one scholar, lars-martin sorensen, has claimed that ozu's partial aim in making the film was to present an ideal of japan at odds with that which the occupation wanted to promote, and that he successfully subverted the censorship in order to accomplish this. "the controversial and subversive politico-historical 'message' of the film is… that the beauty of tradition, and of subjugation of individual whims to tradition and history, by far outshines the imported and imposed western trends of occupied japan."