Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [86]
The role of Genzaburo was played by Kono Akitake. One day his scenes were finished early, so we sent him on back alone. The location for these scenes was on a cliff covered with deep snow. I looked down from the top and saw about seven skiers coming up the road to the cliff. Suddenly they all stood stock still, staring up the road ahead of them, and then in a flash they turned back and skied at breakneck speed down the hill. Small wonder. In the heart of the mountains, where you rarely see a trace of other human beings, if you suddenly saw someone dressed like Genzaburo coming toward you, you would run, too.
Though I have no evil intentions, for some reason in my business I end up giving a lot of people a terrible fright. I met these skiers later at the inn, explained what we were doing and apologized.
On this location the climactic duel between Sanshirō and Tesshin took place in deep snow. They both had to be barefoot, so it was a real test of endurance. Even now, whenever Fujita Susumu (who played Sanshirō) sees my face, he begins to talk about his feet on that 1944 location. He goes on and on about how cold they were and how much he holds it against me. Fujita had also had to jump into the lotus pond in the month of February for the first Sugata Sanshirō, so his resentments were really piled up. But I did not make him do these things because I dislike him. Considering that these films made him a star, I think he might go a little easier on me.
Sugata Sanshirō, Part II was not a very good film. Among the reviews was one that said “Kurosawa seems to be somewhat full of himself.” On the contrary, I feel I was unable to put my full strength into it.
Marriage
THE SAME MONTH Sugata Sanshirō, Part II came out in the movie theaters, I was married. To state it accurately, in 1945 at the age of thirty-five I married the actress Yaguchi Yoko (real name Kato Kiyo) in a ceremony at the wedding hall of the Meiji shrine in Tokyo. The official matchmakers for the ceremony were Yamamoto Kajirō and his wife.
My parents, who had been evacuated to Akita Prefecture, could not attend my wedding. The day after the ceremony took place, U.S. carrier-based planes launched a massive attack on Tokyo, and in the B-29 bomb raid the Meiji shrine became a raging conflagration. The result is that we don’t even have a photograph of our wedding. It was a thoroughly panicked event, our marriage, with the air-raid sirens howling throughout.
At that time if you made an official report of your intention to marry, the government gave you a ration of saké for the exchange of nuptial cups. I received this delivery and decided to taste it before the ceremony. It proved to be some kind of awful synthetic saké. But during the actual ceremony when I took a drink from my cup it wasn’t the synthetic saké; it was in fact delicious, and I wouldn’t have minded having a little more. Then at the reception held at my wife’s parents’ house, the only alcohol was a single bottle of medium-grade Suntory whiskey.
I’m afraid my wife will be very annoyed at me for writing about nothing but the liquor at our wedding. But I feel that, in order to convey a true sense of what it was like to get married at that time, these things should be part of the description. In any event, you can imagine that if the wedding ceremony was like this, the events leading up to it were hardly romantic.
It all began with my parents’ evacuation to the country. Morita Nobuyoshi, who was then head of the Toho production division, saw that I was having a difficult time taking care of myself in my day-to-day life. He suggested that I give some thought to getting married. “But who?” I asked, and Morita immediately replied, “What about Miss Yaguchi?” “Well, that does make sense,” I thought to myself, but since she and I had done nothing but fight all the way through The Most Beautiful, I told