Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [95]
Immediately afterward I threw myself into work on Four Love Stories. This was to be just one of four episodes, and I already had the story worked out in my head, so I scribbled it down in four days. At last I was free to sit down across a table from Uekusa and begin writing One Wonderful Sunday.
It had been twenty-five years since “Murasaki” Uekusa and Kurosawa “Shōnagon” had matched writing styles at the same work table. We were both now thirty-seven years old. But as we worked together I came to realize that although we both had changed in outward appearance, inside we remained virtually the same as we had been as children. Sitting face to face day after day, we found that the years vanished like a dream and these early middle-aged men became “Kei-chan” and “Kuro-chan” again. There are few people in this world who change as little as Keinosuke had. I don’t know if it’s the purity of his heart or just plain obstinacy. As weak as he is, he puts on a show of strength; as romantic as he is, he puts on a show of being a realist. He’s always doing things that make one feel uneasy. In sum, ever since primary school he’s been causing me problems.
Ten years before One Wonderful Sunday I had been sitting on top of the crane on the open set for Tōjurō’s Love. As I was giving directions to the crowd of extras we were filming, suddenly from the middle of the group a hand waved at the camera. One of the basic principles of filmmaking is that the actors must not look at the camera, so I leaped from my perch in a rage to give the fellow what for. When I got close, an odd character with an ill-fitting topknot on his head smiled at me. “Say, Kuro-chan!” I realized then it was Uekusa. Shocked, I asked him what he was doing, and he proudly replied that lately he’d been making lots of money as an extra. I was so busy on this film I didn’t have time for his pranks, so I gave him five yen and told him to go home. He took the money, but didn’t leave, as it turned out. Later he confessed to me that he had put on a masterless samurai’s costume with a deep straw hat to evade my gaze, and he had pocketed not only what I gave him but his full extra’s wages as well. When he told me this, I remembered there had been a strange samurai who persisted in wandering around the set in the wrong places and making trouble for me. Keinosuke remains worrisome.
This fellow Uekusa, perhaps because of the karma from some previous existence, one day suddenly vanishes from before my eyes and another day reappears just as suddenly. And during the periods he is absent from my field of vision he is doing the most amazing things. He took a job as foreman of a crew of gravel-pit laborers. He worked as an extra in the movies. He joined the parade of courtesans in the Yoshi-wara legal-prostitution quarter in Tokyo. And in between these exploits he found time to write superb plays and film scripts.
It may have been that the elusive Uekusa simply got tired of his perennial wanderings, but once he sat down to work on the script for One Wonderful Sunday he applied himself with extreme calm and single-mindedness. His devotion may also have come from the fact that the subject matter of the film—impoverished lovers struggling along in defeated Japan—was perfect material for this man who was always attracted by underdogs and the shadowy side of life. In any event, the material was so well suited to him that our opinions