The second day after I came back to Tokyo, as I was writing at the desk in my hotel room, after midnight, I felt that deep troubled tremor of the earth and once more the old sickness rose in me. The quake was no more than a tremor and yet for that instant my hand went out of control, and the desk shook. Most of the people slept through it, but the morning newspaper reported a sharp tremor. Such tremors come often in Japan, hundreds, thousands of them in a year, on the average of four times a day, and each time it is a reminder to a courageous people that they live on dangerous islands. The effect on them of this eternal tension is obvious. They have extremes of temperament—an exaggerated gaiety, a profound and sometimes frenzied melancholy. A disciplined and studied surface, smiles and calm and casualness, is underlaid, without exception, I might say, by a dark sadness, born of the knowledge in child and adult that catastrophe is endemic in spite of the beauty of mountain and sea and the kindliness of life. This universal knowledge begets in them a consideration, a tender courtesy, as though to say that since the world may end at any moment, let us be kind to one another. When this inherent kindness has to be unlearned, as it does in times of war, when men must be taught to be brutal, they may be cruel beyond imagination … But I was speaking of earthquakes—and tidal waves.
We needed a tidal wave then. The earthquake we could reproduce by camera, but the tidal wave was beyond us. It was here that we had good fortune. Our Japanese co-producers had the finest special-effects studio in the country and, I was told, in the world. I did not know what special effects meant in film talk, but I discovered that it meant the reproduction, in miniature, of a scene in nature. The Japanese are supremely talented in such work and of all Japanese, Tsuburaya is the most talented. Fortunately Tsuburaya belonged to our Japanese co-producers and upon appointment we met him in their offices.
He is an artist and the first look at him revealed the fact. He wore work clothes, baggy pants, baggy shirt and a Japanese coat, and he greeted us with a charmingly natural courtesy. Yes, he said, he knew that we wanted a tidal wave and he had already make sketches to show us. They were startlingly accurate water colors of the rising horizon, the onrushing wave, and the towering crash of the crest. A tidal wave does not appear at first as a wave. Instead the horizon lifts, the sea mounts toward the sky in a smooth brimming line, it runs toward the land, a wall of water that may be two feet high or two hundred. A powerful suction gathers the sea into the wave, so that watching from a cliff, the bottom of the ocean beyond the beach is laid bare. Then the gigantic wave curls over its own base and overwhelms land, house and people.
I watched Tsuburaya’s face as he described the sequences he had painted. I wish I could paint this beautiful Japanese face, even in words. I say beautiful in the deep sense of the word. It was not handsome, in the superficial sense. It was worn with thought and concentration. It was as sensitive as a child’s face, a genius child, but not in the least childish. It was wise and gentle, yet fresh and strong and humorous, the face of an artist purified by the satisfaction of fulfillment through his art. We talked quietly. I listened while he described his plans. He would come to the fishing village with his cameraman and photograph everything. Then he would build the sets in the studio and recreate the scenes and adapt them to the film. This would be done later, when work was in progress. Meanwhile I had the private content of the writer who knows that work is understood and is about to be translated truthfully into another medium.
I have learned by experience that people who work in the theater are not to be judged by the standards applied to the rest of us. They are a group apart, by temperament, whatever their race, class or nationality. A Chinese actor, male or female, is like an American actor, and is like an actor of any other country because they are, first of all, actors. Directors are the same, whatever their age, color, religion, nationality, all prima donnas, without a single exception. I make this general observation as preliminary to our first real problem in making the picture. Everything had gone so pleasantly, so easily, that I might have expected, cheerful pessimist that I am, a storm on the horizon, a knot in the thread, a hitch in the machinery.
It came one hot summer morning when the air conditioning had broken down—in order to provide the proper temperature for coming storm, I suppose. The production manager approached me with an exaggerated courtesy. We were in his office as usual, the American director and I, and the production manager had been too cordial for safety. I should have known he had an idea. He ordered several pretty girls to bring us tea, and when the American said he preferred coffee, because this was the only place in Tokyo which had good coffee, the production manager shouted at another bevy of pretty girls to bring coffee. When we were all seated about the low round table, and after he had swabbed the perspiration from his well-nourished face and neck, he said, too casually, that since his firm’s reputation was also staked on our picture, they would like to supply a Japanese assistant director to the American.
I know that nothing in life is really casual. Hence when I saw a sudden alert in the American’s eyes, I made my reply casual. Of course, I said, we would welcome such aid. I wanted the picture to be true in every detail. It would be expected in my own country. The production manager mentioned even more casually the name of a director. I recognized it. It was the name of a famous Japanese film director now officially retired but still inexhaustibly a director.
“I would like to meet him,” the American director said also casually.
Everything seemed smooth and civilized, the production manager sighed happily and insisted on ginger ale in addition to the tea and coffee. He was a big man, tall and heavy, and he was temperamental. Indeed, I had been taken aside privately the day before we met and warned that he and the American director might not get on well, their natures not being in harmony. I inquired as to what this meant. It was explained to me in Japanese terms that the American was full of energy and determination, and so was the Japanese. The American did not easily yield on a point on which he considered himself right. Neither did the Japanese. Let us say bluntly that neither ever yielded. I had been disturbed by this, and now it occurred to me that a Japanese assistant director might act as a buffer.
When I mentioned this possibility to the American director, however, later in the day, he said shortly that he wanted no buffers. He liked the Japanese production manager because he was as frank as an American and so he could deal with him. I heard an edge in the American director’s voice, and I postponed further discussion. I reminded myself that time takes care of many things. Asia had taught me that.
Meanwhile the casting went on, no matter what else took place, a process not different in Tokyo or on Broadway. We sat by invitation behind the long table in the office and one by one actors or actresses appeared in turn. We had their photographs before us and studied them carefully for photogenic quality, while questions were asked.
English was the problem. There were many handsome young men and many, many pretty girls, and some older characters and their female counterparts. The questions were always the same:
“Your name?”
“How many pictures have you made?”
“What do you think was your best part?”
Somewhere in the thick of the questions, usually very soon, it became all too apparent that English was sadly weak, in fact nonexistent. The only perfect English sentence was the same one. “I cannot speak English.”
“Where did you study English?” we inquired.
“In school—yes.”
“How many years in school?”
“Six yahs.”
“Six years?”
A nod. We tried not to smile as these six years were repeated again and again. One of the young men least learned in English said, “Ten yahs.”
We tried repeating English words, bits of dialogue. A good ear may make it possible to teach the English dialogue. Sometimes the ear was very good. Usually it was not.
“Next time you make a picture,” I advised myself privately,
“let’s stick to the English-speaking countries.”
When at last an actor appeared who spoke perfect English, we tried not to accept him merely because he could speak. There were other requirements. So the days passed, not hopeful and yet not quite hopeless. Meanwhile the matter of the assistant director was not allowed to die. The production manager told us one morning that we were to meet the Japanese director. I was daily more impressed by the production manager, his efficiency and his chronic desperation. He must produce a motion picture every week for Japan’s film-hungry population. It was and is an intolerably heavy schedule, but he assured me it could not grow lighter until television improved and provided real competition, when, he said, the motion picture companies would have to produce better pictures and therefore not so many. Meanwhile he could not stop. He carried on conferences with directors, with everybody, it seemed, while he kept a finger in our pie, appearing and reappearing, always in shirt sleeves, his large face shining with sweat in spite of air-conditioned rooms. He had a very handsome face, in the Japanese classical tradition, although not as handsome as it used to be, doubtless, when he was young, before wine and whatever goes with it made its mark. It was too heavy now in the jowls, there were bags under the fine eyes. It lighted easily with laughter, nevertheless, and when he laughed it was with the roar of a lion. He put aside formalities whenever possible and begged us for frankness. He spoke in Japanese, his interpreter one of the pretty young women who softened what he said without destroying its force. She was very skillful. But I still did not really know him. That came later.
One afternoon then, we were led to another office where we were told to wait for our meeting with the proposed Japanese director. We waited. He entered after five minutes or so, looking vaguely like a Japanese Stokowski, but bigger. He was handsome for his age, his white hair swept back, his profile proud. He bowed but not too deeply and I noticed a coldness creep over the face of the American director. Two young men actors were about to create a scene for us. The Japanese director sat down. He understood English as well as the production manager did, but like him, he would not speak it. The American director explained that he wanted the two actors to do a scene between Toru and Yukio, the main characters in The Big Wave. The Japanese director seized a pen and began to write down what he thought the scene should be. The American director tried through our interpreter to stop this on the grounds that he did not want the scene to be fixed but fluid. The Japanese silenced her with an imperious wave of the hand. Steel shone in the American’s eyes and he instructed the interpreter again.
“Please tell this gentleman I do not want the scene written down. I wish the actors to improvise.”
The interpreter, awed by the Japanese director’s fame and hauteur, made an effort. Again the imperious wave of the royal hand! The American took over. When the Japanese leaned to give the paper to the actors with his own instructions the American removed it, saying in firm English, “I don’t want them to have written instructions.”
There was a moment of awed silence on the part of the actors. Whom should they obey? The American, they finally decided, and the Japanese sat back, looking formidable. I knew what was coming, but knew, too, that it must wait until we got back to the hotel. The American maintained perfect manners in public but when the scene was over, rather well done considering the tense atmosphere, we got up, bowed to the Japanese director and everybody else, and took our leave. The interpreter was in the car with us so nothing was said. As we got out, however, at the hotel door, the American spoke to me through clenched teeth. “I must talk with you before everything falls apart.”
I bowed to the inescapable. “Very well. Let’s have it now, in my rooms. I’ll expect you in fifteen minutes.”
I needed a few minutes in which to prepare myself for the ordeal of a conference with a prima donna. Define prima donna? Whatever the term is in the dictionary, in real life it means a person self-concentric—not necessarily egoistic or egotistical, and not entirely self-centered, but certainly one the nucleus of whose being is the self. Of directors, there are two kinds, generally speaking; the actor’s director, and the director’s director. The actor’s director is the beloved of actors. He woos them, charms them, defers to them, flatters them, binds them to him emotionally until they do their best for him. He calls this “developing their talents.” Sooner or later he also destroys them, especially if they do not release him from the emotional tie he has created between them. He expects to be released as soon as the play opens or the picture is made, for emotion has then served its purpose, and he is indignant if he is not released. Some actors—the females, to be more accurate—are so foolish as to want to continue the tie, and when it is cut off, they are destroyed, at least for a time. Yet so dependent are they in emotional terms that they will continue to speak of him fondly as “an actor’s director.” The director’s director, on the other hand, will avoid the use of emotion as a tool to develop the actor, male or female. He knows what he wants, and will have no truck with “development.” He tells the actor exactly what is to be done, in terms of art and the play, and the actor must perform accordingly. Without exception, so far as I know, Japanese directors belong to the latter group.
At this point of my analysis, there was a knock at my door and the American director entered in what is called ominous silence. He sat down and began as usual by pointing out certain minor mistakes I had made during the day—minor or major it did not matter, for by now every mistake was major and all were mine.
“Why,” he inquired with frightening distinctness, his eyes gimlets on my face, “did you have to greet that Japanese as though he were an old friend? Why did you have to thank him and say it was good to have his help?”
I muttered something about being polite in the Japanese manner, et cetera, but nothing could stop the inevitable. He did not waver.
“I must tell you,” he said, and I knew he must, “that unless this Japanese director is removed at once, I shall return to New York.”
I was speechless. Remove the Japanese after the production manager had invited him? It was to be asked to remove Mount Fuji from the landscape of Japan!
The American proceeded in frigid tones. “There can only be one director. It is I—or it is not I.”
The sky fell. I was crushed. The crisis I had dreaded had arrived. I had hoped that time would make it less violent, I had been foolishly optimistic and now I was desperate. I am not a good fighter at any time and when faced with a battle, I always try to follow the good old Chinese proverb, “Of the thirty-six ways of escape, the best is to run away.” The catch at this moment was that there was no place to run to. I could not run, therefore.
I got up from my chair. It was the end of the day, nearly six o’clock, and I would like to have sent for a pot of Japanese green tea, to which I am addicted, and then, sipping tea, to have read a Japanese novel while I waited for dinner. There was no possibility of either tea or novel. I thought of the worst and most frightening resort and could think of no other. I said,
“Let’s go to the production manager’s office now and tell him.”
I hoped that the American director would admire my courage. It was exactly the same as though I had said let us go to the zoo, find the biggest, fiercest lion and twist his tail. He showed no sign of admiration. He got up and we went, the interpreter timidly behind, paling as we explained our errand.
“Japanese director,” she gasped, “is very big man. So is production manager.”
It was my turn to pale. I began to hate this American director temporarily. And why did I ever yield to this idea of making a picture in Japan? But I was here. We were already in the building. We were going up in the elevator. We announced ourselves at the door of the production manager’s office. Yes, we must see him before he goes, we said. The pretty girl looked surprised, hinted that the production manager was very busy, et cetera, but we said we would wait. We were ushered in and we sat down. The production manager ignored us while he roared in
to one telephone and another. I noticed foolishly that the telephones were all turquoise blue in a green room. I counted the buttons on a pretty girl’s back as she telephoned into still another telephone, repeating the production manager’s roars in a gentle voice. Green tea was brought but I dared not try to swallow lest I choke. After a long five minutes, ten minutes, whatever the hours are, the production manager lowered his bulk into one of the circle of chairs and grunted at his interpreter. I understood perfectly that he was asking in his own way why the devil we were there.
I myself wondered. I wished that I were not there, but a glance at the American’s grim profile was enough to destroy question and answer. I plunged in, knowing that I was committing suicide. I began by assuring the production manager, who understood every English word I said but pretended he did not, that we were honored by his wish to help us but, under the circumstances, directors being directors, young and old—I meandered on, hoping to avoid the final issue, the last moment, when I must somehow say bluntly that we did not want the Japanese director—that is to say, the American director did not—that is to say, I was sure the production manager understood how embarrassing it would be for an American director making his first picture in Japan, to say to an elder director, one so respected, et cetera. The American found such an action impossible even to contemplate, not to mention the confusion of actors who would not know which one to—and so forth—
The interpreter struggled with my faltering efforts. As I knew, the production manager understood perfectly what I was getting at. He cut across faltering and interpreting. He banged his fat knees with his big handsome hands. He roared at us and in English! “American director must be strong! American director must say to everybody, ‘You are listening to me!’”
A Bridge for Passing: A Meditation on Love, Loss, and Faith Page 9