Trevor Hogg profiles the internationally renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in the third of a four part feature… read parts one and two.
“Since the time I was a young man I have always kept a notebook handy when I read a book,” stated filmmaker Akira Kurosawa who has a great appreciation for literature. “I write down my reactions and what particularly moves me. I have stacks and stacks of these college-style notebooks, and when I go off to write a script, these are what I read. Somewhere they always provide me with a point of breakthrough. Even for single lines of dialogue I have taken hints from these notebooks.” A novel which left a lasting impression on the director was one written by author Maxim Gorky, which served as the basis for Donzoko (The Lower Depths, 1957). “Gorky’s setting was Imperial Russia but I changed it to Japan, the Edo period,” explained Kurosawa. “In Edo during this period the Shogunate was falling to pieces and thousands were living almost unendurable lives. Their resentment we still feel in senryu and rakushu [satirical poems and entertainments] of the period.”
An elderly man (Ganjiro Nakamura) and his discontented wife (Isuzu Yamada) rent out rooms to a variety of poor tenants from gamblers, prostitutes, and petty thieves, to drunkards. “This film was easy to make,” declared the Tokyo-born moviemaker. “We worked steadily and well; shooting did not take long. We had only one closed set, and one open set. We also had many rehearsals, and worked out all the choreography, movements, camera shots, etc. well in advance.” Akira Kurosawa was not above the idea of recruiting outside help to aid in the production, “Once, to get everyone in the proper mood, I invited on to the set one of the few remaining practitioners of the old Edo rakugo [humorous but highly satirical stories] – and we never had more fun than on that day.”
“If I make a heavy, serious film, then afterwards I want to make something light, which anyone can enjoy,” revealed Kurosawa. “For example, after The Lower Depths I made Hidden Fortress. It’s a biological need on my part. Whatever film I make is what I want to do at the moment.” In Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (The Hidden Fortress or Three Bad Men in a Hidden Fortress, 1958) Toshiro Mifune plays a general secretly transporting a princess (Misa Uehara) from a defeated royal family through enemy territory only to be impeded by a pair of downtrodden peasants (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara).
“I remember there was good weather at Arima and we worked fast, but Fuji! – the weather changes so rapidly that it is cloudy one minute and bright sun the next,” recalled the director. “Making it there was difficult enough, but just then a big typhoon came and torn up all our scenery. I remember, at one point, we waited over a hundred days for good weather, and so our film was considerably over its three-month production schedule.” It was well worth the effort as the picture was a box office hit and gained an admirer in American movie-maverick George Lucas, who used the film as an inspiration for Star Wars (1977). “The one thing that really struck and intrigued me about Hidden Fortress was that the story is told from the point-of-view of the two lowest characters,” observed Lucas. “Having the two bureaucrats or peasants is like having two clowns – it goes back to Shakespeare which is probably where Kurosawa got [the idea].” The tale, which echoes The Prince and Pauper, was socially ahead of its time. “In the Japanese context of Hidden Fortress we are talking about a strength of class structure that is unknown in the West,” stated the America filmmaker, “and therefore, her [the princess] assimilating into the lower classes is a much bigger issue.”
Shot in the widescreen format, Tohoscope, the movie received global acclaim, winning the Silver Bear for Best Direction at the Berlin Film Festival and the International Critics’ Prize at the Venice International Film Festival.
Seeking more autonomy in his moviemaking, the Japanese director founded Kurosawa Productions in 1960. “The only thing that all film directors have in common with the film companies is the concern for the size of audience,” remarked Akira Kurosawa. “In other words, although it may not be our intention to make a lot of money from our films, we do want to make films that will be seen by as many people as possible.”
The debut project for the fledging production company was Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru (The Bad Sleep Well, 1960). “I decided to do something about corruption, because it has always seemed to me that graft, bribery, etc., on a public level is the worst crime there is,” said Kurosawa. “These people hide behind the façade of some great organization like a company or a corporation – and consequently no one ever really knows how dreadful they are, what awful things they do. Exposing them I thought of as a socially significant act – and so I started the film.”
Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) marries into the family of a corrupt corporate vice president (Maysayuki Mori) in an attempt to gain retribution for the death of his father. The themes of circumstance, revenge, and justice have resulted in the story being described as “a Japanese Hamlet in modern dress.” Having to deal with creative interference was still a prominent issue for Akira Kurosawa. “When I submitted the original script, the producers disagreed on everything. I had to make cowardly compromises. I couldn’t show what I wanted to show – that the real and final source of corruption was at the top. I had to settle for a faceless voice on the other end of the telephone line.” The concession led to further complications as the assumption was made that the mysterious caller was then Japanese Premier Nobusuke Kishi, thereby, significantly hindering the ability to secure a distribution deal for the picture.
“Good Westerns are unquestionably liked by all people, regardless of nationality,” reflected the filmmaker on the universal popularity of the movie genre. “As human beings are weak, they wish to dream of good people and great heroes who lived in olden times.” Kurosawa created such a cinematic persona with Yojimbo (Yojimbo the Bodyguard, 1961). “I was so fed up with the world of the Yakuza [Japanese mob]. So in order to attack their evil and irrationality, and thoroughly mess them up, I brought in a super-samurai played by Mifune. He himself was an outsider, a kind outside the law, which enabled him to act flexibly, sometimes recklessly. Only such a samurai of the imagination much more powerful than a real samurai, could mess up these gangsters. The film sort of evolved from there.”
Hired by competitive crime lords, a manipulative ronin (Toshiro Mifune) goes about bringing peace to a small town. “The hero in the film is different from us,” contemplated the director. “He is capable of standing squarely in the middle and stopping the fighting.” The opening scene of a dog trotting across a dusty road with a human hand in its mouth was inspired by the sight of an actor’s pet dog walking with a glove held in its mouth.
Questioned about the swagger of his lead performer, which makes him look twice his actual size, the filmmaker replied, “Mifune’s walk is his own invention. In order to stress it, I carefully selected camera framings and lenses.” Reflecting on his relationship with his long-time collaborator, Kurosawa stated, “Between Seven Samurai and Yojimbo there was a lapse of ten years, and during that period both Mifune and I probably matured. The more or less unusual overacting in Samurai calmed noticeably in Yojimbo.” The director also wanted to make the fight scenes more realistic. “The chanbara [swordplay] had a greater impact in former days, when it was done with almost no swordplay. It was weakened when a lot of melodramatic cut-and-thrust was injected. Traditionally, the sword was quickly drawn, the stroke was made in one lightning movement and the blade was sheathed with equal speed. I’m trying to return to this, and it may be a coincident that this technique appears similar to the quick draw in Westerns.”
In 1964, the picture was remade as the Italian “spaghetti” Western A Fistful of Dollars with Clint Eastwood starring in his signature role as The Man With No Name. Having not secured the remake rights to the original film, director Sergio Leone (Once Upon the Time in the West) had to contend with a copyright lawsuit initiated by Akira Kurosawa and his writing partner Ryuzo Kikushima, delaying the North American screening for three years.
Taking over the mentor role normally played by Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune was cast as the lead actor in Tsubaki Sanjuro (Sanjuro or Sanjuro of the Camellias, 1962) with Yuzo Kayama portraying his disciple in the feudal comedy. “In Yojimbo and Sanjuro the main character is the same person and he’s a samurai who breaks all the rules of samurai etiquette,” said Kurosawa. “That’s what’s interesting to me about him.”
Intended to be an adaptation of the short story Nichinichi hei-an (Peaceful Days) by Shugoro Yamamoto, the commercial success of Yojimbo caused Akira Kurosawa to revise the tale as a sequel. Mifune reprises his cinematic persona of a wandering ronin who helps nine young samurai outwit three evil clan elders and their henchmen. “For the final sword fight in Sanjuro, I had blood gushing as an experiment,” stated the director. “It was the first time it was ever done in Japan. Having done it once, I have no desire to do it again.”
Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low or Heaven and Hell, 1963) is set in motion when the son of a chauffer (Yukata Sada), who works for a millionaire (Toshiro Mifune), is mistakenly abducted. “The original book [King’s Ransom] was written by Ed McBain,” remarked Kurosawa. “It was not particularly well written. But the setting of the story was shocking to me. If someone can perform a kidnapping on that basis, he could simply snatch any child and demand that the nation or the prime minister pay the ransom.” The filmmaker saw the subject matter as means to address a serious flaw in his homeland’s legal system. “Japanese criminal laws against kidnapping are very lenient. They don’t pay much attention to the lives of the victims. I felt that I had to do something about this situation. To stress this point I had to make the pursuit by the police very cruel, and very severe. In some cases I myself have felt that the pursuit was too relentless.”
“Originally, I had tried various types of music while [Tsutomu] Yamazaki, the kidnapper, was walking toward his house,” explained Akira Kurosawa. “Well, some other music I chose to be heard over the radio in that scene, evoked much more sympathy so that the audience would really feel, ‘Oh, what a helpless fellow.’ I finally settled on the Trout of Schubert. It was not my real intention to make the criminal sympathetic, but as a director it came naturally for me to be sympathetic to an oppressed person.” Commenting on the ending of the film, the moviemaker remarked, “I shot another scene after the confrontation between Mifune and Yamazaki in the prison. We shot some long footage showing [Tatsuya] Nakadai and Mifune walking while thinking about Yamazaki. The two were full of unhappy feelings, despite having succeeded in their mission. To film this scene, we made a huge set. They were about to part and they felt this shadow behind them. They couldn’t forget him. We spent two weeks on this scene. But I felt that the scene between Yamazaki and Mifune in jail is really the end of the picture, so I decided not to use the additional scene.”
Akahige (Red Beard, 1965) marked the last collaboration between Toshiro Mifune and Akira Kurosawa. “The author of the book, Shuguro Yamamoto, had always opposed having his novels made into films,” said the filmmaker. “He made the exception with Red Beard because I persisted with merciless obstinacy until I succeeded. When he had finished viewing the film he turned to look at me and said, ‘Well, it’s more interesting than my novel.’” Pondering the compliment from Yamamoto, Kurosawa went on to add, “The only thing he had requested of me was that I be very careful with the protagonist, a complete failure of a woman, as he saw her. But the curious thing is that the idea of the failed woman was not explicit in his novel.”
An arrogant young doctor Norboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) is assigned to a rural clinic run by Dr. Kyojo “Akahige” Niide (Mifune) which transforms his life. The final black and white film to be produced by Kurosawa was over budget and fell behind schedule. When the picture was released it was a commercial failure. “Red Beard constitutes a point of reference in my evolution,” reflected the moviemaker. “All my films which precede it are different from the succeeding ones. It was the end of one stage and the beginning of another.”
Hollywood came calling when 20th Century-Fox approached Akira Kurosawa to direct the Japanese segments for Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). After shooting had commenced the filmmaker left the ambitious project about the beginnings of the Pacific War upon learning he would not have the “final cut” over his portion of the movie.
Another short-lived venture for Kurosawa was the establishment of a production company called Yonki-no-kai Company (Four Musketeers) with Keisuke Kinoshita, Kon Ichikawa, and Masaki Kobayashi in 1969. “We wanted to form a group to become the “nucleus” of Japanese film,” stated the director. “We wanted to make films without having to fight for them at every step. We set out quite idealistically, thinking if we added D’Artagnan to the Three Musketeers, we’d have Four Musketeers. We thought it was a way to rescue Japanese cinema. The association floundered on the fact that we all had strong individual personalities.”
Dodesukaden (Dodes’ka-den, 1970) was the sole production for the Yonki-no-kai Company. “We [Yoichi Matsue and Kurosawa] were able to finish the script in one third of the time we’d anticipated,” chuckled Akira Kurosawa. “The manger of the hotel – where Oguni Hashimoto and I hole up and write – thought we were leaving so soon because we didn’t like his place.” Not everything came so easily for the filmmaker. “Having finished the script, I racked my brains almost to the point of a nervous breakdown about how to direct it. A story about an urban slum – there’s no such place for a location. Then I went out to the Tokyo dump and figured that I could build my slum dwellings there.” The picture represented a significant departure for Kurosawa. “Dodes’ka-den was a colour experiment film for me. It was my first colour film and I tried all kinds of things – even painting the ground, not to mention the sets.” Though a novice with the medium, the moviemaker was an astute learner, “If I needed sunshine, I used as much lighting as was necessary, and then I painted the shadow areas a darker hue and the lit areas a brighter hue to emphasize the contrast.”
A mentally challenged boy (Hiroyuki Kawase) pretends to be a train conductor while traveling through the slum in which he lives. “A mysterious kid,” commented the director in regards to his young star. “You know how children can’t ever sit still, but he would sit still for hours. He’d come to the set in his costume and just sit there.” Kurosawa was impressed by the talent of the child actor. “I couldn’t have made this film if I hadn’t found a boy like him. He has a certain mysterious air about him…He’s so sharp and intuitive. Whenever I stood up to go over and correct him, he already knew what I was going to say. He would just nod and then make the proper correction in his performance.”
“I can’t stand working in total seriousness; I’ve never been able to even function that way,” confessed Akira Kurosawa. “I told my staff, ‘I want to make this one sunny, cheerful, lighthearted, and charmingly pretty.’ And for the music, I told Turu Takemistu to compose the same sort of thing, rather than something heavy.” To aid the acting performances, the director adopted a laissez faire approach. “We did a run-through, of course, but if I stipulate that something should be done this way or that way, the atmosphere becomes very heavy. The actors are, in a sense, injured. This time I told them to act freely and spontaneously.” Despite being critically panned in Japan, the picture was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.
Turmoil was not confined to his work, as the legendary filmmaker emulated his deceased older brother Heigo by attempting suicide in 1971. “I think I was suffering from some kind of neurosis but I also had a bad case of gallstones, and it wasn’t until long afterward that it was diagnosed and successfully operated,” confided Kurosawa. “I didn’t realize until after the surgery that I had been in pain for years, and I’m sure it had being affecting my spirits.” Reflecting further on the traumatic event, the director added, “I was very foolish. Letters and telegrams came from all over the world; there were offers from children to help finance my films. I realized that I had committed a terrible error.
Kurosawa experienced a full recovery when he received an offer from the Soviet Union to direct a movie. “The Soviets came to me and said, ‘We want you to direct a film in Russia. Whatever you want to do,’” remembered the director. “I suggested the Russian novel by Vladimir Arseniev. I had read it thirty years before. The Russians were amazed that I knew this book, and accepted it immediately.” Dersu Uzala (1975) is based on the memoir In the Thickets of the Ussuri Taiga which chronicles the multiple explorations of Siberia conducted by Arseniev during the early twentieth century. Asked if he was worried about not speaking Russian, Kurosawa answered, “If I couldn’t direct in Japan, why not? Cinema is an international language.”
Summarizing the story, the moviemaker stated, “A Russian Army captain [Yuri Salomin] and his team of surveyors come across Dersu [Maxim Munzuk], an old Mongolian hunter, in the forests of Siberia. Dersu agrees to be their guide. While he is showing them how to find their way through the rugged terrain, he tells them of his philosophy of life – to respect all living things, because man must live in harmony with nature. Five years later, the Army captain and his team return to Siberia and again find Dersu. This time, he shoots a tiger that has been following the group, and falls into a deep depression over violating his principles. Because Dersu is losing his eyesight, the captain takes him to live with him in Khaborovsk, but Dersu can’t stand civilization, and returns to the forest, and dies. The film was a big success in Russia.”
It was essential for Kurosawa to shoot on location. “I couldn’t have portrayed the character of Dersu without showing the nature in which he lives – without it he wouldn’t exist.” Helping him capture the wilderness for the big screen was some foreign ingenuity. “In the case of Dersu, I wasn’t using Kodak film but the Russians’ own film, which had different characteristics. I felt it was particularly good for that very broad, natural setting.” As with his previous films, the director worked on the post-production and the principle photography simultaneously. “If I didn’t edit as I go I not only couldn’t sleep at night, but my crew would lose track of what they were doing with the multiple cameras.”
Despite the picture winning the Gold Medal at the Moscow Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the first filmmaker to be the awarded Japan’s Order of the Sacred Treasure found himself having to make whiskey commercials for Suntory; the ads featured a voiceover proclaiming that his slogan was, “Meticulous as the devil, bold as an angel.” Fortunately, Akira Kurosawa was rescued once again; not by a nation but by two fans who had become major players in Hollywood – George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola (The Rainmaker).
Continue to part four.
For more on the filmmaker visit AkiraKurosawa.info, the Akira Kurosawa Foundation or the British Film Institute.
Also be sure to read Trevor’s article marking 100 years since the director’s birth – Akira Kurosawa: A Cinematic Artist.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.
