I don't think that's the best characterization of what I wrote. I think part of the problem is the vagueness of the word "influence" and in the interest of clarity we should probably ban it from this conversation. I have no doubt that in one of the many senses of that word, Costa was "influenced" by Ozu. I also think Costa often suggests that he is working in the tradition of Ozu, that his films are updates of Ozu, or some such--and I think that sort of argument is willfully perverse. And it's a familiar argument.there is a level of deceit going on when someone like Straub states they are influenced by Ozu
As for Straub, I don't know if he's ever mentioned Ozu. He's hailed Ford before, sometimes for the way that Ford's films can often hold two viewpoints in tension, as in Fort Apache and The Long Gray Line (in the latter: admiring the traditions and family-like society of West Point and bitterly mourning the sacrifice of generations of promising young men to war). But at times when discussing Ford and others, Straub will make impatient statements like "my films are exactly like those of Ford, isn't it obvious?" that seem designed less to communicate and more to separate those "in the know" from others for whom the connection is not immediately evident. This is just part of the severe personae Straub and Huillet adopt(ed), a pose that seems snobbish to me.
I think Costa and others take on versions of that persona--it's part of a game cinephiles like to play, even the ones who disavow cinephilia. And I guess here's where personal taste comes in with a vengeance: I happen to think Costa is writing checks his films can't cash (not as true with Straub).
Back to Ozu: Bordwell would likely deny that "content" exists apart from "form"; or, put another way, he might argue that "content" is an element of form. This is the legacy of the formalists who influenced (that word again!) him (Shklovsky, Eichenbaum, Jakobson...). So the way Ozu deploys meanings, including emotional meanings, is part of his complex and supple experiments with form. I also think it's unwise to reduce those experiments to "visual style." Ozu, without but especially with Noda, is a master of large-scale form, of arranging the big blocks and little motifs of a narrative in a way that activates an incredible number and dense interweaving of formal patterns, making them a feast for the attentive viewer. (I think the same holds for much poetry, and IMO some training in prosody and scansion is of great benefit to anyone who wants to analyze film.)
If you haven't read Bordwell's Ozu book in a while--and although it's the best book on Ozu we have, I don't think it exhausts or claims to exhaust what could be written about his films--I'd recommend re-reading the section on Early Summer, which I think gets at all this in a clear and concise way. It even quotes Tynyanov IIRC.
Edit: posted this at the same time as immediately preceding message, so apologies if I'm just repeating stuff.