Bordwell, David. "Visual Style in Japanese Cinema, 1925-1945." Film History 7.1 (1995): 5-31.

Bordwell explores the visual styles of Japanese cinema during 1925-1945 by looking at the chombara style, piecemeal découpage, and the pictorialist approach. He also analyzes the Japanese cinema in respect to the Westernization that was going on in Japan at the time and compares the styles and techniques used by Japanese filmmakers to those used in Hollywood at the time.

In his article, Bordwell explains that Japanese was very similar to Western cinema in that "American staging and shooting techniques [were] basic to Japanese filmmaking." But rather than copy the Hollywood style completely, Japanese filmmakers adopted a style that "[resembled] the 'primitive' cinema of the West: straight-on long shots." Ozu's fixed camera position may have its roots in "primitive" Hollywood, but it seems that so did the other influential Japanese directors. Bordwell's article also reveals that Ozu's style of filming a montage of unidentified body parts rather than the entire person is not his original invention. Bordwell calls this style "piecemeal découpage" and he explains that it was modeled--by Shochiku's studio in Kamata--on Charlie Chaplin's Woman of Paris (1923) and Ernst Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle (1924). Again, though perhaps indirectly, we see the influence that Lubitsch had on Ozu's style. The way Bordwell characterizes Japanese film style at the time as "at once an assimilation of 'classical techniques seen in the West an an experimental impulse mediated by a self-conscious sense of 'Japaneseness' makes Ozu's films seem less pioneering and more adherent to the trends followed by his peer directors. However, Bordwell points out that "Ozu set himself rigorous constraints, virtually a set of private rules for staging and cutting [which] he then stretched, bent, or recast...creating in the process a rich, gamelike approach to film style." So, though many of Ozu's techniques--such as the static straight-on camera angle, the slower tempo, and the careful attention paid to the composition of a scene--shared by other Japanese directors rather than being unique to him, Ozu took these techniques to the next level, effectively creating his own signature style.

Yasujiro Ozu only developed his signature style with the making of his film Tokyo Story in 1953. To what degree do his films made prior to 1953, such as Tokyo Chorus (1933), demonstrate the influence of the Hollywood style? Ozu especially admired the films of Ernst Lubitsch; what characteristics do his early films share with those of Lubitsch's?