Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [46]
Around that time there was a boom in the printing of “yen books,” so-called because each cost one yen, and the market was flooded with collections of both Japanese literature and translations of foreign works. If you went to secondhand bookstores, you could find these books remaindered for fifty sen, sometimes even thirty sen, so even I could buy as many as I wanted. For someone like me who had no need to spend time in academic pursuits, there was more than enough time to spend in random reading. I read classics and contemporary, foreign and Japanese literature without discrimination. I read under the covers in bed at night, I read as I walked along the street.
I went to the theater to see Shinkokugeki, the “New National Drama” developed to take the place of Meiji-era Kabuki. It was with the greatest wonder in my eyes that I watched the performances at the playwright-director Osanai Kaoru’s Tsukiji Little Theater, the center of revolution in the theater.
A friend of mine who liked music had a phonograph and a record collection. At his house I listened mainly to classical recordings. I also went often to listen to composer-conductor Konoe Hidemaro’s New Symphony Orchestra rehearsals.
Naturally, as an aspiring painter, I went to see every kind of painting I could, both Japanese and Western. At that time art books and printed monographs on painters were not very common, but I bought what I could afford of what was available. What I couldn’t afford, I imprinted on my brain by looking at it over and over again in a bookstore. Most of the art books I bought at this time were lost along with all my other books in the air raids on Tokyo in the Pacific War. But a few of them are still in my possession. Their spines are broken and frayed, their covers and pages mixed up, and they are covered with fingerprints—some of them obviously made by paint-smeared fingers. And when I look at these books now, the same emotions I felt when I first studied them come rushing back.
I became fascinated by motion pictures, too. My older brother, who had left home and was moving from boardinghouse to boardinghouse, was addicted to Russian literature. But at the same time he wrote under various pen names for film programs. He wrote in particular about the art of the foreign cinema, which was much promoted following the First World War.
In matters of both film and literature I owe much to my brother’s discernment. I took special care to see every film my brother recommended. As far back as elementary school I walked all the way to Asakusa to see a movie he had said was good. I don’t remember what it was that I saw in Asakusa, but I do remember that it was at the Opera Theater. I remember waiting in line for discount tickets for the late show, and I remember my brother getting a terrific scolding from my father when we got home.
I have tried making a list of the films that impressed me at that time, and the list runs to nearly a hundred titles.*
Even I am surprised at the number of films I saw during this time that have survived in the annals of cinema history. And I owe this to my brother.
At the age of nineteen, in 1929, I became dissatisfied with my life of painting landscapes and still-lifes when so much was going on in the world around me. I decided to join the Proletarian Artists’ League. When I informed my brother of my intentions, he said, “That’s fine. But the proletarian movement is like influenza now. The fever is going to die down very quickly.” I felt slightly irked by his comment.
At the time my brother had taken a great step. He was no longer simply writing program notes for films as a great fan of the movies, he had become a professional silent-film narrator. The narrators not only recounted the plot of the films, they enhanced the emotional content by performing the voices and sound effects and providing evocative descriptions of the events and images on the screen—much like the narrators of the Bunraku puppet theater. The most popular narrators were stars in their own right, solely responsible for the