Around that time there was a boom in the printing of “yen books,” so-called because each cost one yen, and the market was flooded with collections of both Japanese literature and translations of foreign works. If you went to secondhand bookstores, you could find these books remaindered for fifty sen, sometimes even thirty sen, so even I could buy as many as I wanted. For someone like me who had no need to spend time in academic pursuits, there was more than enough time to spend in random reading. I read classics and contemporary, foreign and Japanese literature without discrimination. I read under the covers in bed at night, I read as I walked along the street.
I went to the theater to see Shinkokugeki, the “New National Drama” developed to take the place of Meiji-era Kabuki. It was with the greatest wonder in my eyes that I watched the performances at the playwright-director Osanai Kaoru’s Tsukiji Little Theater, the center of revolution in the theater.
A friend of mine who liked music had a phonograph and a record collection. At his house I listened mainly to classical recordings. I also went often to listen to composer-conductor Konoe Hidemaro’s New Symphony Orchestra rehearsals.
Naturally, as an aspiring painter, I went to see every kind of painting I could, both Japanese and Western. At that time art books and printed monographs on painters were not very common, but I bought what I could afford of what was available. What I couldn’t afford, I imprinted on my brain by looking at it over and over again in a bookstore. Most of the art books I bought at this time were lost along with all my other books in the air raids on Tokyo in the Pacific War. But a few of them are still in my possession. Their spines are broken and frayed, their covers and pages mixed up, and they are covered with fingerprints—some of them obviously made by paint-smeared fingers. And when I look at these books now, the same emotions I felt when I first studied them come rushing back.
I became fascinated by motion pictures, too. My older brother, who had left home and was moving from boardinghouse to boardinghouse, was addicted to Russian literature. But at the same time he wrote under various pen names for film programs. He wrote in particular about the art of the foreign cinema, which was much promoted following the First World War.
In matters of both film and literature I owe much to my brother’s discernment. I took special care to see every film my brother recommended. As far back as elementary school I walked all the way to Asakusa to see a movie he had said was good. I don’t remember what it was that I saw in Asakusa, but I do remember that it was at the Opera Theater. I remember waiting in line for discount tickets for the late show, and I remember my brother getting a terrific scolding from my father when we got home.
I have tried making a list of the films that impressed me at that time, and the list runs to nearly a hundred titles.*
Even I am surprised at the number of films I saw during this time that have survived in the annals of cinema history. And I owe this to my brother.
At the age of nineteen, in 1929, I became dissatisfied with my life of painting landscapes and still-lifes when so much was going on in the world around me. I decided to join the Proletarian Artists’ League. When I informed my brother of my intentions, he said, “That’s fine. But the proletarian movement is like influenza now. The fever is going to die down very quickly.” I felt slightly irked by his comment.
At the time my brother had taken a great step. He was no longer simply writing program notes for films as a great fan of the movies, he had become a professional silent-film narrator. The narrators not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing the voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of the events and images on the screen—much like the narrators of the Bunraku puppet theater. The most popular narrators were stars in their own right, solely responsible for the patronage of a particular theater. Under the leadership of the famous narrator Tokugawa Musei, a completely new movement was under way. He and a group of like-minded narrators stressed high-quality narration of well-directed foreign films. My brother joined them and, although it was a third-run theater, took a job as the chief narrator at a movie house in the suburb of Nakano.
I thought that my brother, having succeeded in life, had become snobbish about politics and was speaking lightly about something I took very seriously. But, as it turned out, my proletarian feelings subsided exactly as my brother had predicted. I was reluctant to admit that he was right, however, and stuck with the movement for several years. With my head crammed full of art, literature, theater, music and film knowledge, I continued to wander, vainly looking for a place to make use of it.
* It was a long time ago, so it’s very difficult to remember the exact dates. For the foreign films I have had to refer to their production and release dates in their countries of origin, and in some cases there was a gap of two or three years before they were shown in Japan.
1919 (Taishō 8). AK aged 9. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene; Passion, dir. Ernst Lubitsch; Shoulder Arms, dir. Charles Chaplin; Male and Female, dir. Cecil B. DeMille; Broken Blossoms, dir. D. W. Griffith.
1920 (Taishō 9). AK aged 10. Von Morgens bis Mitternacht, dir. Carl Martin; Die Bergkatze, dir. Ernst Lubitsch; The Phantom Carriage, dir. Victor Sjöström; The Last of the Mohicans, dir. Maurice Tourneur; Humoresque, dir. Frank Borzage; Sunnyside, dir. Charles Chaplin.
1921 (Taishō 10: Prime Minister Hara assassinated). AK aged 11. Way Down East, dir. D. W. Griffith; The Kid, dir. Charles Chaplin; The Three Musketeers, dir. Fred Niblo; Over the Hill to the Poor House, dir. Harry Millarde; The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, dir. Rex Ingram; Fool’s Paradise, dir. Cecil B. DeMille.
1922 (Taishō 11: Founding of Japan Communist Party). AK aged 12, first year at Keika Middle School. Dr. Mabuse, dir. Fritz Lang; The Loves of Pharaoh, dir. Ernst Lubitsch; The Little Prince, dir. Alfred Green; Blood and Sand, dir. Fred Niblo; The Prisoner of Zenda, dir. Rex Ingram; Pay Day, dir. Charles Chaplin; Foolish Wives, dir. Erich von Stroheim; Orphans of the Storm, dir. D. W. Griffith; The Distant Smile, dir. Sidney Franklin.
1923 (Taishō 12: Great Kanto Earthquake). AK aged 13, second year at KMS. The Pilgrim, dir. Charles Chaplin; The Thief of Bagdad, dir. Raoul Walsh; La Roue, dir. Abel Gance; Kick In, dir. George Fitzmaurice; The Covered Wagon, dir. James Cruze; Kean, dir. Alexandre Vilkoff; A Woman of Paris, dir. Charles Chaplin; Cyrano de Bergerac, dir. Augusto Genina.
1924 (Taishō 13). AK aged 14, third year at KMS. The Iron Horse, dir. John Ford; He Who Gets Slapped, dir. Victor Sjostrom; Die Niebelungen, dir. Fritz Lang; The Marriage Circle, dir. Ernst Lubitsch.
1925 (Taishō 14: Peace Preservation Law passed; first radio broadcasts). AK aged 15, fourth year at KMS. The Gold Rush, dir. Charles Chaplin; Master of the House, dir. Carl Dreyer; Feu Mathias Pascal, dir. Marcel L’Herbier; Beau Geste, dir. Herbert Brenon; Greed, dir. Erich von Stroheim; Lady Windermere’s Fan, dir. Ernst Lubitsch; The Big Parade, dir. King Vidor; The Salvation Hunters, dir. Josef yon Sternberg; The Last Laugh, dir. F. W. Murnau; The Joyless Street, dir. G. W. Pabst; Nana, dir. Jean Renoir; Variety, dir. E. A. Dupont.
1926 (Taishō 15: Farm Labor Party founded; death of Emperor Taishō). AK aged 16, fifth year at KMS. Three Bad Men, dir. John Ford; So This Is Paris, dir. Ernst Lubitsch; The Armored Vault, dir. Lupu Pick; Tartuffe, dir. F. W. Murnau; Faust, dir. F. W. Murnau; Metropolis, dir. Fritz Lang; Potemkin, dir. Sergei Eisenstein; Mother, dir. V. I. Pudovkin.
1927 (Showa 2: Financial panic; author Akutagawa Ryunosuke commits suicide; Disarmament Conference established). AK aged 17, graduates from KMS. Seventh Heaven, dir. Frank Borzage; Wings, dir. William Wellman; Barbed Wire, dir. Rowland V. Lee; Underworld, dir. Josef von Sternberg; Sunrise, dir. F. W. Murnau; Comedies with Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Chester Conklin, Roscoe Arbuckle, Sidney Chaplin; Chuji tabi nikki, dir. Ito Daisuke.
1928 (Showa 3: Assassination of Chang Tso-lin in Manchuria; “3–15 Incident” suppression of Communism). AK aged 18. Docks of
New York, dir. Josef von Sternberg; The Dragnet, dir. Josef von Sternberg; Thérèse Raquin, dir. Jacques Feyder; Storm over Asia, dir. V. I. Pudovkin; The Wedding March, dir. Erich von Stroheim; The Little Match Girl, dir. Jean Renoir; Verdun, Visions d’histoire, dir. Léon Poirier; The Fall of the House of Usher, dir. Jean Epstein; La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, dir. Carl Dreyer; The Seashell and the Clergyman, dir. Germaine Dulac; Shinpan Ooka Seidan, dir. Ito Daisuke; Roningai, dir. Makino Masahiro.
1929 (Showa 4: “4–16 Incident” suppression of Communism; zeppelin comes to Japan; gold embargo; Tokyo streetcar wars; worldwide Depression begins). AK aged 19. The Blue Angel, dir. Josef von Sternberg; Asphalt, dir. Joe May; Un Chien andalon, dir. Luis Buñuel; Les Mystères du Château du Dé, dir. Man Ray; Rien que les heures, dir. Alberto Cavalcanti; Kubi no za, dir. Makino Masahiro; Kaijin, dir. Murata Minoru.
Military Service
IN 1930 I turned twenty years old and I received a notice to appear for my Army physical prior to conscription. The physical was to be administered at the primary school in Ushigome.
I stood at attention before the officer, who said to me, “Are you the son of Kurosawa Yutaka, who graduated from the Toyama Academy and taught school as an Army officer?” “Yes, sir,” I replied. “Is your father well?” he asked. “Yes, sir.” “I was a student of your father’s. Please give him my regards.” “Yes, sir.” “What do you want to do?” the officer asked me. “I’m a painter, sir,” I replied. (I did not say “proletarian artist.”) “I see,” said the officer. “There are other ways to serve the country besides military service. Go to it.” “Yes, sir,” I replied. “But you seem to be very weak,” the officer continued. “And your posture is bad. You should do body-building exercises, too. This kind of exercise will stretch your back and correct that poor posture.” He stood up and proceeded to demonstrate a whole series of exercises for me. Apparently I still looked like a weakling at that age. Well, maybe the officer had been sitting at his desk too long and needed to stretch.
At the end of my conscription physical I was called before a warrant officer who sat at a desk piled high with forms. This man studied me with a fierce glower and said, “You have nothing to do with military service.” So it was in fact. I was not even called up until the eve of Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War. This occurred after the city of Tokyo had already been turned into a burned-out wasteland by the American air raids, and after I had become a film director. Since it represents my only immediate contact with military service, I might as well describe it here.
At that point most of the people who were being drafted were either physically disabled or had suffered nervous breakdowns. We were all supposed to have our “service bags” (containing the essentials for going into military service) with us for the roll call. There was an inspection of these service bags, and as the inspecting officer looked at mine, he said, “This man’s got everything.” This was to be expected, because my bag had been assembled by my assistant director, who had already done his military service. I stood there at attention pondering this truth, and the inspecting officer whispered to me, “Salute! Salute!” I hastily pulled myself together and saluted him. He returned the salute and passed on to the next man in line. I was distressed that he would praise the good order of my service bag and then scold me in the next breath. But as I was thinking this, I heard him bellowing, “What’s happened to your service bag?” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the inspector glaring at the man standing next to me. The man was carrying a pair of torn undershorts that he had knotted up, with a knot forming a kind of rabbit tail right at the seat of the pants. He stared blankly at the inspector and said, “What’s a service bag?” The military-police officer who was right behind the inspector rushed forward and hit the rabbit-tail man.
Just at that moment the air-raid sirens began to shriek. It was the beginning of the saturation bombing of Yokohama. It was also the end of my association with military service.
But I often wonder what would have happened if I had actually been drafted. I had failed military training in middle school, and I had no certificate of officer’s competence. There would have been no way for me to stay afloat in the Army. On top of that, if I had ever run into that Army officer who had been attached to Keika Middle School, it would surely have been the end for me. Even thinking about it now makes me shudder. I have that officer who administered the Army physical to thank for sparing me. Or maybe I should say I have my father to thank.
A Coward and a Weakling
I FIRST BEGAN commuting to the Proletarian Art Research Institute in Shiina-chō, Toshima Ward in 1928. I showed my paintings and posters in their exhibitions. But the Proletarian Artists’ League, which I joined in 1929, had a brand of realism that was much closer, in my view, to naturalism, and pretty far from the intensity of realism in the work of Courbet. There were some excellent painters in this group, but in general, rather than an artistic movement with its roots in the essentials of painting, it was a practice of putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas—a “leftist tendency” movement, as not only paintings but films of this type came to be called. I gradually came to have deeper and deeper doubts about this movement, and in the end I lost the passion for painting.
Around this time I had become so disillusioned with the Proletarian Artists’ League that I was entering into more direct, illegal political action. The proletarian newspapers had gone underground; their slogans were written in the Western alphabet, and they were further disguised by patterns and designs surrounding them. I became a member of the lower ranks of one of these organizations. Carrying out such activities made me likely to be arrested. I had already experienced the “pigpen” (jail) as a member of the Proletarian Artists’ League, but if I got caught this time, I would not get out so easily as I had on those occasions.
Just imagining the look on my father’s face if he heard I had been arrested gave me immeasurable pain. I told my parents I was going to live with my brother for a while, and I left home. I moved from rented room to rented room and occasionally found shelter in the homes of Communist sympathizers.
At first my job consisted mostly of making contact with members on the outside. But the oppression was so severe that often the person with whom I was to communicate did not appear at the appointed place. Arrested en route, he would never be heard from again.
One snowy day I was on my way to an appointment near Komagome Station. As I opened the door of the coffee shop, I suddenly froze. There were five or six men inside who all stood up simultaneously as they saw me. At one glance I knew they were special police detectives; they all had the same strange reptilian look about them.
The instant they rose to their feet, I was already running. I had the habit of laying out a getaway route whenever I went to an appointment, just in case. This time it paid off. I’m not very fast on my feet, but I was still young, and by taking the route I had picked out ahead of time I lost them completely.
I also had a run-in with the Kempeitai military police once. I was caught, but the M.P. turned out to be very nice. I told him I had to use the restroom, and without even frisking me first he led me off to the facilities. He even held the door shut for me, while inside I hastily swallowed the crucial papers from my superiors that I was carrying. I was set free immediately afterward.
I guess I got a thrill out of this dangerous life-style, and I had a pretty good time. I enjoyed changing my appearance all the time, wearing glasses, thinking up new disguises. But the arrests increased from day to day, and the proletarian newspaper became short-handed. It wasn’t long before, newcomer though I was, I was made an editorial assistant. The man in charge said to me, “You’re not a Communist, are you?” He was right, I wasn’t.
I had tried reading Das Kapital and theories of dialectic materialism, but there had been much that I couldn’t understand. For me to try to analyze and explain Japanese society from that point of view was therefore impossible. I simply felt the vague dissatisfact
ions and dislikes that Japanese society encouraged, and in order to contend with these feelings, I had joined the most radical movement I could find. Looking back on it now, my behavior seems terribly frivolous and reckless.
Yet I stayed with the proletarian movement until the spring of 1932. The preceding winter had been especially cold. The money that came to me from time to time as compensation for my movement activities was small indeed and always seemed on the verge of ceasing altogether. Many days I had only one meal, and some days I didn’t eat at all. There was of course no heat in the room I rented, and the only way to get warm was to go to the public bathhouse before going to bed.
A fellow messenger of working-class background explained his economics to me. When he received his movement compensation, he would count the days until his next payment was due. He would then divide it all up and budget his daily food allowance. But I could never do it that way. In order to fill my empty stomach, I’d spend my share with complete abandon. When my money was gone and I had no duties to carry out, I would spend the day under the covers trying to endure my hunger and the cold. As it became more and more difficult to publish the newspaper, the number of such days increased.
I had one escape route left—to go to my brother for help. But my pride prevented me from appealing to him.
I lived in a tiny four-mat room untouched by any sunlight, upstairs over a mah-jong parlor near Suidōbashi. One day I had a terrible cold and my fever was so high I literally couldn’t move. As I pressed my head to the pillow, the rattle of the mah-jong pieces being shuffled together downstairs fluctuated oddly, at times very near and loud, at others soft and distant. I spent about two days listening to this noise fade in and out, and then the landlord became suspicious. He looked in on me and was greatly alarmed by the smell of sweat in the room and the beads of perspiration standing on my hot face. He said he would call a doctor immediately, but I resisted with all my might. “It’s nothing, really,” I insisted. I didn’t know whether my cold was nothing or not, but I knew it would be something if a doctor came, because I had no money to pay a doctor. The landlord listened to me and left without saying anything else.
Something Like an Autobiography Page 11