Something Like an Autobiography (8 page)

I am sure I must have told Uekusa about this incident at some point, but he now remembers nothing of it. When I accused him of being an old lecher who could only remember things having to do with women, he vehemently denied it. The fact is that this pretty boy you could knock over with one punch was a real problem when it came to knowing his own limits. When we were in the sixth grade, there was a battle with some students from another primary school on Kuseyama mountain. The enemy had their encampment on top of a hill, and they came at us with a shower of stones and dirt clods. Our allies were skirting this by keeping to the hollow created by the bluff as they climbed. Just as I was contemplating sending some men around behind the enemy, Uekusa suddenly shouted out something and ran up the hill, the picture of recklessness.

What can you do when your weakest man takes it upon himself to charge the enemy alone? On top of that, this was a cliff that took more than the usual fortitude for anyone to climb. Covered with wet red clay, it was so steep and slimy that you slipped back two steps for every one you gained. Undaunted, Uekusa rushed forward into the
enemy’s range of dirt-clod and rock fire. He was immediately hit in the head by a large stone and fell back down the bluff.

When I rushed over to help, he lay stretched out on the ground, his mouth agape and his eyes fixed on some remote corner of the sky. I would have liked to call him a fearless hero, but in all honesty I can only say he was a lot of trouble. When I turned and looked up, I saw all of the enemy lined up on top of the cliff looking down with terror-stricken faces. I was left standing there staring at Uekusa’s prostrate form and wondering how in the world I would get him home.

I must tell one more story about Uekusa and Kuseyama mountain. One evening Uekusa was standing alone atop Kuseyama. He was sixteen, he had written a love letter to a certain girl student and he was waiting for her. He had climbed up Kuseyama and looked out over the Emma-do, the temple dedicated to the king of hell, watching the steep street for some sign of her.

But the girl did not appear at the appointed hour. He decided to wait another ten minutes. Having done so, he was just thinking about waiting yet another ten minutes when he turned and saw a figure in the darkness. “Ah, she has come,” he thought, and his heart leaped. He started toward the figure and then noticed that it had a beard.

At that point, according to Uekusa, “I did not lose my courage. I did not run away, but approached the man.” The man asked him, “Did you write this?” He was holding Uekusa’s love letter up in front of him. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “I am this girl’s father,” and handed Uekusa his name card. The first thing Uekusa saw on it was “Police Headquarters, Building and Repair Section.”

Uekusa says that then, because he was courageous, he resolutely faced the man and undertook to describe his feelings for the daughter and how pure they were, drawing—amazingly—a comparison to the poet Dante’s love for Beatrice to illustrate his point, patiently and elaborately explaining to the girl’s father. “And then what?” I asked. “Her father at last understood my feeling,” claims Uekusa. “And what happened with the girl after that?” I queried. “Never saw her again, but we were just kids anyway.” I think I understand and yet I don’t.

AT THE BEGINNING
of the Taishō era, 1912 and the years following, a fragrance of the preceding Meiji era lingered on. It was evident even in the songs we sang in primary school, all of which were invigorating tunes. The two I still like best today are “The Battle of the Japan Sea” and “The Naval Barracks.” Their lyrics are open-hearted, their melodies simple, and they describe their events with surprising directness and precise fidelity—no unnecessary sentiments are tacked on. In later years I told my assistant directors that this was exactly what movie continuity (the shooting script) should be like. I encouraged them to use these songs as models and learn from their descriptions. I am still convinced this is a good method.

I believe that the people of the Meiji era were like those described by contemporary novelist Shiba Ryotaro in his
Saka no ue no kumo
(
Clouds over the Hill
). They lived their lives as if their sights were set on the clouds beyond the hill they were climbing.

One day when I was in primary school my father took me and my sisters to the Toyama Army Academy. We sat in a bowl-shaped amphitheater that had grass-covered step benches. In the round clearing at the bottom a military band gave a concert.

As I look back on it now, it seems a very Meiji-era scene. The band members wore red trousers; the brass instruments glittered in the sunlight; the azaleas were in brilliant bloom around the garden; the ladies sported bright-colored parasols; and your feet couldn’t help tapping along with the melody the woodwinds played. Perhaps because I was just a child, I didn’t perceive the slightest specter of our dark militarism.

By the end of the Taishō era, in 1926, popular songs had become gloomy, full of glorification of despair. Some of them were “I Am But a Withered Pampas Grass in the Riverbed,” “Floating Downstream” and “When Evening Darkness Closes In.”

The sounds I used to listen to as a boy are completely different from those of today. First of all, there was no such thing as electric
sound in those days. Even phonographs were not electric phonographs. Everything was natural sounds. Among these natural sounds were many that are lost forever. I will try to recall some of them.

The resounding “boom” of midday. This was the sound of the cannon at the Kudan Ushi-ga-fuchi army barracks, which fired a blank each day precisely at noon.

The fire-alarm bell. The sound of the fire-watchman’s wooden clappers. The sound of his voice and the drumbeats when he informed the neighborhood of the location of a fire.

The tōfu seller’s bugle. The whistle of the tobacco-pipe repairman. The sound of the lock on the hard-candy vendor’s chest of drawers. The tinkle of the wind-chime seller’s wares. The drumbeats of the man who repaired the thongs of wooden clogs. The bells of itinerant monks chanting sutras. The candy seller’s drum. The fire-truck bell. The big drum for the lion dance. The monkey trainer’s drum. The drum for temple services. The freshwater-clam vendor. The natto fermented-bean seller. The hot-red-pepper vendor. The goldfish vendor. The man who sold bamboo clothesline poles. The seedling vendor. The nighttime noodle vendor. The oden (dumplings-and-broth) vendor. The baked-sweet-potato vendor. The scissors grinder. The tinker. The morning-glory seller. The fishmonger. The sardine vendor. The boiled-bean seller. The insect vendor: “Magotaro bugs!” The humming of kite strings. The click of battledore and shuttlecock. Songs you sing while bouncing a ball. Children’s songs.

These lost sounds are all impossible to separate from my boyhood memories. And all are related to the seasons. They are cold, warm, hot or cool sounds. And they are allied with many different kinds of feelings. Happy sounds, lonely sounds, sad sounds and fearful sounds. I hate fires, so the sound of the fire alarm and the fire-watchman’s voice and drum shouting out the location of the fire were sounds that struck me with terror. “Bong, bong! Fire in Kanda district, Jinbōchō’.” At such noises I burrowed down under the covers and tried to make myself small.

During my “Konbeto-san” period I was awakened once in the middle of the night by my sister. “Akira, there is a fire. Hurry and get dressed.” Scurrying to pull on my kimono, I ran out to the entry, where I saw the house directly across from our gate in a mass of bright red flames. After that, I remember nothing.

When I became aware of my surroundings again, I found myself walking alone on Kagurazaka hill. I rushed home and found the fire had been put out, but the policeman guarding the emergency demarcation lines for the fire area wouldn’t let me through. When I
pointed to the other side and said, “My house is over there,” he looked at me in surprise and let me pass.

As soon as I came into the house, my father’s wrath descended on me like thunder. Since I did not understand what had happened, we asked my sister. Apparently I had run away as soon as I saw the fire. In spite of her cries of “Akira! Akira!” I opened the front gate and escaped into the night.

Apropos of fires I remember something else: the horse-drawn fire wagons of those days. They were pulled by beautiful horses, and they were very elegant affairs with things that looked like pure brass sakéwarming bottles on top. I hate fires, but I had long wished to see these fire wagons just once more. My chance came years later on an open set at the 20th Century-Fox studios. It was a scene representing old New York City, and the fire wagon was pulled up in front of a church where masses of purple lilacs were in bloom.

But let me return to the sounds of Taishō. All of them carry memories for me. When I saw the child of the freshwater-clam vendor, who raised a pitiful wail to sell his goods, I felt fortunate in my own lot in life. Noon on a stifling summer’s day when the hot-red-pepper vendor passed by, I remember holding a bamboo rod for catching cicadas and studying the insects’ movement in the oak tree overhead. At the sound of a humming kite string I see myself standing on Nakanohashi bridge clutching the string under a windy winter sky almost strong enough to take it away from me.

If I were to continue enumerating the somewhat sad childhood recollections that arise from sound stimuli, there would be no end to it. But as I sit here and write about these childhood sounds, the noises that assail my ears are the television, the heater and the sound truck offering toilet paper in exchange for old newspapers; all are electrical sounds. Children of today probably won’t be able to fashion very rich memories from these sounds. Perhaps they are more to be pitied than even that freshwater-clam seller’s child.

AS I HAVE
mentioned previously, my father’s attitude was one of extreme severity. My mother, who came from an Osaka merchant family and was thus less sensitive to finer points of samurai etiquette, received frequent scoldings about the fish set out on the individual meal trays. “Idiot! Are you trying to make me commit suicide?” Apparently there was a special procedure for serving the meal that precedes a ritual suicide. It seems it extended to the position of the fish on the plate. My father had worn his hair in a samurai topknot as a child, and even at the time these scoldings occurred he would frequently take a formal sitting position with his back to the art alcove and hold his sword straight up to polish the blade with abrasive powder. So it’s probably quite natural that he should have been angry, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for my mother and thinking it could hardly matter that much which way the fishhead pointed. Yet my mother continued to make the same mistake over and over again. And every time the fish on his tray was pointed the wrong way, my father scolded her. As I think about it now, it could have been that my father’s fault-finding was so frequent an occurrence that she became deaf to it, as the saying goes, “like a horse’s ears in an east wind.”

I’m still not sure how a meal tray is supposed to be presented to someone about to commit suicide; I have yet to put a scene of ritual suicide in one of my films. But when you are served a fish on a meal tray, usually its head points to the left and its belly is toward you to make it easy to reach. If you are going to commit suicide, I gather that it is served with its head pointing to the right and its belly away from you, because it would be insensitive to place a cut fish belly directly facing someone who is about to cut open his own abdomen. This is my assumption, but it is no more than an assumption.

And yet I can’t imagine that my mother would do something no Japanese would ever think of, like serving a fish in such a way as to make it difficult to reach, with its belly away from the person about to eat it. So she must have mistaken only the part about pointing the head to the left or right. And this alone made my father angry with her.

I, too, received my share of scoldings on the subject of mealtime etiquette. If I held my chopsticks the wrong way, my father would take his chopsticks by the points and rap me on the knuckles with the heavy ends. My father was very strict about these things, and yet, as I mentioned earlier, he frequently took us to the movies.