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By Root 645 0

to create the impression of heat. But I received an unprovoked complaint—or, rather, accusation—from an American woman who had watched the filming. She represented the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and claimed that I had had a healthy dog injected with rabies. This was a patently false charge. The dog was a stray that we had obtained from the pound, where it was about to be put away. The people in charge of props had given it affectionate care. It was a mutt, but it had a very gentle face, so we used makeup to give it a more ferocious appearance, and a man on a bicycle exercised it to make it pant. When its tongue started to hang out, we filmed it. But, no matter how carefully we explained all this, the American S.P.C.A. lady refused to believe it. Because the Japanese were barbarians, injecting a dog with rabies was just the sort of thing we would do, and she had no time for the truth. Even Yama-san came by to confirm that I was a dog-lover and would never do such a thing, but the American lady insisted that she was going to take me to court.

At this point I lost all patience. I was ready to tell her that the cruelty to animals came from her side. People are animals, too, and if we are subjected to things like this, we need a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans. My colleagues did their best to calm me down. In the end, I was forced to write a deposition, and I never at any other moment experienced a stronger sense of regret over Japan’s losing the war.

With the exception of this one unfortunate incident, the making of Stray Dog was most enjoyable. It was underwritten by the Film Art Association and Shin Toho, so I was able to work once again with crew members who had been separated from me by the Toho strike. From our days together back at P.C.L., I got back my sound recordist Yanoguchi Fumio and my lighting technician Ishii Chōshichiro, and for cameraman I got back Nakai Asakazu, who has worked with me more often than anyone else. For the music I had Hayasaka as composer again, and as chief assistant director a close friend since P.C.L. days, Honda Inoshiro. The art director was Matsuyama Shu, but his assistant was the man who has since been art director on all of my films, Muraki Yoshiro.

On top of this, we used the Oizumi studio. The furor of the strike had not yet totally died down, and it might have been difficult for me to use the Shin Toho studios, so we ended up at the old place. At that time it was virtually deserted. On the grounds there was a small apartment-house kind of building, so we all moved in there and used it as a dormitory. We worked without respite or distractions.

It was midsummer when we filmed Stray Dog. When the day’s work ended around five o’clock, the sun was still beating down. Even after we finished supper it was still light outside. Right after the war, even if you went into the center of town (from Oizumi that meant going to the Ikebukuro district), there was not much to do. We ended up killing time waiting for dark and the hour to return to the dormitory. More often than not someone would say, “Why don’t we do a little more work?” We ended up spending a great many evenings on the set.

Stray Dog is made up of many short scenes in many different settings, so the little sound stage we used was cleared and redecorated with lightning speed. On fast days we shot five or six different scenes on it. As soon as the set was ready, we’d shoot and be done again, so the art department had no choice but to build and decorate sets while we slept. The art director, Matsuyama Shu, had three other films to supervise besides mine, so he just drew plans of what he wanted and hardly ever came to the set. The ones who really slaved to put it all together were his assistant Muraki and a female assistant.

One evening I went to see how construction was going on the open set at one of our locations. Against the sunset sky I saw two silhouettes on top of the wooded hill. Muraki and the girl assistant were sitting exhausted, totally silent. I was about to yell my thanks to them