Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [88]
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail
IN THE EARLY days of my marriage I suddenly realized that the wartime air raids were a real threat. We moved from the Ebisu area of Shibuya Ward out to Soshigaya in Setagaya Ward. The following day an air raid sent our Ebisu house up in flames. The war was hurtling Japan along the road to defeat at breakneck speed, and yet the Toho studios, employing the hands of people with empty stomachs, continued to show remarkable vitality in the production of motion pictures. But those who were not running around frantically trying to complete a picture were sitting on their heels in the central courtyard talking. They were so hungry it was painful for them to stand up.
Around this time I had written a script called Dokkoi kono yari (The Lifted Spear) for Okochi Denjiro and Enomoto Ken’ichi to star in. We were already in pre-production, but the last scene was going to require special attention. It was to show the Battle of Okehazama, where the feudal leader Oda Nobunaga defeated a northern Japanese clan in 1560. We needed to show Nobunaga and his generals spurring their horses forward into the final battle, so we set out for Yamagata Prefecture to select an appropriate location and horses.
But even Yamagata Prefecture, which had always been a breeding ground for horses and had provided us with great numbers of them, now had only old nags and sickly beasts. There wasn’t a single horse in the entire prefecture that could run. This discovery led to the shelving of the whole Lifted Spear project, and it was as if we had gone location-scouting only to ruin our film. In my disappointment, I decided at least to take the opportunity to visit my parents, who had been evacuated to Akita Prefecture. This would be the only thing I gained from the entire trip.
I arrived in the middle of the night at the house where my parents were. When I banged on the big front door, my older sister Taneyo, who had gone with my parents to help them, peeped through a crack in it and shouted, “It’s Akira!” Then she left me standing outside in the dark and ran to the kitchen to start cooking rice. I was baffled. It turned out that her behavior was not at all laughable. The first thing she wanted to do for the younger brother who she knew was not getting enough to eat was to cook him a meal with real rice. I was almost moved to tears.
These few days I spent with my father were to be our last together. He had been evacuated from Tokyo after the release of Sugata Sanshirō, and had never seen my new bride. He wanted to hear all about her. Immediately after the war I myself became a father, but my own father was never to see his grandchild.
When I was ready to return to Tokyo, my father loaded me up with a huge backpack full of rice. Because I understood painfully well my father’s feeling of wanting to be sure that my pregnant wife at least had rice to eat, I allowed myself to be treated like a pack mule. The thing was so heavy that if I relaxed my muscles I fell over backward. In my topheavy condition I squeezed onto the train for Tokyo, which was already jammed with people like a sardine can.
At a station partway down the line an Army officer and his wife forced their way onto the overflowing train. A woman complained about their pushiness, and the man snapped at her, “How dare you address a soldier of the Imperial Army in such a way?” The woman came back with, “And as a soldier of the Imperial Army, just what do you think you’re doing?” The officer had no reply, and remained meekly silent all the way to Tokyo. This incident gave me a strong feeling that Japan had already lost the war.
The next morning, completely exhausted by the rice-filled backpack, I made my way to the entry of my house in Soshigaya. I sat down on the step with the weight still on my back, and when I tried to stand up again, I could not.
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail came about