Something Like an Autobiography

by Akira Kurosawa

  (I still can’t understand why he failed that entrance examination. He had never had any difficulty with exam questions before, and after this test he seemed to be full of his usual confidence. There are only two explanations I can think of: One is that, in the final selection process, preference was given to the children of alumni; the other is that in the oral-interview part of the examination my conceited and individualistic brother responded in a way that could not be measured by their testing standards.)

  Oddly enough, I have no recollection of my brother’s mood or behavior at this time. Probably he assumed his usual detached air, but I’m sure this incident was a terrible shock for him too, underneath it all. The evidence for my suspicions lies in the fact that immediately afterward, his personality changed suddenly and dramatically.

  At my father’s suggestion, he entered the Seijo Middle School in Wakamatsu-cho, Tokyo. This school was very much like a military academy, and I believe my brother reacted against the regimentation. In any case, he now seemed to be willing to throw his academic career to the winds, for he developed a passionate addiction to literature. Confrontations between my brother and my father became frequent.

  My father had been in the first graduating class of the Imperial Army’s Toyama Academy and had subsequently become a teacher. He was so remarkable a teacher that some of his students had advanced to the rank of general; and his educational principles were terribly spartan. It was inevitable that he would come into direct conflict with my brother, who was becoming infatuated with ideas gleaned from foreign literature.

  Unable to understand such a rift between father and son, all I could do was look on sadly. But just as this desolating wind overtook my home, yet another cold gust of change began to blow.

  My oldest sister’s child is the same age as I am, which means that when I was born, this sister had already left home to be married. My oldest brother is also much older than I, so by the time I was becoming a mentally and physically aware human being, he had long since left home and I saw him only very rarely. My second oldest brother died of illness as a child before I was born. So the siblings I actually grew up with consisted of the older brother I have been writing about and three of my older sisters. I was the youngest member of the family.

  All of my sisters have the character meaning “generation” or “representative,” pronounced “yo,” at the end of their names. Beginning with the oldest who had already left home, they are Shigeyo, Haruyo, Taneyo and Momoyo. But I always addressed my sisters at home according to their ages, so for me these three were “Big Sister,” “Middle Big Sister” and “Little Big Sister.” As I mentioned earlier, my brother would have nothing to do with me, so I always played with my sisters. (I’m still good at playing patty-cake and cat’s cradle. When I demonstrate these skills to my current acquaintances or motion-picture crew, I invariably draw a surprised reaction. I’m sure they will be much more surprised to read about my “Konbeto-san” period.)

  The sister I spent the most time with was “Little Big Sister.” I remember very clearly one time when we were playing at the school where my father taught in the Ōmori district. We were in a funnel-shaped corner and suddenly a twirling gust of wind lifted the two of us, clutching at each other, into space. We floated in the air a moment and the next second crashed to the ground. I cried all the way home, grasping her hand tightly in mine as we ran.

  When I was in the fourth grade, this dear sister of mine became ill. Quite suddenly, as if touched by a swift, evil wind, she died. I can never forget the forlorn smile on her face when we went to visit her in the Juntendo Hospital.

  Nor can I forget playing with her at the time of the Doll Festival on March 3. In my family we had an heirloom set of festival dolls representing the Emperor and Empress. We also had the three court ladies, five court musicians, an Urashima Taro (a kind of underwater Rip Van Winkle who took a ride on a tortoise and came home an old man) and a court lady with a Pekinese dog on a leash. There were two pairs of gold folding screens, two lanterns and five little gold lacquer trays complete with the tiny dishes and utensils for ceremonial meals. There was even a silver brazier small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

  With the lights turned out, soft gleams from the lantern candles in the darkened room fell on the dolls arranged on their five-tier stand of scarlet wool felt. In the eerie glow they seemed so lifelike as to start speaking at any moment, and this exquisite beauty was just a little bit frightening to me. Little Big Sister would call me over to sit before the doll display, put one of the trays in front of me and proffer the brazier. She would treat me to a fraction of a thimbleful of sweet white saké in one of the tiny doll-sized cups.

  Little Big Sister was the prettiest of my three sisters who lived at home, and she was almost too gentle and kind. Her beauty was something of a glass-like transparency, delicate and fragile, offering no resistance. When my brother fell off the balance beams and injured his head at school, it was this sister who sobbed and said she wanted to die in his place. Even as I write about her now, my eyes burn with tears and I keep having to blow my nose.

  The day her funeral was held, the whole family and all our relatives gathered at the main hall of the Buddhist temple to listen to the priests recite sutras. When the recitation became quite noisy, as they all chimed in with the wooden drum and the gong sounding, I suddenly broke into peals of laughter. Much as my father, mother and sisters glared at me, I couldn’t stop laughing. My brother led me outside, still laughing. I was prepared for a terrific scolding. But my brother did not seem in the least angry. Nor did he leave me out in front and return to the ceremony in the main hall as I expected him to do. Instead, he turned and looked back toward the loud proceedings and said, “Akira, let’s get farther away.” He set out briskly across the paving stones toward the temple gate.

  As he forged ahead, he spat out the word “Idiotic!” and I was happy. The reason I had started laughing was that I felt the same way. To me, the whole thing was absurdly funny. When I heard my brother’s opinion, I felt relieved. I wondered if my sister would be at all consoled by that ceremony in the main hall. She died at the age of sixteen. For some strange reason, I remember the Buddhist name she received after death in its entirety: To Rin Tei Kō Shin Nyo. (“Peach Forest Righteous Sunbeam Sincerity Woman”).

  Kendō

  IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS of the Taishō era, kendō swordsmanship was added to the regular curriculum beginning in the fifth grade. It was a two-hour-a-week class, beginning with instruction in wielding bamboo swords. Then we learned how to parry and thrust, and finally we put on the old, sweaty fencing outfits that had been in the school for generations and embarked on real contests—best two out of three.

  Usually the fencing instruction was given by one of the regular teachers who was especially well versed in kendō. But sometimes a fencing master who ran his own school would appear with an assistant to polish and correct what had been taught. They would pick out the most promising students to be given lessons, and occasionally the master and his assistant would use real swords and demonstrate the basic techniques of their school’s style.

  The fencing master who came to Kuroda Primary School was named Ochiai Magosaburo. (Or it may have been Matasaburō. In any case, it was a typically swordsman-like name that I can’t remember correctly now.) He was an imposing and exceptionally strong man, and when he demonstrated his swordplay style with his assistant, his power was awesome. The students gathered to watch all held their breath.

  I was one of those singled out as meriting closer attention by the master. He offered me a personal lesson, and I suddenly became enthusiastic. I squared off with him, raised my bamboo sword over my head and shouted “O-men!” (“To the face!” or “En garde!”). But as I charged toward him, I felt a sensation of lifting off the ground, my feet kicking in the air, while a deft movement of Ochiai Magosaburo’s muscular arm grasped me at his shoulder height. I had been taken completely by surprise. My respect for this swordsman naturally
rose beyond measure.

  I went straight to my father and begged him to enter me in Ochiai’s fencing school. He was overjoyed. I don’t know if my interest had occasioned a resurgence of the samurai blood in my father’s veins or the reawakening of his military-academy teacher’s spirit, but, whichever it was, the effect was remarkable.

  This happened at about the time that my brother, for whom my father had cherished great expectations, began to go astray. My father had spoiled me up until this time, but now he seemed to transfer his hopes from my brother to me and began to treat me with great attention and strictness.

  My father was more than agreeable to my devoting myself to kendō, and insisted that I take calligraphy lessons as well. Moreover, I was instructed to be sure to pay my respects at the Hachiman shrine on my way back from my morning kendō lesson at the Ochiai school, in order to develop the proper spirit. The Ochiai school was far away. From my house to Kuroda Primary School was far enough to fatigue a child’s legs, but to the Ochiai school was more than five times as far.

  Fortunately, the particular Hachiman shrine my father ordered me to visit every morning was next to Kuroda Primary School and more or less on the route from the fencing school. But, following my father’s orders, I had to go to the Ochiai school in the morning, visit the Hachiman shrine on my way back from the fencing lesson, return home to eat breakfast and then go off to Kuroda Primary School. After school, I had to go to the calligraphy teacher’s house, which luckily happened to be on the way from school to my house. And then I was to go to Mr. Tachikawa’s home.

  The latter trip was my own choice. Mr. Tachikawa had left Kuroda Primary School, but Uekusa and I continued to visit him at his home. We passed many a fulfilling day in the atmosphere of free education and respect for individuality he created, and the warm hospitality his wife provided. No matter what my other duties, I was unable to forgo these precious hours.

  In order to carry out this daily program, I had to leave home before dawn in the morning, returning after sunset at night. It occurred to me to try to evade the shrine visits, but my father prevented that. Telling me it would provide a record of my piety, he gave me a little diary in which I was to receive the imprint of the shrine seal every morning.

  There was no way out. My innocent request for kendō lessons had brought me a load of unexpected tasks. But I had asked for it, so there was nothing I could do. My father accompanied me to the Ochiai fencing school when I applied for admission, and, beginning the very next morning, I followed this rigorous daily schedule for several years, until I graduated from Kuroda Primary School. The only surcease came on Sundays and during summer vacation.

  My father did not permit me to wear tabi socks with my wooden clogs, even in winter. So in the cold season my feet were pitifully chapped and frostbitten. It was my mother who attempted to rescue me with hot foot baths and medication.

  My mother was a typical woman of the Meiji era, Japan’s age of swift modernization, during which women were still expected to make extreme sacrifices so that their fathers, husbands, brothers or sons could advance. Beyond that, she was the wife of a military man. (Years later when I read the historical novelist Yamamoto Shugoro’s Nihon fudoki [An Account of the Duties of Japanese Women], I recognized my mother in these impossibly heroic creatures, and I was deeply moved.) In such a way as to escape my father’s notice, she would listen to all my complaints. Writing about her like this makes it sound as if I am trying to set her up as a model for some moral tale. But that is not the case. She simply had such a gentle soul that she did these things naturally.

  In the first place, I believe that things were the opposite of what they appeared on the surface. My father was actually the sentimentalist, and my mother the realist. During the war years, when I visited my parents in Akita Prefecture, to which they had been evacuated, I had to part with them under conditions that meant we might never meet again. I was on a lonely road that stretched off into the distance from the front gate of the house. I kept looking back over my shoulder at my parents standing there to see me off. It was my mother who immediately turned and hurried back into the house. My father kept standing there perfectly still, looking in my direction, until he appeared as small as a bean.

  During the war there was a popular song called “Father, You Were Strong” (“Chichi yo, anata wa tsuyokatta”), but I want to say “Mother, You Were Strong.” My mother’s strength lay particularly in her endurance. I remember an amazing example. It happened when she was deep-frying tempura in the kitchen one day. The oil in the pot caught fire. Before it could ignite anything else, she proceeded to pick up the pot with both hands—while her eyebrows and eyelashes were singed to crinkled wisps—walk calmly across the tatami-mat room, properly put on her clogs at the garden door and carry the flaming pot out to the center of the garden to set it down.

  Afterward the doctor arrived, used pincers to peel away the blackened skin and applied medication to her charred hands. I could hardly bear to watch. But my mother’s facial expression never betrayed the slightest tremor. Nearly a month passed before she was able to grasp something in her bandaged hands. Holding them in front of her chest, she never uttered a word about pain; she just sat quietly. No matter how I might try, I could never do the same.

  I seem to have strayed off the subject; let me return briefly to the Ochiai fencing school, kendō and myself. From the time I began my daily attendance at the Ochiai school, I assumed all the affectations of a boy fencer. I was a child, so this was predictable behavior. After all, I had read about all the great swordsmen from Tsukahara Bokuden (1489–1571) to Araki Mataemon (1599–1637) in books from Mr. Tachikawa’s library.

  My apparel at the time was the Kuroda Primary School outfit, rather than that of the Morimura Gakuen, as suited a prospective samurai swordsman: a splash-pattern kimono over duck-cloth hakama trousers, heavy wooden clogs. To get a better picture, try imagining Fujita Susumu in the role of Sugata Sanshirō in my first film. Then shrink him to one third as tall and half as wide and have him carrying a bamboo sword in the sash tied around his kendō outfit. That will give you the idea.

  Every morning while the eastern sky was still dark, I set out by the light of the streetlamps on the street that followed the Edogawa River, my wooden clogs scraping along the road. I passed Kozakurabashi bridge, Ishikiribashi bridge, and after crossing Ishikiribashi to the street with the trolley tracks, just about the time I reached Hattoribashi bridge I would pass the first trolley of the day going in the opposite direction. I crossed the Edogawabashi bridge. My journey to this point took about thirty minutes.

  From there I walked another fifteen minutes or so in the direction of Otowa, turned left and slowly climbed the hill toward Mejiro. In about another twenty minutes I could hear the drum announcing the start of morning lessons at the Ochiai fencing school. Forcing myself to hurry, in another fifteen minutes I arrived at the school. From the time I left home, walking without taking so much as a glance aside, it took an hour and twenty minutes.

  Lessons at the Ochiai school began with meditation. All of the disciples of Ochiai Magoemon (what was his name?) gathered together and sat down on the floor in formal position, facing the shelf for the Shinto deities, which was lit by votive candles. We began by concentrating our strength in the pits of our stomachs and banishing all worldly thoughts.

  The room in which we sat had a hard, cold board floor. In order to withstand the winter temperatures, especially when dressed in nothing more than a single layer of fencing costume, you had to concentrate all your strength in your stomach. It was cold enough to make your teeth chatter, so there was hardly any leftover space for an idle worldly thought to pop into your head. In winter all we thought about was getting warm as quickly as possible, but in good weather it took a tremendous concentration of energy to banish those mental obstructions. At the end of the sitting, the parrying-and-thrusting practice began.

  We separated according to the rank of our skills and spent thirty minutes in prearr
anged combat. Then we took formal sitting position again to give thanks to the fencing master, and the morning lesson was over. On cold winter days, by this time our bodies would be giving off steam. But after leaving the fencing school and setting off toward the shrine, my footsteps became heavy.

  With my stomach empty and breakfast the only thing on my mind, I would push on to the shrine so as to get home faster. On clear days it was about this time that the first rays of sunshine would strike the top of the gingko tree in the shrine compound. Standing in front of the worship hall, I would ring the “alligator mouth” gong (a hollow metal bell of a wide, flattish shape rung by shaking the clapper-studded braided cloth rope with which it is hung high above the collection box on the exterior of the main shrine building). After clapping my hands in prayer, I would go to the priest’s house in one corner of the compound and stand in the entry way, shouting out, “Good morning!” The priest, his kimono, his hakama and his face all white, would come out. Without saying a word, he would take the little diary I held out in front of him and next to the date he would stamp it with the shrine seal. Whenever I saw him, his cheeks were puffed up and his jaws were working, so I guess I always caught him eating his breakfast.

  Then I descended the shrine’s stone steps and, passing in front of the Kuroda Primary School, to which I had to return immediately, I headed for home and my own breakfast. From the foot of Ishikiribashi bridge, as I approached my house along the Edogawa River, the morning sun at last came up and shone full in my face. Every time the sun shone on me in the morning, I couldn’t help thinking that from that moment on my day would begin to be like that of an ordinary child. But it wasn’t out of discontent that this feeling came to me; it was a sense of self-sufficiency and satisfaction.