Something Like an Autobiography (26 page)

Anyway, the censors put me through some horrible experiences. Because I resisted them, they all looked like enemies to me. But even though I had had two scripts in succession shelved by them, I went on and wrote another one. It was called
Tekichu odan sanbyakuri (Three Hundred Miles Through Enemy Lines)
. This was a big action-adventure story based on the novel by Yamanaka Hotaro, and it dealt with the Tatekawa reconnoitering party during the Russo-Japanese war just after the turn of this century. Tatekawa himself, who had been a second lieutenant at the time of his famous exploits nearly forty years before, had advanced to lieutenant general in the Pacific War, and was also ambassador to the Soviet Union. He was most enthusiastic about the idea of filming the story of his reconnoitering party, and I had calculated that with this kind of subject and support the censors in the Ministry of the Interior were not likely to complain.

Moreover, at that time around the city of Harbin in Manchuria there were a great many White Russians. Among these were a number of Cossacks, and they had preserved their military uniforms and flags from before the revolution very carefully. Everything needed for the filming was thus available, and I proposed the project to the company.

Morita Nobuyoshi was then head of the Toho planning division, and he was among the best film people I have ever met. But he looked over my script and groaned. “It’s good. It’s very good, but …” He trailed off. What he was trying to say was that the script was good and they certainly would want to film it, but that the scale of the picture was much too large to be given to a first-time director like me.

It was true that although there were no actual battle scenes in the script, the action is set in the battle camps of both sides as they pull back to a stand-off after the Battle of Mukden. And in the end I had to wave goodbye to this script as well. (It would be filmed much later, in 1957, by the director Kazuo Mori.)

Years afterward Morita recalled this incident as the greatest mistake of his life. “If only I had let you make that movie—but I felt bad about it even at the time. I really had no choice.” I saw his
point—under wartime conditions, when the film industry as a whole was so full of hardships, no one could consider giving a large-scale picture to a complete novice. My feelings were assuaged somewhat when, after the project had been shelved, Yama-san and Morita succeeded in getting it published in
Eiga hyoron
magazine.

One day around this time I saw an advertisement in a magazine called
Nihon eiga (Japanese Cinema)
in which the name Uekusa Keinosuke appeared. I learned from it that this magazine had published my old schoolmate’s script
Haha no chizu (A Mother’s Map)
. I went to a bookstore on the Ginza and bought the magazine. As I walked out the door, I ran straight into Uekusa, who was carrying in his pocket a copy of the
Eiga hyoron
with my script printed in it. I don’t remember what we did or what we talked about that day on the Ginza, but Uekusa came to join the screenwriters’ section of Toho, and finally we had the opportunity to work together.

AFTER MY
Three Hundred Miles
project was shelved, I gave up fighting to become a director. All I did was go on writing scripts in order to earn the money to drink, and I drank as if it were going out of style. The scripts I wrote were things like
Seishun no kiryu (Currents of Youth
, directed by Fushimizu Shu in 1942) and
Tsubasa no gaika (A Triumph of Wings
, directed by Yamamoto Satsuo in 1942). They were stories that the times required, about the aircraft industry and boy aviators. Their aim was to fan the flame of the national war spirit, and I did not undertake them out of any personal inclination. I just dashed them off in the suitable formulas.

In the midst of this I was reading the newspaper one day when an advertisement for a new book caught my eye. It was for a novel called
Sugata Sanshirō
, and for some reason my interest was terrifically aroused. The advertisement described the content only as the story of a rowdy young judo expert, but I just had a gut feeling that “This is it.” There was no logical explanation for my reaction, but I believed wholeheartedly in my instinct and did not doubt for an instant.

I rushed to see Morita and showed him the ad. “Please buy the
rights to this book. It will be a great movie,” I begged. Morita replied happily, “All right, let me read it, too.” But then I said, “It hasn’t come out yet. I haven’t even read it myself,” and Morita gave me a funny look. I hastily tried to reassure him, “It’ll be all right. I’m positive this book will make a good movie.” He laughed, “O.K. If you’re that sure about it, you’re probably right. But just because you tell me a book you haven’t read is sure to be good I can’t go rushing out and buy the rights. When it comes out, you read it right away and if it’s good come back. Then I’ll buy it for you.”

After that I haunted the bookstores in Shibuya. I checked morning, noon and night, three times a day every day, to see when the book would arrive. When it finally appeared, I leaped to buy it. This happened in the evening, and by the time I had returned home and read it it was 10:30 p.m. But I had been right. It was good, and it was exactly the kind of material I was looking for to film. I couldn’t wait until morning.

In the dead of night I set out for Morita’s house in Seijo. A very sleepy Morita came out when I banged on the door of the darkened house. I thrust the book at him and said, “It’s a sure thing. Please buy the rights.” “All right,” he promised, “I’ll see to it first thing in the morning,” and he had a look on his face that very clearly said, “There’s no stopping this fellow.”

The next day producer Tanaka Tomoyuki (now president of the Toho Eiga film production arm of Toho Ltd., and co-producer of my latest film,
Kagemusha)
was dispatched to visit the author of
Sugata Sanshirō
, Tomita Tsuneo. He requested the film rights for Toho, but came away without an answer.

Later I heard that the next day two of the other majors, Daiei and Shochiku, had also requested the rights. Both of them had promised to cast a big star in the role of the judo expert, Sugata Sanshirō. But, very fortunately for me, Mrs. Tomita had read about me in the film magazines, and told her husband she thought I showed promise.

So at least in a way I owe the start of my career as a director to the wife of the author of the novel
Sugata Sanshirō
. But in the course of my work as a film director, whenever my fate has hung in the balance, some kind of guardian angel has always appeared out of nowhere. I myself can’t help being surprised by this strange destiny. This fate nudged me into my first experience as a fledgling movie director.

I wrote the script for
Sugata Sanshirō
at one sitting. Then I took it to the naval air station on the coast of Chiba Prefecture, where Yama-san was shooting
Hawai-Marei oki Kaisen (The War at Sea from
Hawaii to Malaya)
. My purpose was, of course, to have him look at my script and give me his advice.

When I arrived at the base, I saw a massive aircraft carrier moored with its deck facing the ocean. Zero fighters were landing, taxiing and taking off from it in rapid succession, circling into the sky. The shooting of the film, in other words, betrayed all the tension of a real-life battle. All I could do was greet Yama-san, tell him the purpose of my visit in a word or two and get out of the way.

At the barracks where the camera crew were housed I waited for Yama-san to return. But a message came that he would be delayed because he had to have dinner with the admiral and the commissioned officers. My instructions were not to wait up. I waited until about
11:
00 p.m. and then gave up and crawled into bed. I fell asleep immediately.

In the middle of the night I woke up. When I turned over, I saw light coming through the cracks around the door of Yama-san’s room. I got up and very softly walked over and peeked in. I saw Yama-san seated on top of his bed with his back to the door. He was reading.

He was poring over the manuscript of my
Sugata Sanshirō
screenplay. He was going through it very carefully page by page, sometimes turning back the pages and rereading. In that concentrated silhouette there should have been some sign of the exhaustion of the day’s shooting and the evening’s drinking. Not a trace. The barracks occupants had all gone to sleep; there wasn’t a sound anywhere, except for the pages turning. I wanted to say, “You have to get up early in the morning—it’s all right, you don’t have to do this for me, please go to sleep.” But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to speak. His seriousness was intimidating. I sat down and waited with my back erect for him to finish reading. I will never forget that view of Yama-san’s back and the sound of those pages turning.

I was thirty-two years old. At last I had climbed to the base of the peak I had to scale, and I stood gazing up at my mountain.

THE SHOOTING
of
Sugata Sanshirō
began on location in Yokohama in 1942. My first step as a director, the first shot we set up, was Sanshirō and his teacher, Yano Shogoro, coming up a long flight of stone steps leading to a Shinto shrine. After the tests were done and we were ready to shoot, with the cameras rolling I gave the call for action, “Yoi, staato!” (“Ready, start!”) The whole crew turned to stare at me. Apparently my voice sounded a little peculiar. I had done plenty of second-unit directing for Yama-san, but, no matter how much experience you have, when you finally reach the point of directing your own first film you are in a state of extreme tension.

But from the second shot my tension disappeared; everything just felt exciting, and all I wanted to do was hurry on. The second shot showed what the judo expert and his teacher saw at the top of the steps: the back of a young girl praying in front of the worship hall of the shrine. She is the daughter of Murai Hanshiro, who will be Sanshirō’s adversary in the match sponsored by the police headquarters, and she is praying for her father’s victory. But Sanshirō and his teacher don’t know who she is, and they are so impressed by this girl’s fervent prayers that they try to avoid disturbing her and go around the back way to pray and leave.

Preparing for this second shot, the actress playing the daughter (Todoroki Yukiko) asked me, “Mr. Kurosawa, do I just pray for my father’s victory?” I replied, “Yes, that’s right, but while you’re at it, you might as well pray for the success of this picture, too.”

While on the Yokohama location, one morning I got up and went to the washroom. On my way I happened to glance at the entryway, and among the men’s shoes lined up there I saw a pair of high heels. They were quite flashy-looking, so I couldn’t believe they belonged to the script girl. Miss Todoroki was commuting to the set from home, so they couldn’t be hers. Yet, aside from the script girl, there were only men in the crew and cast staying at this inn. I found this strange.

I asked the innkeeper whose shoes they were. He looked at me with a pained expression, but I guess he decided he had been caught. “Mr. Fujita [Susumu, who was playing the Sanshirō role] went out
drinking last night in Yokohama and brought back a girl from a bar,” he said. “But I put her in a separate room.”

I had to admire the innkeeper’s way of putting it—it sounded more like a lawyer’s defense than a witness’s account. But I asked him to send Fujita to my room anyway. I went back and waited. Finally I heard the sound of the door sliding open, and I glanced around. Through the ever so slightly opened door, one of Fujita’s eyes was peering in at me to see what kind of mood I was in.

Later in the film there is a scene where Sanshirō goes out on the town and gets in trouble drinking and fighting. Afterward he is called in by his teacher, Yano Shogoro, for a scolding. I had Fujita do exactly what he had done with me. He complained that I was cruel to put him through two chastisements, but he had no one to blame but himself. And he was very good in that scene.