Something Like an Autobiography

by Akira Kurosawa

  The Family Tree

  DURING THE SUMMER holidays of my third year in middle school I was sent to stay with my relatives in Toyokawa Village. The household was that of my father’s older brother, but since he had already passed away, his oldest son was the master of the house.

  The house itself was what had formerly been the rice storehouse. The original house had been sold in grandfather’s time to the area’s wealthiest man. By my time not even the foundation cornerstone was left. But some shadow of the past could still be found in the garden.

  There was a lovely meandering stream there. Its course carried it through the center of the kitchen, and from there it continued on to rejoin the brook by the town’s main thoroughfare. They say that in the old days you could catch frogs in the stream, and that they even came into the basin that blocked the flow of the stream in the kitchen.

  The building that had once been the rice storehouse had ceiling rafters as big around as the pillars holding up a normal house. The central pillar of this house as well as the beams supporting the ridgepole were thick and sturdy, and the braces all gleamed with a dark glow.

  It had been my father’s idea to send me here. He decided that this was the place to cure my physical weakness with discipline. The daily schedule for my training was outlined in a letter from my father to the head of the house. My father’s instructions were to be carried out with extreme rigidity.

  For a city boy like me it was a cruel regime. I got up very early in the morning, and as soon as I had finished breakfast I was turned out of the house. I was given a layered lunchbox with two meals for each of two people in it. These meals consisted only of rice, miso bean paste and pickles. I was also given a cast-iron pot to carry. Outside I was met by a primary-school sixth-grader from another family of local relatives. This boy always carried a huge net for catching fish and a massive stick.

  The idea was that if we wanted to eat anything besides pickles and rice for our lunch and dinner, we had better catch ourselves some fish. The stick the sixth-grader carried was actually more of a log with a square board nailed to one end of it. You were supposed to stem the flow of the stream with it and chase the fish into the net. The boy who accompanied me was a big fellow who carried the stick like a piece of straw, but when I tried lifting it, I found it awfully heavy. Trying to block off a stream and a fish with it was hard work. But we wanted more than pickles and rice to eat, so we applied ourselves to using it, with modest success.

  The sixth-grader willingly manipulated the fishnet, but he absolutely refused to wield the stick. “No. Orders,” he said. The fact that my father’s instructions had penetrated even this boy’s brain caused me to marvel and shut my mouth.

  It was summer, so we usually ate our outdoor meals in a cool forest. First we’d find two Y-shaped branches and stick them into the ground. Then we’d lay a crosspiece on them, hang the pot on it and build a fire underneath. The pot was cast iron, but inside it were big clamshells with miso sauce for cooking the fish in kaiyaki style. The fish were mostly varieties of carp. We would add local herbs and vegetables that grew wild. We ate with chopsticks made from whittled branches, and our meals were indescribably delicious.

  I was about to write that these were the best meals I’ve ever tasted, but that would be a slight exaggeration. Nevertheless, I would be hard put to decide which meals were better, these or the cold riceballs I ate atop the peaks when I much later became a devotee of mountain climbing.

  We usually ate dinner on the riverbank. This meal, eaten amid the sunset colors of the sky and the glowing reflection from the river, had a different flavor although the ingredients were the same. When it was over, we made our way back home, reaching it in total darkness. As soon as I returned and had a bath, I was sleepy. I’d have a cup of tea by the sunken hearth and find myself unable to keep my eyes open, so I’d go straight to bed.

  With the exception of rainy days, my entire summer was spent in this kind of mountain samurai’s existence. Gradually I got better at catching fish, and the stick with the board on it lost its heaviness for me. Gradually also we came to penetrate deeper and deeper into the mountains, and our number increased to three, then four and five as other children tagged along with us.

  One day we came upon a waterfall. It emerged from what seemed to be a rock tunnel cut through the mountain wall, and it plunged some thirty feet into a pool. The pool was not a very big one, and the overflow continued on down the mountain. I asked the other children what it was like at the other end of the tunnel the waterfall came through. They all replied that no one knew because no one had ever been there. “Well, then I’ll go take a look,” I said. They all looked horrified and urged me to give up the idea—after all, no adult had ever been there, so it must be really dangerous, they insisted. At this resistance my stubbornness grew and I felt I absolutely had to go.

  I shrugged off all the frantic attempts to deter me and clambered up the cliff. I entered the hole from which the waterfall emerged, putting both hands firmly against the top and my feet astride either side of the stream below me. Shifting my weight from left to right with each step, I headed for the light at the end of the tunnel where the stream came in. Each time I moved one of my hands or feet, the smooth, wet moss on the rock walls threatened to make me slip. The sound of the water inside the tunnel made a deafening, echoing roar, but I wasn’t particularly frightened.

  But the moment I arrived at the other end I inadvertently relaxed my grip. In an instant I had fallen into the stream. I don’t know how I came back through the tunnel, but before I could gather my wits I was astride the top of the waterfall and plunging headlong over it into the pool below. I seem to have come through unharmed, because I surfaced and swam to the edge of the pool, where the terrified children all stared at me with their eyes as wide as saucers.

  It’s a good thing they didn’t ask me what it was like at the other end of the tunnel. I did make it that far, but I didn’t have time to look around.

  After that I did one more stupid thing that amazed the boys of Toyokawa Village. Not far away there is a good-sized river called the Tamagawa. At one point the current of the Tamagawa forms a big whirlpool. Whenever the village children went swimming, their good sense made them carefully avoid this spot. I once more displayed my bravado by insisting I would dive into the river precisely there. Naturally everyone turned pale and tried to stop me. So naturally I became all the more determined to show them.

  Finally the boys set a condition on allowing me to dive into the whirlpool. They would all tie their kimono sashes together and tie this sash rope around my waist. That way, if anything happened, they would have a hold on me and could pull me out of the water. But this rope of sashes nearly proved to be the death of me.

  I had taken lessons in the Kankairyŭ swimming style from the time I entered middle school. I had been made to swim under a huge cargo junk as part of these lessons. At that time exactly what the teacher had told me would happen occurred. When I reached the midpoint under the belly of the ship, I was suddenly sucked against its bottom boards. But, exactly as the teacher had told me, I did not panic. Instead, I turned over. My back had been pinned to the junk but now I pushed off with all four limbs and swam on.

  Since I had had this experience with the junk, a mere whirlpool seemed like nothing to me. But no sooner did I dive into the whirlpool than I was pinned to the bottom of the river. Recalling the junk, I repeated over and over to myself, “Don’t panic,” and I tried to crawl along the river bottom, away from the whirlpool. But the boys on the bank were pulling on the sash rope tied around my waist with all their might, so I couldn’t move at all. I did panic. But I still couldn’t move. I had no choice but to try crawling in the direction from which I was being pulled by the waist, against the current. After what seemed like hours of extreme pain and abject terror, I began to float toward the surface. I kicked my feet and shot out of the water. Once again the village boys were all standing there with pale faces and staring at me with ey
es as round as saucers.

  There was a reason I gave them such adventures. As I have explained already, it was only on rainy days in Toyokawa Village that I was not turned out of the house after breakfast with a two-meal lunchbox. My life-style was the exact expression of the phrase “working in fair weather and reading in wet.” When it rained, I’d read books or occasionally look at my homework but not really do much of it. On these days I had the use of the small room where the shelf for the Shinto gods was. One day while I was reading, the head of the household came and took from a drawer or bookshelf under the god shelf what he said was the Kurosawa genealogy chart.

  Looking at the family tree, I saw the name Abe Sadato (1015–1062), who died in that Battle of Zenkunen that no longer has a train station named after it. From his name there extended a number of lines, but the third one was Kurosawa Jirisaburō. From his name extends one Kurosawa after another. Apparently Abe Sadato’s third son—Kurosawa “Tail End Number Three Son,” to treat his name literally—was the progenitor of my family. It was the first time I had ever heard the name Kurosawa Jirisaburō, but Abe Sadato was a very familiar name. In the history books he is mentioned as a famous warrior of northern Japan. His father was the Genji warrior Yoritoki, and his younger brother, Abe Muneto. He defied the orders of the imperial court and went to war with Minamoto Yoriyoshi, where he met his end. The fact that he was a traitor and died in a losing battle was a little disappointing, but he was Kurosawa Jirisaburō’s father, and if I had to pick an ancestor to admire, it was Sadato who cut the best figure. And somehow I became courageous.

  The result of my newfound courage was climbing the waterfall tunnel, slipping and going over the falls and later diving into a whirlpool. Not very smart. But even though I pursued such foolishness, in the course of this one summer vacation this particular descendant of Abe Sadato became considerably more robust.

  My Aunt Togashi

  AS I FINISH my stories about Akita Prefecture, there is one person I must write about. This person is my father’s older sister, who married into the Togashi family in the town of Omagari in Akita. This Togashi household were descendants of the border captain Togashi, who has Benkei read the subscription list in the famous Kabuki play Kanjinchō, upon which I based my 1945 film The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail.

  The Togashi estate did not occupy a very big piece of land, but the house was an exceptionally large one and surrounded by a moat. Carved wooden sumo wrestlers supported the ridgepole, supposedly the work of the legendary early modern architect-sculptor Hidari Jingoro. Of course, any wood sculpture that looks like anything at all is attributed to Hidari Jingoro, so I can’t tell if these wrestlers were really his work or not. There is also supposed to be a short sword in the Togashi household that is the work of the master swordmaker of the thirteenth century, Okazaki Masamune, but I have not yet seen it. In any event, you could judge the social standing of the household by looking at the construction of the house. For me it was much more a case of sensing the social standing of the household by observing my aunt’s behavior.

  My Aunt Togashi had a truly awe-inspiring presence, a majesty powerful enough to wither those around her. But she was affectionate toward me, and I in turn had a special liking for her. When she came to visit my father in Tokyo, he behaved with extreme courtesy. And we would often have eel for dinner. This dish was terribly expensive at the time, so we hardly ever ate it. But my aunt always left half of her portion neatly untouched. Then, calling “Akira,” she gave it to me.

  Whenever she went visiting, I accompanied her. She was at that time already very advanced in age, and she wore her white hair cut short around a face that still showed teeth blackened in the traditional way for married women of the feudal era. She looked something like one of the magical little old men of the Noh drama. When we went out, she wore a kimono overcoat and put her hands inside her sleeves as she walked. I don’t mean she had her arms folded together inside her sleeves in some lazy or sneaky fashion, but rather that she grasped the ends of the sleeves with her hands from the inside, and she pulled the sleeves out straight to the side as she walked. So she looked something like a chicken or a heron spreading its wings to take off in flight. Passers-by would always stare at her in surprise. I felt a little embarrassed as I accompanied her, but it was a special kind of feeling.

  My aunt never talked while we walked along. But when we arrived at the house where she was going visiting, she would turn to me and hand me a fifty-sen piece wrapped in paper and say, “Saraba,” a northern dialect word for “goodbye.” At that time fifty sen was a huge amount of money for a child. But it wasn’t for the money that I enjoyed escorting my aunt. It was because that word “saraba” had a charm that sent shivers down my spine. In my aunt’s way of saying it there was a great store of implicit warmth and kindness.

  Aunt Togashi should have lived, judging by her general physical condition, to be about a hundred and ten years old. But a stupid doctor had a theory about extending her life span even longer by making her eat strange things like pine wood and tree roots. Because of this she died without even reaching the age of ninety.

  When she was on her deathbed, I went a little in advance of my father to be his representative in case she died before he got there. My aunt lay quietly as I sat near her pillow, and then she said to me, “Akira? Pain. Your father?” I explained that my father had been slightly detained and had sent me ahead, but that he was on his way. I left the room. But she called me back again and again to say, “Akira, has he come yet?” Finally my father arrived from Tokyo, and I was already on my way back. A few days later my aunt died.

  For my part, I cannot forgive that doctor who made her eat those strange things. I’d like to stuff his mouth with pine needles.

  The Sapling

  ORDINARILY, children are supposed to spend their childhood like saplings sheltered in a greenhouse. Even if on occasion some wind or rain of the real world slips in through the cracks, a child is not supposed to be weatherbeaten in earnest by the sleet and snow. I, too, spent such a sheltered childhood, and the only time I really experienced the wind of life was in the Great Kanto Earthquake. Events like the First World War and the Russian revolution and the transitions and upheavals in Japanese society during those years were things I only heard about, like the wind and rain outside my greenhouse. When I graduated from middle school, it was as if I had been planted outdoors for the first time. I began to feel the wind and rain of world events on my own skin.

  In 1925, when I was in my fourth year at middle school, the first radio broadcasts in Japan began. Even if I didn’t want to hear about what was going on in society, I could not avoid it. As I mentioned earlier, this was about the time that military education was instituted in the schools, and the world became somehow hurried and cold. As I look back on my early years now, it seems the summer I spent in Akita was the last carefree time of my childhood.

  But such observations may be pure sentimentality on my part. In my fourth and fifth years of middle school, when I was about sixteen, I was still fumbling around with a crystal radio set. On Sundays I would borrow my father’s pass (why he had this I don’t really know) and go to the Meguro racetrack, where I would spend the whole day looking at the horses I had loved from childhood. And my parents bought me a set of oil paints so I could go to the outskirts of Tokyo and paint the scenes of rural life I saw there. I had a pretty good time.

  During these years my family moved from Koishikawa to Meguro, and from there to Ebisu, near Shibuya. Still in Tokyo, of course. Each time we moved, it was to a smaller, less well-built house. I did not understand that this meant my family’s economic situation was getting worse and worse. I still insisted that upon my graduation from middle school I intended to become a painter.

  At that point I was forced to think about how I would actually make a living in my chosen profession. My father, who had always loved calligraphy, was not without sympathy for my goals—he did not oppose me. But, as any parent in those days
would have done, he said I would have to go to art school. As a lover of Cézanne and Van Gogh, I felt that such an academic approach would be a waste of time. Nor was I eager to take another entrance examination. Even though I felt that I had the ability to pass the practical painting test, I was rightly not confident of my command of academic course material. I took the entrance exam and failed.

  Although it was a bitter thing to have to disappoint my father, I was thus enabled to pursue my studies freely, and I was sure there would be some other way to console him. The year after I finished middle school, at the age of eighteen, I had a painting accepted for the prestigious national Nitten exhibition. My father was happy. But after that I set out on a winding path beset by wind and snow.

  The Labyrinth

  THE YEAR I turned eighteen, 1928, saw the mass arrest of Communist Party members in the “3–15 Incident” and the assassination of the Manchurian warlord Chang Tso-lin by Japanese Army officers. The following year brought the worldwide economic panic. As the winds of the Great Depression blew across a Japan shaken to the very foundations of her economy, proletarian movements sprang up everywhere, including the field of fine art. At the other extreme was an art movement that advocated escape from the painful realities of the hard times, something that was called, in a sort of pidgin, “eroguro nan-sensu” (“erotic-grotesque nonsense”).

  In the midst of all this social upheaval it was impossible for me to sit quietly in front of my canvas. On top of that, the cost of canvas and painting supplies was so high that, considering the financial situation of my family, I could hardly ask them to buy me a full supply. Unable to throw myself completely into painting, I explored literature, theater, music and film.