where the film camera, camera follows backward, forward or moves alongside the subject being recorded. In cinematography, the term refers to a shot in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly ...

s, characteristically close crops and obstructive scenery making their debut. It's like looking for footprints, tracking the master this apprentice was to become." David A. Conrad found ''One Wonderful Sunday'' to be one of many occupation-era Japanese films that parallel the more famous

Italian neorealism Italian neorealism ( it, Neorealismo), also known as the Golden Age, is a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. They are filmed on location, frequently with non-professional actors. They pri ...

movement, emphasizing poverty, hunger, weakening social mores, and urban dilapidation in the years after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Awards

* Mainichi Film Concours – "Best Director" and "Best Screenplay", 1948.

References

External links

*
''One Wonderful Sunday''
at

Allmovie AllMovie (previously All Movie Guide) is an online database with information about films, television programs, and screen actors. , AllMovie.com and the AllMovie consumer brand are owned by RhythmOne. History AllMovie was founded by popular-cul ...

''One Wonderful Sunday''
at

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

*
One Wonderful Sunday
' at the

Japanese Movie Database The , more commonly known as simply JMDb, is an online database of information about Japanese movies, actors, and production crew personnel. It is similar to the Internet Movie Database but lists only those films initially released in Japan. Y. ...

1947 films Films directed by Akira Kurosawa 1940s Japanese-language films 1947 romantic drama films Japanese black-and-white films Toho films Films with screenplays by Akira Kurosawa Films produced by Sōjirō Motoki Japanese romantic drama films Films set in Tokyo {{romantic-drama-film-stub