Something Like an Autobiography (12 page)

WHEN THE HOLOCAUST
had died down, my brother said to me in a tone betraying his impatience to do so, “Akira, let’s go look at the ruins.” I set out to accompany my brother with the kind of cheerfulness you feel on a school excursion. By the time I realized how horrifying this excursion would be and tried to shrink back from it, it was already too late. My brother ignored my hesitation and dragged me along. For an entire day he led me around the vast area the fire had destroyed, and while I shivered in fear he showed me a countless array of corpses.

At first we saw only an occasional burned body, but as we drew closer to the downtown area, the numbers increased. But my brother took me by the hand and walked on with determination. The burned landscape for as far as the eye could see had a brownish red color. In the conflagration everything made of wood had been turned to ashes, which now occasionally drifted upward in the breeze. It looked like a red desert.

Amid this expanse of nauseating redness lay every kind of corpse imaginable. I saw corpses charred black, half-burned corpses, corpses in gutters, corpses floating in rivers, corpses piled up on bridges, corpses blocking off a whole street at an intersection, and every manner of death possible to human beings displayed by corpses. When I involuntarily looked away, my brother scolded me, “Akira, look carefully now.”

I failed to understand my brother’s intentions and could only resent his forcing me to look at these awful sights. The worst was
when we stood on the bank of the red-dyed Sumidagawa River and gazed at the throngs of corpses pressed against its shores. I felt my knees give way as I started to faint, but my brother grabbed me by the collar and propped me up again. He repeated, “Look carefully, Akira.”

I resigned myself to gritting my teeth and looking. Even if I tried to close my eyes, that scene had imprinted itself permanently on the backs of my eyelids. In this way, convincing myself it was inescapable, I felt a little bit calmer. But there is no way for me to describe adequately the horror I saw. I remember thinking that the lake of blood they say exists in Buddhist hell couldn’t possibly be as bad as this.

I wrote that the Sumidagawa was dyed red, but it wasn’t a blood red. It was the same kind of light brownish red as the rest of the landscape, a red muddied with white like the eye of a rotten fish. The corpses floating in the river were all swollen to the bursting point, and all had their anuses open like big fish mouths. Even babies still tied on their mothers’ backs looked like this. And all of them moved softly in unison on the waves of the river.

As far as the eye could see there was not a living soul. The only living things in this landscape were my brother and I. To me we seemed as small as two beans in all this vastness. Or else we too were dead and were standing at the gates of hell.

My brother then led me to the broad market grounds of the garment district. This was where the most people lost their lives in the Great Kanto Earthquake. No corner of the landscape was free of corpses. In some places the piles of corpses formed little mountains. On top of one of these mountains sat a blackened body in the lotus position of Zen meditation. This corpse looked exactly like a Buddhist statue. My brother and I stared at it for a long time, standing stock still. Then my brother, as if talking to himself, softly said, “Magnificent, isn’t it?” I felt the same way.

By that time I had seen so many corpses that I could no longer distinguish between them and the burned bits of roof tiles and stones on the ground. It was a bizarre kind of apathy. My brother looked at me and said, “I guess we’d better go home.” We crossed over the Sumidagawa again and headed for the Ueno Hirokoji district.

As we approached Hirokoji Street, we came upon a large burned-out area where a great number of people had gathered. They were assiduously sifting through the ruins, looking for something. My brother smiled bitterly as he said, “It’s the remains of the bullion treasury. Akira, shall we look for a gold ring as a souvenir?”

But at that particular moment my eyes were fixed on the greenery atop the Ueno hills, and I couldn’t budge. How many years had it
been since I’d seen a green tree? That’s how I felt, as if I had after a long time at last come to a place where there was air. I took a deep breath. There had not been a single trace of green in all the ruins of the fire. Until that instant it had never occurred to me how precious vegetation is.

The night we returned from the horrifying excursion I was fully prepared to be unable to sleep, or to have terrible nightmares if I did. But no sooner had I laid my head on the pillow than it was morning. I had slept like a log, and I couldn’t remember anything frightening from my dreams. This seemed so strange to me that I asked my brother how it could have come about. “If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened. If you look at everything straight on, there is nothing to be afraid of.” Looking back on that excursion now, I realize that it must have been horrifying for my brother too. It had been an expedition to conquer fear.

THE KEIKA MIDDLE SCHOOL
in Ochanomizu burned down in the fire. When I saw the rubble of my school, my first thought was, “Ah, summer vacation will be extended,” and I was delighted. I realize as I write this that I must appear insensitive, but to describe the feelings of a not very brilliant middle-school student honestly, this is what you get, so it can’t be helped.

I have always been honest to a fault. If I did something bad at school and the teacher asked who was responsible, I would always honestly raise my hand. And then the teacher would take out his grade book and give me a zero for conduct.

When we got a new teacher I continued my honesty. I raised my hand when he asked who did it. But this new teacher then said that everything was all right because I had not tried to dodge responsibility. He took out his grade book and gave me a hundred for conduct.

I don’t know which of these teachers was right, but I have to admit I liked the teacher who gave me the hundred better. He was the same teacher who had praised a composition of mine as “the best since the founding of Keika Middle School,” Mr. Ohara Yōichi.

In those days Keika Middle School graduates had an excellent rate of entrance into Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), and this was a great matter of school pride. Mr. Ohara always used to say, “Even a ghost could get into a private university.” These days it isn’t that easy, but a ghost with money can still get in.

I liked my grammar teacher, Mr. Ohara, very much, but I was also fond of my history teacher, Mr. Iwamatsu Goro. According to my class report, I was a great favorite of this teacher as well. He was a wonderful teacher. A really good teacher doesn’t seem like a teacher at all; that’s exactly how this man was. If someone looked out the window or started whispering to his neighbor during class, Mr. Iwamatsu would throw a piece of chalk at him. He would fly into a rage and throw one piece after another, so he was always running out of chalk. Then he would say he couldn’t give his lessons without chalk, so he’d smile and settle into an unstructured chat. His rambling talks were always far more instructive than any textbook.

But the heavenly perfection of Mr. Iwamatsu’s personality displayed itself in the most vivid fashion when the term-end examinations came. Each classroom where the exams were held was visited by a succession of teachers who administered the tests. Care was taken that the supervising teacher had nothing to do with the subject of the exam being given. But if it was Mr. Iwamatsu who walked in the door, a roaring cheer would fill the room. The reason was that Mr. Iwamatsu was unable to do something so formal as proctor an examination.

If a student showed distress over one of the exam questions, Mr. Iwamatsu would come and peer over his shoulder at the problem. Then the following events invariably transpired: Mr. Iwamatsu would say, “What’s the matter, can’t you do that? Listen, it goes like this,” becoming completely involved. Then he would say, “You still don’t understand? Blockhead!” At this he would go to the blackboard and write out the whole solution, saying, “Well, now you understand, don’t you?” Sure enough, after his careful explanation, even the worst idiot would have the answer. I am very poor at mathematics, but when Mr. Iwamatsu proctored the examination, I got a hundred percent.

At the end of one term I took a history examination with ten questions. There wasn’t much I could do to answer any of them. The proctor was of course not Mr. Iwamatsu, since he taught the subject, so I was ready to give up. But in the utmost desperation I decided to take a stab at one of then: “Give your impressions of the three sacred treasures of the Imperial Court.” I scribbled about three pages of nonsense, something along these lines: I’ve heard a great deal of talk about the Three Treasures, but I’ve never seen them with my own
eyes, so it isn’t really possible for me to write my impressions of them. Take for example the legendary yata-no-kagami sacred mirror—it is so holy that no one has ever been allowed to see it, so it may in reality be not round but square or triangular. I am only capable of talking about things I have looked at closely with my own eyes, and I believe only things for which there is proof.

The day came when Mr. Iwamatsu had finished grading the exam papers and returned them to the students. He announced in a loud voice, “There’s one paper here that’s very curious. It answers only one of the ten test questions, but this answer is most interesting. This is the first time I’ve ever come across such an original answer. The fellow who wrote this shows real promise. One hundred percent! Kurosawa!” He thrust the paper at me. All eyes turned on me at once. I turned bright red and shrank down in my chair, unable to move for a long moment.

In my day there were many such teachers who harbored a libertarian spirit and a wealth of individual qualities. By comparison with them, among today’s schoolteachers there are too many plain “salary-man” drudges. Or perhaps even more than salary men, there are too many bureaucrat types among those who become teachers. The kind of education these people dispense isn’t worth a damn. There’s absolutely nothing of interest in it. So it’s no wonder that students today prefer to spend their time reading comic books.

In primary school I had a wonderful teacher in Mr. Tachikawa. In middle school I had Mr. Ohara and Mr. Iwamatsu, who were also wonderful teachers. These teachers understood my individual qualities and encouraged me to develop them. I have been truly blessed with my teachers.

Later, when I entered the film world, I was fortunate enough to get an excellent teacher in “Yama-san” (director Yamamoto Kajirō, 1902–1973). I also received warm encouragement from director Itami Mansaku (1900–1946) and excellent training from the superb producer Morita Nobuyoshi. Besides these people there are many directors I revere as teachers: Shimazu Yasujirō (1897–1945), Yamanaka Sadao (1909–1938), Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujirō and Naruse Mikio. When I think about these people, I want to raise my voice in that old song: “… thanks for our teacher’s kindness, we have honored and revered.…” But none of them can hear me now.