Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [112]
I had gone to the Komagata-ya regularly when I was an assistant director. There was a pretty barmaid there named O-Shigechan, and she understood us very well, won our affection and let us drink on credit. I used to go there with all the other assistant directors.
For some reason I had gone to the Komagata-ya alone one evening. We usually went upstairs to a dirty but comfortable room on the second floor, but to drink alone I sat down at the bar on the ground floor. It was on this occasion that Hiruta was sitting next to me. He was already quite drunk, and he persisted in talking to me. The bartender, O-Shigechan’s father, tried to keep the man from bothering me, but I nodded my head to let him know I didn’t mind. I drank on while listening to the stream of babble.
Behind the man’s appearance—he was approaching fifty—as well as in his manner of speaking there seemed to be something very bitter, something that tugged at the heart as he talked. He didn’t just ramble senselessly like an ordinary drunk. I wondered how many times he had repeated his story before he told it to me. He talked as if he had memorized his speech, and recited it fluently and casually. But in that casual air the sad content of his talk was all the more striking.
The subject of his refrain was his daughter. She was suffering from tuberculosis and was completely bedridden, and he repeated over and over again what a wonderful girl she was. She was “like an angel,” “like a shining star,” descriptions that under ordinary circumstances would sound sickeningly sweet. But I was strangely moved, and listened to him with an open heart.
He went on to say that, compared to his daughter, he himself was a totally worthless human being. He started to list the ways, giving examples, in which he had proved inferior to his daughter, but at this point O-Shigechan’s father seemed to have had all he could take. He put a covered glass dish in front of the man and said, “All right, that’s enough now. You’d better go home; your daughter’s waiting for you.” The man suddenly fell silent and sat staring at the glass dish. He didn’t move. Inside the covered dish was something that looked like the sort of food that would be given to someone with a high fever. Suddenly he stood up, grabbed the dish, tucked it carefully under his arm and rushed out the door.
O-Shigechan’s father apologized to me as I gazed at the door through which the man had disappeared. “He’s a problem. He comes in here every day and repeats those same things while he drinks the evening away.” I wondered what the man who had just rushed out said to his daughter when he came home every night. As I thought about what must be in his heart, I felt pain well up in my own.
That evening I drank and drank, but was unable to feel any release. I was sure I would never forget this man and his story. I did, completely. But when I was writing the Scandal screenplay, his memory emerged unconsciously from my brain and made my pen dance on with peculiar strength. The character of Hiruta was written by that man I met in the Komagata-ya bar. He was not written by me.
Rashōmon
DURING THAT TIME the gate was growing larger and larger in my mind’s eye. I was location-scouting in the ancient capital of Kyoto for Rashōmon, my eleventh-century period film. The Daiei management was not very happy with the project. They said the content was difficult and the title had no appeal. They were reluctant to let the shooting begin. Day by day, as I waited, I walked around Kyoto and the still more ancient capital of Nara a few miles away, studying the classical architecture.