Something Like an Autobiography (7 page)

I USED TO
return home exhausted in the afternoon, tired out from all the walking and from having to prove myself to the teacher whom I hated. The way seemed three times as long as it had in the morning, and still longer because I had to look forward to a calligraphy lesson.

My father loved calligraphy, and frequently put hanging scrolls of calligraphy on display in the tokonoma alcove of our house. Only very rarely did he put up paintings. The scrolls he usually hung were either ink rubbings of inscribed stone monuments from China or characters written by his Chinese acquaintances.

I still recall a particular antique rubbing of a gravestone from Hanshan Temple. Here and there the characters had been broken or chiseled off the stone, and there were blank spaces in the middle of some sentences. My father would fill in the missing words, and in this way he taught me the poem “A Night Spent by the Maple Bridge” by the Chinese poet Chang Chi of the T’ang Dynasty.

Even now I can recite this poem off the top of my head, and I can write it with a brush just as easily. Some years ago I attended a gathering at a Japanese-style restaurant where this same poem by Chang
Chi, written in an overly graceful hand, was hanging as a scroll in the art alcove. Without really thinking about it, I quickly read it aloud. The actor Kayama Yŭzō overheard me, and staring in wonder said, “Master, your accomplishments amaze me.”

It’s no wonder that Kayama should have been impressed. Reading the script for
Sanjurō
aloud, he had a line that was to be “Wait behind the stable.” Mistaking “stable” for another character with the same radical, he read it, “Wait behind the outhouse.” Nevertheless I gave him a major role in this 1962 film and used him again later in
Red Beard
(1965). But now I must tell the truth, and the fact is that I could read that poem only because it was from Hanshan Temple. Presented with any other Chinese poem, I would have simply stammered. Of another Chinese poem in a hanging scroll my father liked, for example, I remember only the lines

For your sword, use the Full Moon Blue Dragon Blade
For your study, read the Tso Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals
.

This is of limited interest.

I have strayed from the subject again. The point is that I cannot understand how my father, who loved calligraphy so much, could have sent me to study with the kind of teacher he did. Perhaps it was because the teacher’s school was in our neighborhood, and because my brother had also gone there. When my father went to enroll me as a student, the teacher inquired after my brother and urged my father to send him back for more lessons. Apparently my brother had done extremely well there.

But I was unable to find anything interesting about the teacher’s calligraphy. He was indeed strict and forthright, but I found his writing without flavor or fragrance—just like printed characters in a book. I had my father’s orders, however, so I went to the school every day and, using the teacher’s calligraphy as a model, I practiced writing.

Both my father and the calligraphy teacher let their facial hair grow, as was fashionable in the Meiji era. But while my father had both a full beard and mustache in the manner of a Meiji elder statesman, the calligraphy teacher wore only a mustache, in the manner of a Meiji petty bureaucrat. He invariably sat behind a desk wearing a stern expression, as if challenging the students lined up behind their desks across from him.

Beyond him we could see the garden. Dominating the garden was a huge construction of shelves crowned by a row of bonsai miniature trees displaying the antique bends of their branches. As I looked at
them, I couldn’t help thinking how like them were these students at their desks. When a student felt he had done a good piece of writing, he would carry it up to the teacher with great trepidation. The teacher would look at it and take a brush with red ink to correct the strokes he did not like. This procedure would be repeated over and over again.

Finally, when the teacher approved the student’s writing sample, he would take out a seal I couldn’t read because it was carved in ancient seal script and stamp it in blue on the side of the student’s work. Everyone called this the Blue Seal, and when you got the Blue Seal, you could go home for the day. Since I wanted nothing except permission to leave quickly and go to Mr. Tachikawa’s house, I applied myself with fervor to copying the teacher’s calligraphy. But you can’t love what you don’t like.

About half a year later I asked my father if I could quit the calligraphy lessons. With my brother’s assistance, I succeeded in getting permission to stop. I don’t remember my brother’s exact words, but he had a very logical understanding of the vague dissatisfaction I felt with the teacher’s writing. He came to the conclusion that it was perfectly natural I should feel as I did. I remember I sat in amazement and listened to him as if he were talking about someone else.

When I left the calligraphy school, I was still at the stage of writing four-character poems on large sheets of paper in block-style script. To this day I’m very good at that kind of calligraphy. But if I have to write anything smaller than that or write characters in cursive script, it’s no good at all.

In later years I was told by an older colleague in the movie world that “Kuro-san’s writing isn’t writing, it’s pictures.”

WHEN I DECIDED
to write this thing resembling an autobiography, I got together with Uekusa Keinosuke to talk about the past. On that occasion he told me about how, on the hilly street where Kuroda Primary School was situated, called Hattorizaka, I once told him: “You are Murasaki Shikibu and I am Sei Shōnagon.” I have no recollection whatever of having said this.

In the first place, it’s not possible that we—in primary school—could have been reading Murasaki’s
Tale of Genji
or Sei Shōnagon’s
Pillow Book
, both written around the middle of the Heian period (794–1185). But now that I think about it carefully, Mr. Tachikawa had told us a great deal about these classics of early Japanese literature during our visits, which took place after my calligraphy lessons. Uekusa was generally there, waiting for me, and we spent many pleasant hours with our former teacher. So I think this exchange between Uekusa and me could have occurred as we walked home together down the hill between Denzu-in and the Edogawa River.

Even so, the idea of comparing ourselves to Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon was outrageously conceited. Yet I have some inkling of why this childish utterance might have taken place: At that time Uekusa’s compositions were long narratives, while mine were always very short descriptions of impressions.

In any event, when it comes to friends from that time of my life, Uekusa and I were together so much that he is the only one I remember anything about. But our home lives were entirely different: His was a townsman’s household, while mine had a samurai atmosphere. So when we sit back and talk over old times, the things he remembers well have a completely different character from those I recall.

For example, Uekusa retains a very vivid impression of the time he caught a glimpse of his mother’s white calves above the hem of her kimono. He also remembers that the prettiest girl in school was the girls’ group leader of our class, that she lived in the Ōtaki area on the Edogawa River; he remembers her name and tells me, “You seemed to be interested in her, Kuro-chan.” I have no recollection at all of these kinds of things.

What I remember has to do with getting better at kendō and becoming a sub-captain in my third term of the fifth grade at primary school. And how as a reward my father brought me a suit of black kendō armor. And I remember that in a fencing match I beat five opponents in succession with a reverse body twist. I remember that the captain of the opposing team was the son of a fabric dyer and when we were in close combat he gave off a terrific odor of dark-blue dye. For some reason, all of my recollections betray this martial spirit.

Among them there is one incident that remains the most memorable. It was when I was ambushed by students from another primary school. As I was on my way home from the Ochiai fencing school, I came to a fish shop near Edogawabashi bridge. In front of it was a gathering of seven or eight slightly older children whose faces I
did not recognize. They carried bamboo swords, bamboo poles and sticks.

Children have their territories staked out, too. Since this was not Kuroda Primary School territory and these children were looking at me in a strange way, I stopped. But since I had taken on the airs of a boy swordsman, I could not allow myself to show any fear in a situation like this. I put on a blasé expression and walked on past the fish shop, and since nothing happened even when I had my back to them, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Immediately afterward I felt something whizzing dangerously near my head. Just as I moved my hand to touch my head, I was hit. Swinging around, I saw a hail of rocks coming at me. The group of children remained silent, but all of them were heaving stones in my direction. It was their silence that terrified me.

My first impulse was to run, but I felt that if I did, my poor bamboo sword would shed tears of humiliation. With this in mind, I took the bamboo sword I was carrying and brought it round to aim at their eyes. But since my kendō outfit was dangling from the end of my sword, the move didn’t achieve quite the effect it was supposed to.

The children, however, interpreted my move as a threat, and, shouting something to one another, they all came at me flailing their weapons. I, too, flailed my sword with all my might. My kendō outfit went flying off the end of it, and my sword became light. And once they raised their voices, my adversaries ceased to be so frightening as they had been when silent.

Grasping my lightened sword and yelling “O-men!” “(To the face!”) or “Kote!” (“Gauntlets!”) or “Do” (“To the torso!”) and such things as I had learned in my kendō lessons, I went at them with the bamboo blade. For some reason, they didn’t surround me, but all seven or eight bunched up together and faced me. They came forward wildly brandishing their weapons, so there was no backing down. These myriad flying arms were imposing, but by merely jumping to one side or the other it was easy for me to gain the advantage. I remembered that in such a situation it was dangerous to close in too soon, so I avoided that, and the result was that I had plenty of leeway.

Finally they fled into the fish shop. The proprietor, wielding one of the long shoulder poles used to support loads at each end, came running out from the interior. At that point I picked up the high wooden clogs I had kicked off when it had become a great swordfight, and fled.

I clearly remember escaping into a narrow alleyway that had
sewage running down the middle of it. I ran zigzag, jumping from side to side to avoid the foul-smelling water. It wasn’t until I came out of the other end of this alley that I stopped to put on my clogs. I have no idea what happened to my kendō outfit. It probably became the war spoils of my adversaries.

My mother was the only person I told about this incident. I really didn’t want to tell anyone at all, but since I had lost my kendō outfit, I had to talk to her. When my mother heard my story, she said nothing, but went to the closet and brought out the kendō outfit my brother was no longer using. Then she washed the gash on my head where the rock had hit me and put soft ointment on the wound. I had no other injuries. But to this day a scar remains from the stone.

(As I have been writing about my bundled up kendō outfit and my high wooden clogs, I have had a sudden realization. Without knowing it at the time, it was these objects from my past that I employed in my first film,
Sugata Sanshirō
[1943] as visual devices showing Sanshirō’s new dedication to a life of judo. Perhaps it is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.)

As a consequence of this incident, my route to and from the Ochiai fencing school underwent a slight alteration. I did not pass by that fish shop a second time. But this was not because I was afraid of those urchins. I simply didn’t feel like running into that fish-shop proprietor’s carrying pole again.