Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema consists of two parts. The first provides overviews of Ozu’s career from several different angles. It looks at his biography, his place in the Japanese film industry, his methods of storytelling, his use of film techniques, and his films’ social and ideological implications, all the while trying to illustrate how an approach grounded in poetics can help us understand him in ways different from earlier accounts. The second part discusses each film singly, taking up one or two issues raised by the movie but also trying to pick up and develop strands stated in the first part.