in Late Spring, vividly depicted Ozu’s approach to directing actors in her description of the scene in which Noriko is about to leave her father’s house for her wedding: Ozu told me to come [back] in the room [after she, Hara and Ryu had exited] and circle around. So I did as I was told, but of course it wasn’t good enough. After the third take, Ozu approved it… The reason [Aunt Masa] circles around the room once is that she’s nostalgic for all the memories there and she also wants to make sure she’s left nothing behind. He didn’t show each of these things explicitly, but through my smoothly circling the room—through how I moved, through the pacing and the blocking—I think that’s what he was trying to express. At the time, I didn’t understand. I remember I did it rhythmically: I didn’t walk and I didn’t run; I just moved lightly and rhythmically. As I continued doing it, that’s what it turned into, and Ozu okayed it. Come to think of it, it was that way of walking rhythmically that I think was good. I did it naturally, not deliberately. And of course it was Ozu who helped me do it. Editing According to Richie, the editing of an Ozu film was always subordinate to the script: that is, the rhythm of each scene was decided at the screenwriting stage, and the final editing of the film reflected this. This overriding tempo even determined how the sets were constructed. Sato quotes Tomo Shimogawara, who designed the sets for The End of Summer (though the description also clearly applies to other late-period Ozu films, including Late Spring): "The size of the rooms was dictated by the time lapses between the actor's movements... Ozu would give me instructions on the exact length of the corridor. He explained that it was part and parcel of the tempo of his film, and this flow of tempo Ozu envisioned at the time the script was being written... Since Ozu never used wipes or dissolves, and for the sake of dramatic tempo as well, he would measure the number of seconds it took someone to walk upstairs and so the set had to be constructed accordingly." Sato says about this tempo that "it is a creation in which time is beautifully apprehended in conformity with the physiology of daily occurrences." A striking fact about