Japan’s tradition of silent movie ‘narrators’ survives and thrives

TOKYO — This year marks both the 60th anniversary of the death of the great Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu and the 120th anniversary of his birth. I was lucky enough to attend one of several celebratory events — a showing of two short silent films that he made in the late 1920s.

Ozu is best known outside Japan for his emotionally complex post-World War II family dramas, such as “Tokyo Story” (1953), considered by some critics as one of the greatest films ever made. The two shorts, “A Straightforward Boy” and “Fighting Friends,” were very different: slapstick comedies influenced by British-American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy.