STRUCTURES, STRICTURES, AND STRATAGEMS feature of open-ended narratives. Here a concluding description of the setting, the weather, or some other noncausal feature constitutes, by convention, a substitute for causal resolution.9 Ozu absorbs such conventional endings into the overarching rhythm of life, often by introducing at the opening the motif that will close the film, but there making it more causally functional as an establishment of the drama's locale. Hence the factory settings that open and close The Only Son, the landscapes that open and close Late Spring, the train station in Equinox Flower, the harbor shots in Tokyo Story, and so on. Such a device offers a good example of how material- the subject of the family- gets transformed by constructive principles like metaphor and narrative closure. This formal process will in turn prove essential to an ideological analysis of Ozu's work in Chapter 8. Symmetries, parallels, and cycles superimpose an abstract logic upon the causal patterning of Ozu's films. They lend a diagrammatic shape to the plot, lodging each incident within a purer system of relations. When a single event finds a spot within all these structures, it gains an enormous narrative richness. Consider, as just one instance, the end of Early Summer. The grandparents have moved in with the uncle, and they sit in his house, looking out at the countryside. In terms of purely local causality, the scene is a consequence of Noriko's decision to marry Yabe. It also participates in two symmetries: it is the end of the film's second, heavily-plotted major part and the coda to its third 'act'. In addition, the scene constitutes a rigorous parallel to the film's opening, in which the family gathered for breakfast. (These points are discussed in detail on pp. 320-1.) The sequence also participates in the overall cycle of the parting of generations, constituting phase 9b in my schematic list. Three levels of pattern endow the scene with a rigorous density that owes only a part of its force to immediate cause and effect. As if all these abstract patterns were not enough to 'overdetermine' the film's shape, Ozu has recourse to intertextual factors as well. I am not here thinking of genre, which certainly does contribute to the causal and motivic structure of the films. Ozu is unusual in that he self-consciously exploits his entire output as one vast 'text' of which each film can be seen as a chapter. An obvious case in point is his reliance on remakes and series. Not only did his earliest films tend to be based on American films or stories, but Ozu remade two of the 1930s works - I Was Born, But... and Story of Floating Weeds - as Ohayo and Floating Weeds. A popular catchphrase led Ozu to create the 'I... but...' series. More unusual is his 'Kihachi' series of the 1930s. Passing Fancy, Story of Floating Weeds, An Innocent Maid, and Inn in Tokyo all center on an itinerant character played by Takeshi Sakamoto, who has a son, usually played by Tokkan Kozo. In each, Kihachi has a friendly or amorous relation with an older woman played by Choko lida. Each film involves Kihachi with another woman before he is (usually) separated from his son. Nevertheless, the causal details of the films vary drastically. In some, Kihachi has somehow lost his wife, but in one the lida character is his wife; in one, he has two sons. As Ozu pointed out, these films do not constitute a true series in that they are not really about the same character.'0 Kihachi even has a rather different personality from film to film: thick-headed but good-natured in Passing Fancy, more clever and surly in Story of Floating Weeds, and so on. The 61