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context: movies > general points
Modernism
Japan liked Modernism, or at least modernism. It fitted with many of their great traditions - the exposing of structure and the clean, rational line of International Modernism is shown as well in the 17th C Katsura Imperial Villa as in the Bauhaus, and the greater interest in structure than plot is characteristic of most old Japanese storytelling modes, in theatre and prose - these were always more keen on formal qualities than any notion of realism. Film was inherently modernist, it might be said, and the national taste for structure, pattern and symmetries fitted well with some trends in movies. Ozu perhaps exemplifies this best, but it can be seen widely in Japanese film history - a very overt recent example might be something like the Infernal Affairs series. But there were not manifestos in Japan, no programmes for a New True Way - this was just one of the many traditions and approaches to choose from: Japan was naturally inclined to what later became known as postmodernism.