Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [42]
The sixth-grader willingly manipulated the fishnet, but he absolutely refused to wield the stick. “No. Orders,” he said. The fact that my father’s instructions had penetrated even this boy’s brain caused me to marvel and shut my mouth.
It was summer, so we usually ate our outdoor meals in a cool forest. First we’d find two Y-shaped branches and stick them into the ground. Then we’d lay a crosspiece on them, hang the pot on it and build a fire underneath. The pot was cast iron, but inside it were big clamshells with miso sauce for cooking the fish in kaiyaki style. The fish were mostly varieties of carp. We would add local herbs and vegetables that grew wild. We ate with chopsticks made from whittled branches, and our meals were indescribably delicious.
I was about to write that these were the best meals I’ve ever tasted, but that would be a slight exaggeration. Nevertheless, I would be hard put to decide which meals were better, these or the cold riceballs I ate atop the peaks when I much later became a devotee of mountain climbing.
We usually ate dinner on the riverbank. This meal, eaten amid the sunset colors of the sky and the glowing reflection from the river, had a different flavor although the ingredients were the same. When it was over, we made our way back home, reaching it in total darkness. As soon as I returned and had a bath, I was sleepy. I’d have a cup of tea by the sunken hearth and find myself unable to keep my eyes open, so I’d go straight to bed.
With the exception of rainy days, my entire summer was spent in this kind of mountain samurai’s existence. Gradually I got better at catching fish, and the stick with the board on it lost its heaviness for me. Gradually also we came to penetrate deeper and deeper into the mountains, and our number increased to three, then four and five as other children tagged along with us.
One day we came upon a waterfall. It emerged from what seemed to be a rock tunnel cut through the mountain wall, and it plunged some thirty feet into a pool. The pool was not a very big one, and the overflow continued on down the mountain. I asked the other children what it was like at the other end of the tunnel the waterfall came through. They all replied that no one knew because no one had ever been there. “Well, then I’ll go take a look,” I said. They all looked horrified and urged me to give up the idea—after all, no adult had ever been there, so it must be really dangerous, they insisted. At this resistance my stubbornness grew and I felt I absolutely had to go.
I shrugged off all the frantic attempts to deter me and clambered up the cliff. I entered the hole from which the waterfall emerged, putting both hands firmly against the top and my feet astride either side of the stream below me. Shifting my weight from left to right with each step, I headed for the light at the end of the tunnel where the stream came in. Each time I moved one of my hands or feet, the smooth, wet moss on the rock walls threatened to make me slip. The sound of the water inside the tunnel made a deafening, echoing roar, but I wasn’t particularly frightened.
But the moment I arrived at the other end I inadvertently relaxed my grip. In an instant I had fallen into the stream. I don’t know how I came back through the tunnel, but before I could gather my wits I was astride the top of the waterfall and plunging headlong over it into the pool below. I seem to have come through unharmed, because I surfaced and swam to the edge of the pool, where the terrified children all stared at me with their eyes as wide as saucers.
It’s a good thing they didn’t ask me what it was like at the other end of the tunnel. I did make it that far, but I didn’t have time to look around.
After that I did one more stupid thing that amazed the boys of Toyokawa Village. Not far away there is a good-sized river called the Tamagawa. At one point the current of the Tamagawa forms a big whirlpool. Whenever the village children went swimming, their good sense made them carefully avoid this spot. I once more displayed