arthur nolletti, jr, writing an essay in the book titled "ozu's tokyo story" compared the film to its usa predecessor film, mccarey's 1937 "make way for tomorrow", and indicates that: "david bordwell sees ozu as 'recasting' the american film -- borrowing from it, adapting it -- and briefly mentions that there are similarities in story, theme and plot structure. indeed these similarities are striking. both films focus on an elderly couple who discover that their grown children regard them as a burden; both films are structured as journeys in which the couple are shuffled from one household to another; both films explore much of the same thematic material (e.g., sibling self-centeredness and parental disillusionment); and both films are about the human condition -- the cyclical pattern of life with its concomitant joys and sorrows -- and the immediate social realities that affect and shape that condition: in mccarey's film, the great depression; in ozu's, the intensified postwar push toward industrialization. primarily sober in tone but possessing rich and gentle humor, both films belong to a genre that in japanese cinema is called "shomin-geki", films dealing with the everyday lives of the lower middle classes."