marriage in this film, as well as many of ozu’s late films, is strongly associated with death. prof. onodera's daughter, for example, refers to marriage as "life’s graveyard." geist writes: "ozu connects marriage and death in obvious and subtle ways in most of his late films… the comparison between weddings and funerals is not merely a clever device on ozu’s part, but is so fundamental a concept in japanese culture that these ceremonies as well as those surrounding births have built-in similarities… the elegiac melancholy ozu evokes at the end of "late spring", "late autumn", and "an autumn afternoon" arises only partly because the parents have been left alone… the sadness arises because the marriage of the younger generation inevitably reflects on the mortality of the older generation." robin wood stresses the marriage-death connection in commenting on the scene that takes place in the somiya home just before the wedding ceremony. "after everyone has left the room… [ozu] ends the sequence with a shot of the empty mirror. noriko is no longer even a reflection, she has disappeared from the narrative, she is no longer ‘noriko’ but ‘wife.’ the effect is that of a death."