takekurabe ( 1955 film )
it is a film adaptation of higuchi ichiyō' s 1895 - 1896 novel takekurabe .
it is a film adaptation of higuchi ichiyō' s 1895 - 1896 novel takekurabe .
) is a 1955 black - and - white japanese film directed by heinosuke gosho .
isuzu yamada - isuzu yamada won blue ribbon awards for best supporting actress in takekurabe in 1956 .
isuzu yamada - isuzu yamada won blue ribbon awards for best supporting actress in takekurabe in 1956. [ 3 ]
marit 1 relations, 1955, directed by shiro t) yoda.' hisaya morismge, chikage, asmma. , grotmong 170, 1955. directed by fleinostike gosbo. hibari misora ,
' ilk somegoro ichikawa. the beauty and the dmgon, 1955, directed by kimisaimiro' iohimura. nobtiko ov (center) .
x list of illustrations four seasons of children, 1939. 30 a full life, 1962. 153 grass whistle, 1955. 94 growing up, 1955. 93 harakiri, 1962. 154 the harp of burma, 1956. 143 he and life, 1928. 24 high and low, 1963. 204 the hoodlum soldier, 1965. 2o8 horses, 1941. 32 the human condition, 1958 - 61. 147 humanity and paper balloons, 1937. 29 ikiru, 1952. 87 the inferno of first love, 1968. 212 an inn at osaka, 1954. 91
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donald micie has long been the internationally acclaimed expert on the japanese film. he is a former member of unijapan film and film critic for the japan times, and is presently curator of the film department at the museum of modern art, new york. he designed and presented the kurosawa and ozu retrospectives, as well as the massive 1970 retrospective at the museum, the japanese film. his book on the films of akira kurosawa has been called a
virtual model for future studies in the field .
mr. richie has been a resident of japan for the past twenty - five years. film books by donald richie: the cinematographic view: a study of the film. 1958. the japanese film: art and industry. 1959. co - authored with joseph l. anderson. japanese movies. 1961. the japanese movie: an illustrated history. 1965. the films of akira kurosawa. 1965. george stevens: an american romantic. 1970 .
japanese cinema film stye and national character donald ricbie anchor books doubleday & company, inc. , garden city, new york
list of illustrations the abe clan, 1938. 29 an actor' s revenge, 1963. 203 the affair, 1967. 211 the age of assassins, 1966. 209 alone on the pacific, 1964. 205 assassination, 1964. 207 the assignation, 1960. 149 an autumn afternoon, 1962. 154 bad boys, 1960. 151 the bad sleep well, 1960. 149 the beauty and the dragon, 1955. 93
246 kenji mizoguchi appendix sisters of the gion (gion shimai), 1935, 95 min. utamaro and his five women (utamaro o meguru gonin no onna), 1946, 95 min. women of the night (yoru no onnatachi), 1l948, 75 min. the life of oharu (the life of a woman by saikaku) (saikaku ichidai onna), 1952, 148 min. ugetsu (ugetsu monogatari), 1953, 96 mini. a story from chikamatsu (chikamatsu monogatari), 1954, 100 min. sans ho the bailiff (sansho dayu), 1954, . 125 mmn. the princess yang kwei fei (yokihi), 1955, ca. 120, mmn. new tales of the taira clan (shin heike monogatari), . 1955, 120 min. street of shame (red. . light district) (akasen chitai), - 1956, 85 mini. 511 ny ab ny ja nl ab cv nl ab
xii list of illustrations man - slashing, horse - piercing sword, 1930. 25 a man vanishes, 1967. 211 the man who left his will on film, 1970. 214 marital relations, 1955. 93 the men who tread on the tiger' s tail, 1945. 34 mother, 1952. 88 mud and soldiers, 1939. 30 muddy waters, 1953. 90 the neighbors wife and mine, 1931. 25 night drum, 1958. 146 no regrets for our youth, 1946. 83 oban, 1957 - 58. 146 onibaba, 1963. 205 operation negligee, 1968. 212 the origin of sex, 1967. 211
ix death by hanging, 1968. 212 dodes' ka - den, 1970. 214 double suicide, 1969. 213 drunken angel, 1948. 84 early spring, 1956. 143 earth, 1939. 29 the end of summer, 1961. 152 an enemy of the people, 1946. 34 enfo, 1958. 147 evil spirits of japan, 1970. 213 fires on the plain, 1959. 148 five scouts, 1939. 30 floating clouds, 1955. 94 floating weeds, 1959. 147 flowing, 1956. 144
xvi list of illustrations ugetsu, 1953. 89 until the day we meet again, 1950. 85 utamaro and his five women, 1946. 83 the war at sea from hawaii to malaya, 1942. 33 when a woman ascends the stairs, 1960. 151 where chimneys are seen, 1953. 89 wife, be like a rose, 1935. 28 wild geese, 1953. 9o woman in the dunes, 1964. 2o6 woman of osaka, 1940. 31 women of the ginza, 1955. 143 yearning, 1963. 204 yojimbo, 1961. 152
xiv list of illustrations the river fuefuki, 1960. 150 samurai rebellion, 1967. 210 sanjuro, 1962. 154 sanshiro sugata, 1943. 33 sansho the bailiff, 1954. 91 the scandalous adventures of buraikan, 1970. 214 the scent of incense, 1964. 205 seven samurai, 1954. 92 she and he, 1963. 204 she was like a wild chrysanthemum, 1955. 94 sisters of the gion, 1935. 28 snow country, 1957. 145 souls on the road, 1921. 23 sounds from the mountain, 1954. 92 south wind, 1942. 32
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the japanese film, which was among the last to achieve an individual flavor, is now the last to retain this individuality. it continues to show, for all who care to see, the most perfect reflection of a people in the history of world cinema. this profile of japan is easy to catch; the likeness is unmistakable, yet difficult to define. in the broadest of generalizations, it might be this: if the american film is strongest in action, and if the european is strongest in character, then the japanese film is richest in mood or atmosphere, in presenting characters in their own surroundings. the relationship between man and his surroundings is the continual theme of the japanese film, one which quite accurately reflects the oneness with nature that is both the triumph and the escape of the japanese people .
xxi is seen in many of the themes of the japanese film, but of its technique there are few traces; in fact, overcoming the influence of the shimpa was one of the japanese film' s earliest triumphs. even shingeki, the modern theater (one quite analogous to that of america or europe), has offered almost nothing to the japanese film style. in the same way, television - a medium which has had an enormous and not always beneficial influence on the american film - has contributed as yet little to japanese cinematic form. at most one might say (and it is, admittedly, saying much) that the influence of japanese drama on japanese film is interior. that is, the kind of mind which created the noh and the kabuki remains the mind which creates the japanese film. one might then think that the films of other countries have been a decisive influence, a common enough occurrence in france or america, countries which have eclectic cinematic traditions. and on one level there is some foreign influence. the japanese
action
picture, particularly the gangster film, is much influenced by the american, as indeed are all the world' s gang films. yet on the higher level, as represented by the best directors, there is almost none at all. or, perhaps better, there is none visible. in the history of each director there has been some. that we no longer see it in the most experienced directors leads us directly to a basic assumption in the definition of japanese film style: the japanese are unable to handle anything without sooner or later nationalizing it - or, perhaps better put, the peculiar japanese genius is that of assimilation and incorporation. any influence
214,' by akira kurosawvva, ~ ~ os i... kixata zushi, mi iasakdaro sbinoda. tatsuyai ~ n ~ akaai, shimaui n' wa -. . shita on film, 1970, directed by
244 appendix harakiri (seppuku), 1962, 135 mmn. kwaidan (kaidan), 1965, il6o mim. sh wr kazuo kuroki akira kurosawa silence has no wings (tobenai chimoku), 1l967, iog min. the men who tread on the tiger' s tail (tora no 0 o fumu otokotachi), - 1945, 6o min. drunken angel (yoidore tenshi), 1948, 1 - 02 mi. stray dog (nora inu), 1. 949, 122 mi. scandal (shubun), 1. 950, 10 5 minl. rashomon, 1950, 84 minl. the idiot (hakuchi), . 1951, the i66 min. version. ikiru, 1952, 140 mmn. seven samurai (shichinin no samurai), 1 - 954, 141. min. version. i live in fear (record of a living being) (ikimono no kiroku), 1955, 1l05 min. un ab ab ab sii ja ny ab ab ab
appendix japanese films circulated in 16 mm in the united states guide to abbreviations: ab audio film center and brandon films, inc. , affiliated with crowell, collier and macmillan, inc. , 34 macquesten parkway, south, mount vernon, n. y. 10550 ca cavalcade pictures, inc. , 959 north fairfax avenue, hollywood, calif. 90046 co contemporary films, affiliated with mcgraw - hill, inc. , 330 west 42 street, new york, n. y. 10036 cv cinema ventures, 133 west 14 street, new york, n. y. 1oo12 fi film images, a division of radim films, inc. , 17 west 60 street, new york, n. y. 10023 gr grove press, inc. , film division, 53 east 11 street, new york, n. y. 10003
140 japanese cinema as such, seem to demand. the form, rather, is organic; it is that demanded by the characters rather than the plot. open - ended sequences, visual non - sequiturs, and lapses of continuity, all carefully judged, create the air of believability so characteristic of this film. though far different from such early films about children as those of ozu and shimizu, it joins them through its honest realism and its bitter perception. equally perceptive were ceremony (gisaku, 1971), and, in particular, the man who left his will on film (tokyo senso sengo hiwa, 1970), an elaborately selfreferential film about a student making a movie. he kills himself at the end of the picture, and the film he was making becomes the film we have been seeing. using a completely amateur cast, oshima succeeded brilliantly in creating a visual counterpart for the world which an acutely sensitive youth must feel and fear. in these later and mature films the excesses of youth, its revolts, its retreats, are captured with a compassion quite missing from the earlier work. at the same time, however, one must add that the individuality of oshima, of kobayashi, and of masumura is a bit like that of imai, and is different from that, say, of ozu or kurosawa, in that stylistic unity is imposed not by the director but by the subject matter he chooses. another example would be yasuke chiba, whose personal style was based entirely in the shomin - geki genre seen in the films of shimazu, of ozu, or gosho. downtown (shitamachi, 1957) was an excellent short film about a poor working woman - beautifully played by isuzu ya
1896 - 1945 41 use for chronology and so dispensed with it. rather, we see one image (the sister in her room concerned for her brother' s safety) cut directly into another (his sister much younger, during their childhood), the link being neither logical nor causal but emotional. later, the linkage becomes even more subjective. pain becomes a visible hallucination when the water he is drinking turns to steam; the cat, attracted by his open, bloody wounds, becomes something evil, a black, creeping form. again and again in this film the cut is determined not by its slight plot, not by the several convolutions of the story line, but because one scene suggests another or because one object suggests another: the round shape of a hat, the round shape of a teacup - an early example of what eisenstein called analytical montage. the construction is largely made of such parallels and it is just in such a manner that many japanese pictures are made, from the understated parallels of an ozu picture to the hidden parallels in a kurosawa film. it is also indicative of japanese film that though this picture was a period film - it was set late in the eighteenth century - kinugasa treated it as though it were contemporary. that is, he put his audience into the mind of a living person, the hero of the picture. this is so rare in western historical pictures that those who do so - dreyer in the passion of joan of arc, for example, completed a year before this film - are considered exceptional. in japan this is not the only method of making a period film, but it is certainly a common one. one of the reasons is that japan is a young moder
1896 - 1945 5 the first japanese pictures, however, contained not only 1904 street scenes and geisha dances but also the most celebrated stage actors of the day in action on the stage. in the west, the stage was still refusing to be compromised by the low - class novelty but in japan the stage interested itself in the movies to the extent that at least several dramatic troupes commissioned early cameramen to film portions of their plays so that these could serve as advertisements at those theaters specializing in motion pictures. somewhat later the situation was to be reversed. in america the movies became socially acceptable only by the innovation of filmed theater with its
famous players
; in france by the stagy film dart. in japan the actors were to show less enthusiasm, realizing that movies are the natural enemy of the stage, and fearing that if they appeared in film no one would come to see them in the flesh. initially, however, the west was given time to develop at least the rudiments of film grammar and vocabulary before the stage took over; in japan the influence of stage upon screen was from the first complete. since no two art forms are further apart, the effect upon the infant japanese cinema could have been disastrous. the first japanese films, as stagy as any film dart, were burdened with all the accouterments of the japanese stage. the continual front - center shot and the idea that actors must be seen full - length were limitations shared with other countries, but in japan alone was there an
6 japanese cinema insistence upon female impersonators and, the major obstacle to cinematic technique, the benshi. the benshi was a narrator - commentator - explainer who accompanied most film showings until well into the era of sound, narrating a story which was at least occasionally of his own construction, commenting upon the apparent, and explaining the obvious. his popularity was extreme and was based upon that very quality which had made films so instantly popular: japanese enthusiasm for selfimprovement. then as now the japanese were unfailingly curious and, at the same time, unfailingly disturbed lest they not understand everything. this audience created the benshi, gave him his enormous prestige, and paid him his not inconsiderable rewards. although the benshi was not unique - america had its lantern - slide and travel - film commentators; france, its movie compare - he long outstayed his welcome and prevented the japanese film from early attaining that reliance upon purely pictorial means which is the true strength of the motion picture. but he effectively filled a basic need, the need for complete instruction. his effect upon the japanese film is almost impossible to overestimate, and certain aspects of even the latest movies can be traced back to the benshi and to the need which he satisfied. though japanese films can be the most subtle in the world, the most understated, the most evocative, a commentator will frequently reiterate a point already presented visually. a scene will often appear, unnecessary in the context of the film, which explains what went before. those japanese critics who called rashomon
1946 - 1971 233 manism, his dostoevsky - like compassion, remains his final and his strongest statement. in seven samurai, however, compassion is not sentimentality. it has been tempered with action; theory has become practice. violent physical action, things done, things accomplished, things completed, things irrevocable: these are what this film is made of. the end result of all this action (and there has rarely been so violent an
action film
as seven samurai) is the distillation of a single bittersweet and almost unpalatable truth, but one the emotional acceptance of which is impossible to avoid. the story is simple. a small village, completely defenseless, is harassed by bandits. they ask the aid of a group of masterless samurai, men as homeless, as outside society as the robbers they are asked to fight. they agree, and the body of the film shows their defense, during which a number of them die. the villagers are grateful, but it is spring planting season. they are busy, they have things to do. the remaining samurai leave the town they have defended, the only home they know. they stop in front of the grave of those they left behind, then they move on. the film is an impassioned call for cooperation among men and, at the same time, suggests why this has always been and will always be impossible. like la grande illusion - which it resembles in no other way - seven samurai demonstrates the essential sympathy binding men together, and shows how war perverts it. but, more, the kurosawa film goes on to demonstrate that peace too
1946 - 1971 197 believe. if they lack anything, it is immediacy; just as the films of imai and kobayashi, oshima and masumura, lack that interest in character delineation, in the intricate interplay of character with environment, which is so much of film style, since this is just what is sacrificed through exclusive interest in social issues. these two qualities - an interest in film aesthetics as a medium of emotional communication and an equal interest in social issues which are larger than the single man - are reconciled in the work of akira kurosawa, a film director whom the last twenty - five years has revealed as so thoroughly whole and in that sense so completely great that one can compare him only to yasujiro ozuhis utter opposite, the director most antithetical, and yet one with whom, oddly, he shares more than any other. like ozu, he is a master stylist. he adds to a given theme, or plot, or incident, all of the circumstances calculated to produce the entire effect that the theme or the plot or the incident ought to produce. he creates an entire world, along with all the laws which govern it. he shows character by presenting what motivates that character. and he suggests the environment, the context, of every action. one of the effects of this is that kurosawa' s world is a private one, one that is uniquely his own. one minute of an ozu or a kurosawa film is enough to let you know whose it is. at the same time the work of kurosawa represents a departure from the tradition of the japanese film. he has always refused to make the expected kind of picture. he has consistently confused critics and, sometimes, au
i80 japanese cinema complications whether he truly understands them or not. the reason is that shinoda is not interested in the intricacies of history. they are useful only in establishing various kinds of action necessary for the disclosure of his main concern. this is the shapes or patterns of men' s lives. and this interest accounts both for his cursory treatment of history and for the structure of the film itself. in the first reel we believe we are being introduced to the heroes and that they are talking about the villains. by the time the second reel is over, however, we have heard enough to know that the first men might be villains and that the
villains
may well be heroic. as the film progresses, we are led to question the ethical motives of everyone in the film. the screenplay, which shinoda helped write, as he does for all his films, uses the methods of orson welles' s citizen kane or, perhaps better, francesco rosi' s salvatore giuliano. the film loops back again and again into the main character' s life, never solving any of the problems, nor resolving any of the differences. as a consequence, the character (played by tetsuro tamba) becomes more and more alive throughout the course of the film. in this sense, a very complicated plot becomes simple as the director makes one live through it. shinoda' s shogunate japan - seen here in double suicide, in sarutobi, in buraikan, and in silence - is a world in itself. again one thinks of mizoguchi, because there has been no other director since him who could create the feeling of historical locale as well. in assassination shinoda creates a real world (much of which is shot
1946 - 1971 227 corner of the picture frame; and all of this incessant and meaningless motion confuses and fatigues the eye. ikiru presents the same disordered environment, but intensifies it. the film is long and varied; it winds and unwinds; it shifts from mood to mood, from present to past, from silence to a deafening roar - all in the most unabashed and absorbing fashion. one can compare it only to citizen kane, a film japan did not see until its 1961 television showings, in which, for much the same reason, the resources of the camera are strained to the limit: the marvelous
night town
sequences in which camera motion is consummately used to suggest the teeming city; the scenes in the office, so hushed and underplayed that they all but shout for attention; the final funeral sequence (the last third of the film) where the life of the dead official is reviewed over and over again, each repetition getting a bit nearer the truth. in all of kurosawa' s best films the style fits the story so closely that the resulting emotional experience is literally unforgettable. this is seen even in his debut film, sanshiro sugata, and in its 1945 sequel, where the judo story was reflected in athletic cutting, and in the bounce and pace of the tempo. it is seen fully matured in two of the director' s very finest pictures: rashomon and seven samurai. the former is extremely well known, probably the most famous japanese film ever made. its theme, like that of ikiru, is basically existential: a man is what he does, not what he intends nor what he believes; truth is just as relative as anything else and reality is a matter of in
1946 - 1971 79 analysis is followed without comment by a master stroke: the very next scene, late at night, finds her drunk, coming into his room and flinging herself at him. in their separate ways both the geisha and the young heroine of wild geese overcome tradition and toyoda' s occasional animosity toward the traditionally japanese is, unlike that of naruse, only rarely stated. one of his fullest statements, however, is found in one of his finest films: grass whistle (mugibue, 1955). it is the story of three adolescents, the girl still a child, the boys just growing into that long and difficult period which is prelude to manhood. they are good children, if a bit wild, and - like all children - they manage to live entirely outside the traditional society represented by their parents. but they are not immune to it. their tragedy is not merely the coming of adulthood and the consequent loss of the candor of childhood, more specifically it is their subscribing to attitudes and beliefs, properly traditional in themselves, which have no relevance to their own problems. one of the boys dies. his friend had loved him, and the girl had loved him; and, in the honest manner of children, both boy and girl also love each other. in the final sequence of the film they go to the grave of their friend and the boy attempts to tell her what he feels. already old enough to distrust her emotions, she almost hysterically subscribes to whatever ideas of morality she has already absorbed from the grown - ups. it becomes evil to think of herself in the presence of the dead - rather, she must remain faithful to a memory which is already
drama japanese cinema film style and national character donald richie it is common knowledge that japan has produced one of the most extraordinary national cinemas in the history of film. this book, written by the internationally - recognized expert on the subject, makes japanese movies accessible to western audiences as never before. it is, first of all, a succinct history of japanese film, from the beginning through 1970. it is also, however, an exploration of japanese culture - and the japanese mind. the author relates the films to the other art forms, and the traditions and attitudes of the japanese people. he is thus able to refute the occasional western objections that japanese movies are sentimental, or boring, or full of cliches. the book discusses not only the well - known classics of such directors as kurosawa and mizoguchi, but also the popular
entertainment
films as well. it establishes the historical basis for the important post - war films that first brought japanese cinema to the attention of the world. above all, this book explores the unique vision of the japanese film - makers, the vision
which is the aesthetic of japan - and which has created some of the most beautiful and truthful films ever made .
this volume is complete with numerous stills from the films, an appendix with information about 16 mm. distribution in the united states, and an index. cover design by sydney butchkes cover photograph, double suicide, courtesy of toho motion picture company, ltd. , tokyo a doubleday anchor original isbn: 0 - 385 - 09441 - 8
48 japanese cinema in any event there was, in japan, an early public acceptance of the realistic historical film, an agreement from the man in the balcony that his problems were much like those of the samurai on the screen. consequently, japanese directors retained a freedom to make pertinent, living historical films, something which was often denied like - minded directors - and dreyer is the most obvious example - in the west. not that the japanese do not make historical distinctions. indeed, in common use, the distinctions are indelible. the period film is always thought of as an isolated genre and it is indicative of japan' s attitude toward itself that it should make such a rigid division between the jidai - geki, the period drama, and the gendai - geki, the film about contemporary life. yet this dichotomy exists only because of the traditional japanese fondness for, and dependence upon, intellectual categorization. the continuum of history flows serenely over all barriers and the japanese, in life as in films, quite accepts a living past. he no more questions this than he questions that, after a hard day' s work, he comes home, takes off his business suit and gets comfortable in a kimono. this, naturally, implies a double standard. there is no more truly logical connection between kimono and business suit than there is between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. the japanese is necessarily of two minds - mutually incompatible to western eyes - about his world. this pattern is reflected over and over in the japanese film. it becomes a theme of the greatest importance to
232 japanese cinema samurai (shichinin no samurai, 1954) - originally shown abroad, before the american remake (1961), as the magnificent seven - kurosawa' s best film and one which, were it necessary to make the choice, i should call the finest japanese film ever made. in a way, it is the summation of everything which is most japanese about the japanese film. it is concerned with the present, though its story is laid in the past. it criticizes contemporary values but insists that they are, after all, human values. it faithfully and honestly creates the context of japanese life, man and his surroundings. at the same time it is concerned with timeless values and universal attitudes. it uses a controlled realism as vehicle and presents a surface of superlative physical beauty which serves to accentuate the beauty beneath. in many ways seven samurai is both the opposite and the continuation of rashomon. the earlier film represents the limitations of the intellect: four stories, each completely intellectualized, all mutually incompatible, and all, in their way ,
true .
seven samurai on the other hand steps beyond intellectualization. it says that only those acts which spring from emotion are valid acts; that action thus motivated is itself truth. this truth is one which remains, though universally applicable, particularly japanese. it is one which is shared with zen and with the haiku, as well as the films of ozu and kurosawa - the emotions comprehend where the intellect falters. the basic dichotomy is one recognized and insisted upon in japan just as much as in the west, and kurosawa' s hu
1946 - 1971 99 (fuefukigawa, 1960) - kinoshita' s last important picture before his retiring into television - a chronicle film about five generations in the lives of a poor farming family during the sixteenth century. again, the film had a rich theatricality about it, emphasized by a use of color which purposely imitated the very early forms of japanese woodblock prints. in addition kinoshita, particularly in the battle scenes, used still photographs which both halted and held the action. though this technique might be described as an innovation, one should also notice its extreme similarity to the kami - shibai, the old paper - slide theater which the boys and girls of japan still love. the theme of the film would appear antitraditional. the final scene, the true climax of this beautifully made and often compelling film, shows the last remaining member of the family picking up the banner of the ruling family, for which he and his ancestors have traditionally fought, as it floats by on the river, then, with a superb gesture of rejection, throwing it back into the river. what has also become apparent, however, is that kinoshita is only rejecting the worst. the rest of traditional life he keeps and approves. perhaps no more war for tyrannical ruling families but, at the same time, when every new son rides off into the world we are made to feel that mother and father are somehow slighted and that, after all, the family is the most important thing. the attitude of a director such as imai would be, perhaps, that mother is wrong, that it is more important for a young son to realize himself. with this interpretation one
224 japanese cinema desire is both timeless and international in its appeal and it is this quality which kurosawa both preserved and amplified. kurosawa saw in the picture a continuation of a major theme :
i keep saying the same thing in different ways: if i look at the pictures i' ve made, i think they say,' why is it that human beings aren' t happy?' both ikiru and record of a living being are such pictures - the throne of blood on the other hand shows why they must be unhappy .
the reasons are the most elemental rules of the human comedy - kurosawa and shakespeare both agree on just what they are. so, in this film kurosawa continued his thesis that power invariably corrupts. since the story was a legend and the theme timeless, however, he discarded the extreme realism of other historical films, and created a film style which so completely suited the plot that form and content became visually one. using only a handful of components - drifting fog and smoke, rainy forests, the shining surface of armor, the sheen of natural wood, the translucence of cloudy skies, the dead white of human skin - kurosawa, with his cameraman, azakazu nakai, created a film with a definite texture. it was as though you could feel it with the hand. more, it was a nearly perfect fusion of film and sound - and one studded with examples of the director' s talent. just a few were: a marvelous scene - not in shakespeare - where hundreds of birds, disturbed by the destruction of their forest, fly into the banquet hall and circle around the distraught hero; the sequence where
1946 - 1971 103 highest attainment a woman can reach is not in becoming a wife, as in, say, an american film, but in becoming a mother. that this rather monstrous mother as seen in japanese films does not often exist in real life means little. she exists on film and is there because audiences have willed her there. the most notable haha is yuko mochizuki, a fine actress who now finds herself mother most of the time. she - and this particular type of mother role - is seen at her best in such atypical films as kinoshita' s a japanese tragedy and imai' s rice (kome, 1957). in both films she commits suicide, the common lot of japanese film mothers. though mother still reigns, a contender has appeared in the tsuma - mono, or wife picture. this is a postwar development and reflects a very real change of japanese attitude. of course wives were featured in prewar films but seldom did these pictures focus on them as individuals unless they also happened to be mothers. in such cases the fact that mother is also a wife was irrelevant. to speak of a mother in a haha - mono is to speak of a person who occupies a definite place in the family. in the tsuma - mono, on the other hand, it is a concern for the wife as an individual which animates the film. her problems are personally hers and though she may represent young or old wives everywhere, the emphasis is upon her as an individual. not that her problems in japanese films are too varied. usually this motion - picture wife is concerned with her attempt to defend or discover her own individuality. very
102 japanese cinema structure. another favorite complication is that father is more childish than any of the children. the tragic father is always tragic because he is no longer a father and the films of ozu are, even on this popular level, the perfect example. mother, on the other hand, is almost always sympathetic. she is also so prevalent that an entire genre, the haha - mono, or mother film, has been created just for her. in the usual haha - mono there is no escape for mother. she must sacrifice and suffer. it is all a part of her life. if she has any happiness, it is only in the hope that her husband may reform. there is very slight chance of this, however; it is not even socially desirable in a totally male - oriented society. then there are also problems with the children, who often turn out ungrateful for mother' s loving care. in a foreign film, when a child runs away, the mother often feels that she has some connection with her child' s departure and that perhaps he will be happier away from home. it seldom occurs to the japanese mother in the ordinary haha - mono, however, that her child' s happiness is at stake. she feels totally betrayed and the only remedy is a complete reconciliation in which all the old relationships are restored. thus, the foreign film mother finds happiness through adjustment; the japanese entertainment film mother almost never realizes that any adjustment, other than her child' s, is required. mother' s attitude may be unreasonable but, as has been pointed out many times before, she has a vested interest to protect. in japanese films the
1946 - 1971 229 incited them into the duel which killed her husband. all stories are equally plausible, all are probably true - this is what the original script intended to convey, and here it ended. it was kurosawa himself who added the epilogue. he has said that the film was otherwise too short and so it probably was. at the same time, however, the addition is so typical of the director that one cannot well imagine the film without it. after the various stories the cry of an infant is heard. the three find an abandoned baby and the servant steals some of its clothing just as the woodcutter had stolen, we find, the woman' s dagger. the priest remonstrates, thinking the woodcutter intends to strip the infant, but he merely picks it up, saying that though he has six others at home, one more will not matter. the priest, moved, says :
you have, i think, restored my faith in humanity .
this addition is completely typical of the director. it is compassion which, in a way, rights all wrongs; amid a chaos of relative values it is the only absolute. it is also typical of kurosawa that he should have chosen for the film the particular style that he did. of it, he says :
i wanted to return to the simple pictorial values of the silent picture - it is an attempt to bring back the lost beauty of the film .
certainly, so far as pictorial beauty goes, this is a ravishing motion picture. even mizoguchi rarely equaled the beauty of the opening scenes, with lord and wife wandering through the forest. the shots of sunlight filtering through foliage may have been inspired by similar scenes in the films of
58 japanese cinema verted. realism might be used for propagandistic purposes but, at the same time, it remained the principal ingredient of the national film style. the concern for environment, for atmosphere, so much a part of japanese cinema, though heavily criticized during the war for its
lack of optimism ,
remained a part of the film just as it has for centuries remained a part of the character. though an unbiased view was directly opposed to the aims of the militarists, the japanese ability to see the present in the past was by this time so strongly a part of japanese motion picture style that even the most jingoistic of wartime period films were elevated by it. all of these qualities managed to exist throughout the war and, in the years following, as though after a period of incubation, flowered in so luxurious a manner that foreign critics called it a cinematic renaissance. it was not that. rather, it was the logical outcome of what had gone before. the golden age of the japanese cinema had come .
1896 - 1945 13 raquin, ernst lubitsch, erich von stroheim, and g. w. pabst, attempted to create entire worlds, with details so telling that the feeling of actuality became almost palpable. these directors presented characters along with the forces which motived them. their eye for action was so acute that the result was psychological revelation. the early films which helped form japanese film style had an intimacy and a concern for detail which made them unusual. murata and mizoguchi were not merely telling stories. rather, they were creating a world which faithfully reflected and sometimes illuminated the reality of japanese life. murata called his style
symbolic photographicism ,
by which he meant a kind of realism in which all the characters were lifelike but whose actions and personalities had symbolic and occasionally, as in souls on the road, almost allegorical meanings. mizoguchi' s aims were the same though his methods were different. always interested in pictorial beauty, having studied to be a painter, he excelled in the creation of atmosphere, that almost palpable feeling of reality which is the special quality of the well - made film. just as murata wanted his characters to be real but also larger than life, so mizoguchi, and those many more traditionally minded directors who followed him, wanted a world that was more realistic than life. the creation of such a place is naturally one of the privileges of any film director. we approach the films of von stroheim, of lubitsch, of josef von sternberg, of max ophuls, for example, as creations of the directors' own worlds, which obey their own inner laws and which
98 japanese cinema sorrows that they are, at the end of the film, able to remember. in a picture as late as the scent of incense (koge, 1964), a three - hour chronicle film, we see that traditional japan - reactionary and insular - has a way of warping lives, but that this is somehow beautiful because it enables people to live nobly if (or because) unhappily. even more explicit was the ballad of narayama (narayamabushi - ko, 1958), about a small community in the northern mountains whose custom it was to expose the aged to the elements so that there would be more food for the young. the barbarity of the custom, one absolutely unauthenticated it should be added, did not move kinoshita (indeed, he made very decorative use of it) nearly so much as did the spectacle of the son who, the perfect japanese chonan, weeping and struggling, was forced to deposit his mother on top of narayama. tradition, in this case, naturally, did not consist of the fictitious abandoning of the aged, but rather the traditional respect with which youngsters regard their elders in japan, a tradition all the more conspicuous because of its ostensible absence from this film. technically the ballad of narayama reflected kinoshita' s later preoccupation with the traditional. though using both color and widescreen, the director relied heavily on stage effects - even choosing to frame the story in devices taken from the kabuki, that most traditional of japanese theatrical forms. at times this thoroughly conservative motion picture even appeared to be filmed theater. the same was somewhat true of the river fuefuki
236 japanese cinema nique (including extensive use of telephoto lenses for intimacy, shooting even the most violent of sword fights in this manner) to content, with superb results. the story, which concerns rival gangs in a small town at the end of the edo period, is composed of the very stuff of the ordinary period film. toshiro mifune is the masterless samurai, amused and contemptuous, who sets everything right. but kurosawa, like yamanaka before him, infused this common material with new life, returning to even the most notorious cliches their original value. cliches, film or otherwise, are clich6s only because they happen to be true, and in yojimbo kurosawa' s validating of material which the common japanese cinema had deprived of all life was particularly striking. to take but one example: one of the staple cliches of the period film is a falling fighter' s crying oka (from okaasan, meaning mother) as he dies. nowadays it is used in a most perfunctory manner, and kurosawa, seeing it as a challenge, deliberately revitalized it. first in a short scene with a mother and her small son, where it was used with all of the human emotion it retains in ordinary japanese speech; next in a very funny scene where a weak young man, released by the rival gang, rushes to his mother, and barely gets it out of his mouth before she viciously slaps him; and finally in a fighting scene where a dying gang member gives back to it all the horror and despair and longing for life which rightfully belongs to it. the very fact that the material is so ordinary makes
12 japanese cinema japanese audiences just how enlightening and entertaining motion pictures could be. intolerance had been seen in 1919 but it was only after the earthquake, and the resultant shortage of japanese films, that foreign pictures were imported in any number. within a year such important films as the marriage circle, the covered wagon, and the birth of a nation had all been seen. the audiences now took much more readily to the experiments of kaeriyama, osanai, murata, and mizoguchi, which had helped form the basis of common japanese cinematic style. like all true cinematic styles it was based upon realism, upon the fact that the camera cannot help but reflect reality, the style consisting in part of realizing and utilizing rather than attempting to disguise this fact. a film like souls on the road is just as realistic as, say, henry king' s torable david, made in the same year, and is much more realistic than such stagy 1921 spectacles as fritz lang' s destiny or d. w. griffith' s atypical orphans of the storm. realism, however, though it must be the basis of the style, is seldom more than that. the apparently actual must be made meaningful by both a selection and an interpretation. the way in which this has been done constitutes the aesthetic history of the film. some directors, like griffith or sergei eisenstein, created the feeling of reality through cutting, through the structure, or the form of the film they were creating. others, like e. a. dupont and dziga vertov, called attention to the camera itself. still others, such as charles chaplin in a woman of paris, jacques feyder in therese
1946 - 1971 71 dying, and that he regarded this as a tragedy. it is typical of ozu' s world that in it only the very young and the very inexperienced ever attempt to escape from the limitations of this traditional world. ozu' s successes are his fathers and the mothers in such films as floating weeds and late autumn, and their success lies precisely in their accepting these limitations as their own. as in that line from robert frost, they
find salvation in surrender .
the traditional japanese view is limiting, for better or for worse. and the majority of japanese film directors treating these values - and almost every japanese director has, they are such a part of japanese life - are agreed that the limitation is for the worse, though the dismissal is not always as abrupt as that of a kurosawa or an imai. both mikio naruse and shiro toyoda reflect traditional problems but are not content, as is ozu, to reflect. they seem to imply that it is good that tradition dies or, at least, they show it as something from which their characters attempt to escape and cannot. naruse has said :
my films deal exclusively with the home. so do most japanese films. it is in this fact that we find a major fault of japanese pictures - the home is simply too narrow a place in which to set everything... only if japanese films can succeed in breaking beyond the limits of the family will they have truly universal meaning .
thus, in a naruse film, the family is usually held together by bonds so strong that no single member can break them. and, unlike in an ozu film, they all want
takekurabe ( たけくらべ takekurabe ) ( english titles include : adolescence , growing up twice , growing up , and child 's play ) is a 1955 black-and-white japanese film directed by heinosuke gosho . it is a film adaptation of higuchi ichiyō 's 1895-1896 novel takekurabe . production design was made by kazuo kubo , sound recordist was michio okazaki and lighting technician was susumu irie . 
takekurabe (たけくらべ takekurabe) (english titles include: adolescence, growing up twice, growing up, and child's play) is a 1955 black-and-white japanese film directed by heinosuke gosho. it is a film adaptation of higuchi ichiyō's 1895-1896 novel takekurabe. production design was made by kazuo kubo, sound recordist was michio okazaki and lighting technician was susumu irie.
takekurabe (たけくらべ takekurabe) (english titles include: adolescence, growing up twice, growing up, and child's play) is a 1955 black-and-white japanese film directed by heinosuke gosho. it is a film adaptation of higuchi ichiyō's 1895-1896 novel takekurabe. production design was made by kazuo kubo, sound recordist was michio okazaki and lighting technician was susumu irie.