Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [49]
Just at that moment the air-raid sirens began to shriek. It was the beginning of the saturation bombing of Yokohama. It was also the end of my association with military service.
But I often wonder what would have happened if I had actually been drafted. I had failed military training in middle school, and I had no certificate of officer’s competence. There would have been no way for me to stay afloat in the Army. On top of that, if I had ever run into that Army officer who had been attached to Keika Middle School, it would surely have been the end for me. Even thinking about it now makes me shudder. I have that officer who administered the Army physical to thank for sparing me. Or maybe I should say I have my father to thank.
A Coward and a Weakling
I FIRST BEGAN commuting to the Proletarian Art Research Institute in Shiina-chō, Toshima Ward in 1928. I showed my paintings and posters in their exhibitions. But the Proletarian Artists’ League, which I joined in 1929, had a brand of realism that was much closer, in my view, to naturalism, and pretty far from the intensity of realism in the work of Courbet. There were some excellent painters in this group, but in general, rather than an artistic movement with its roots in the essentials of painting, it was a practice of putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas—a “leftist tendency” movement, as not only paintings but films of this type came to be called. I gradually came to have deeper and deeper doubts about this movement, and in the end I lost the passion for painting.
Around this time I had become so disillusioned with the Proletarian Artists’ League that I was entering into more direct, illegal political action. The proletarian newspapers had gone underground; their slogans were written in the Western alphabet, and they were further disguised by patterns and designs surrounding them. I became a member of the lower ranks of one of these organizations. Carrying out such activities made me likely to be arrested. I had already experienced the “pigpen” (jail) as a member of the Proletarian Artists’ League, but if I got caught this time, I would not get out so easily as I had on those occasions.
Just imagining the look on my father’s face if he heard I had been arrested gave me immeasurable pain. I told my parents I was going to live with my brother for a while, and I left home. I moved from rented room to rented room and occasionally found shelter in the homes of Communist sympathizers.
At first my job consisted mostly of making contact with members on the outside. But the oppression was so severe that often the person with whom I was to communicate did not appear at the appointed place. Arrested en route, he would never be heard from again.
One snowy day I was on my way to an appointment near Komagome Station. As I opened the door of the coffee shop, I suddenly froze. There were five or six men inside who all stood up simultaneously as they saw me. At one glance I knew they were special police detectives; they all had the same strange reptilian look about them.
The instant they rose to their feet, I was already running. I had the habit of laying out a getaway route whenever I went to an appointment, just in case. This time it paid off. I’m not very fast on my feet, but I was still young, and by taking the route I had picked out ahead of time I lost them completely.
I also had a run-in with the Kempeitai military police once. I was caught, but the M.P. turned out to be very nice. I told him I had to use the restroom, and without even frisking me first he led me off to the facilities. He even held the door shut for me, while inside I hastily swallowed the crucial papers from my superiors that I was carrying. I was set free immediately