Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [78]
At the barracks where the camera crew were housed I waited for Yama-san to return. But a message came that he would be delayed because he had to have dinner with the admiral and the commissioned officers. My instructions were not to wait up. I waited until about 11:00 p.m. and then gave up and crawled into bed. I fell asleep immediately.
In the middle of the night I woke up. When I turned over, I saw light coming through the cracks around the door of Yama-san’s room. I got up and very softly walked over and peeked in. I saw Yama-san seated on top of his bed with his back to the door. He was reading.
He was poring over the manuscript of my Sugata Sanshirō screenplay. He was going through it very carefully page by page, sometimes turning back the pages and rereading. In that concentrated silhouette there should have been some sign of the exhaustion of the day’s shooting and the evening’s drinking. Not a trace. The barracks occupants had all gone to sleep; there wasn’t a sound anywhere, except for the pages turning. I wanted to say, “You have to get up early in the morning—it’s all right, you don’t have to do this for me, please go to sleep.” But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to speak. His seriousness was intimidating. I sat down and waited with my back erect for him to finish reading. I will never forget that view of Yama-san’s back and the sound of those pages turning.
I was thirty-two years old. At last I had climbed to the base of the peak I had to scale, and I stood gazing up at my mountain.
Ready, Start!
THE SHOOTING of Sugata Sanshirō began on location in Yokohama in 1942. My first step as a director, the first shot we set up, was Sanshirō and his teacher, Yano Shogoro, coming up a long flight of stone steps leading to a Shinto shrine. After the tests were done and we were ready to shoot, with the cameras rolling I gave the call for action, “Yoi, staato!” (“Ready, start!”) The whole crew turned to stare at me. Apparently my voice sounded a little peculiar. I had done plenty of second-unit directing for Yama-san, but, no matter how much experience you have, when you finally reach the point of directing your own first film you are in a state of extreme tension.
But from the second shot my tension disappeared; everything just felt exciting, and all I wanted to do was hurry on. The second shot showed what the judo expert and his teacher saw at the top of the steps: the back of a young girl praying in front of the worship hall of the shrine. She is the daughter of Murai Hanshiro, who will be Sanshirō’s adversary in the match sponsored by the police headquarters, and she is praying for her father’s victory. But Sanshirō and his teacher don’t know who she is, and they are so impressed by this girl’s fervent prayers that they try to avoid disturbing her and go around the back way to pray and leave.
Preparing for this second shot, the actress playing the daughter (Todoroki Yukiko) asked me, “Mr. Kurosawa, do I just pray for my father’s victory?” I replied, “Yes, that’s right, but while you’re at it, you might as well pray for the success of this picture, too.”
While on the Yokohama location, one morning I got up and went to the washroom. On my way I happened to glance at the entryway, and among the men’s shoes lined up there I saw a pair of high heels. They were quite flashy-looking, so I couldn’t believe they belonged to the script girl. Miss Todoroki was commuting to the set from home, so they couldn’t be hers. Yet, aside from the script girl, there were only men in the crew and cast staying at this inn. I found this strange.
I asked the innkeeper whose shoes they were. He looked at me with a pained expression, but I guess he decided he had been caught. “Mr. Fujita [Susumu, who was playing the Sanshirō role] went out drinking last night in Yokohama and brought back a girl from a bar,” he said. “But I put her in a separate room.”
I had to