The 1931 silent film "Tokyo Chorus" ("Tokyo no Gassho")—about a young office worker with a family and a house in the suburbs who stands up for an unjustly fired office colleague and winds up getting fired himself—has been considered by some critics Ozu's breakthrough film in the "shomingeki" genre. As the Great Depression had hit Japan severely by this time, the hero’s predicament is no minor problem (one intertitle reads "Tokyo: Town of Unemployment"). In its movement from broad office comedy to the grim drama of (temporary) poverty, Ozu achieved in this depiction of the lives of ordinary people the synthesis of humor and pathos that Shiro Kido was urging his directors to strive for. It has been claimed that it was the influence of his co-screenwriter, Kogo Noda, ten years Ozu’s senior, that was instrumental in this change towards a tone darker than the director’s more lighthearted early works.