Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [17]
I seem to have strayed off the subject; let me return briefly to the Ochiai fencing school, kendō and myself. From the time I began my daily attendance at the Ochiai school, I assumed all the affectations of a boy fencer. I was a child, so this was predictable behavior. After all, I had read about all the great swordsmen from Tsukahara Bokuden (1489–1571) to Araki Mataemon (1599–1637) in books from Mr. Tachikawa’s library.
My apparel at the time was the Kuroda Primary School outfit, rather than that of the Morimura Gakuen, as suited a prospective samurai swordsman: a splash-pattern kimono over duck-cloth hakama trousers, heavy wooden clogs. To get a better picture, try imagining Fujita Susumu in the role of Sugata Sanshirō in my first film. Then shrink him to one third as tall and half as wide and have him carrying a bamboo sword in the sash tied around his kendō outfit. That will give you the idea.
Every morning while the eastern sky was still dark, I set out by the light of the streetlamps on the street that followed the Edogawa River, my wooden clogs scraping along the road. I passed Kozakurabashi bridge, Ishikiribashi bridge, and after crossing Ishikiribashi to the street with the trolley tracks, just about the time I reached Hattoribashi bridge I would pass the first trolley of the day going in the opposite direction. I crossed the Edogawabashi bridge. My journey to this point took about thirty minutes.
From there I walked another fifteen minutes or so in the direction of Otowa, turned left and slowly climbed the hill toward Mejiro. In about another twenty minutes I could hear the drum announcing the start of morning lessons at the Ochiai fencing school. Forcing myself to hurry, in another fifteen minutes I arrived at the school. From the time I left home, walking without taking so much as a glance aside, it took an hour and twenty minutes.
Lessons at the Ochiai school began with meditation. All of the disciples of Ochiai Magoemon (what was his name?) gathered together and sat down on the floor in formal position, facing the shelf for the Shinto deities, which was lit by votive candles. We began by concentrating our strength in the pits of our stomachs and banishing all worldly thoughts.
The room in which we sat had a hard, cold board floor. In order to withstand the winter temperatures, especially when dressed in nothing more than a single layer of fencing costume, you had to concentrate all your strength in your stomach. It was cold enough to make your teeth chatter, so there was hardly any leftover space for an idle worldly thought to pop into your head. In winter all we thought about was getting warm as quickly as possible, but in good weather it took a tremendous concentration of energy to banish those mental obstructions. At the end of the sitting, the parrying-and-thrusting practice began.
We separated according to the rank of our skills and spent thirty minutes in prearranged combat. Then we took formal sitting position again to give thanks to the fencing master, and the morning lesson was over. On cold winter days, by this time our bodies would be giving off steam. But after leaving the fencing school and setting off toward the shrine, my footsteps became heavy.
With my stomach empty and breakfast the only thing on my mind, I would push on to the shrine so as to get home faster. On clear days it was about this time that the first rays of sunshine would strike the top of the gingko tree in the shrine compound. Standing in front of the worship hall, I would ring the “alligator mouth” gong (a hollow metal bell of a wide, flattish shape rung by shaking the clapper-studded braided cloth rope with which it is hung high above the collection box on the exterior of the main shrine building). After clapping my hands in prayer, I would go to the priest’s house in one corner of the compound and stand in the entry way, shouting out, “Good morning!” The priest, his kimono, his hakama and his face all white, would come out.