Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [99]
Taking this newly formed doctor character, we put him in a clinic on the opposite bank of the garbage sump from the black market. With him living in his clinic and the yakuza controlling the territory across the pond, a superb balance came into play. To make the drama unfold, all we had to do was wait for the two men to come in contact with each other.
Uekusa and I made the gangster and the doctor collide head on in the very first scene of the film. The gangster is injured in a gang war and goes to see the alcoholic doctor to have the bullet removed. As he takes care of the bullet hole, the doctor finds that the gangster also has a hole in his lung, resulting from tuberculosis. It is the tuberculosis germ that proves a binding tie for the two men. From that point on, all that was necessary to set the drama in motion was for the two of them to disagree and oppose each other on what should be done about it, and tuberculosis would act as pivot. Once things got rolling on the script with this structure, we finished it in virtually one sitting.
Our speed at writing does not necessarily mean everything went perfectly smoothly between Uekusa and me, however. I’m not sure what the cause was. Perhaps it was that Uekusa, in the course of associating with our gangster role-model in order to study him, became too deeply involved with him. Perhaps he was simply overcome by his natural feeling of sympathy for the weak, the wounded and those who live in the shadows of life. In any event, he began to object to my attitude of opposition to the yakuza system.
Uekusa’s dissatisfactions hinged on the argument that the failures and perversions in the yakuza personality were not the sole responsibility of the individual. This may well be true. But even if the society that gave birth to them must assume a part, or even the greater share, of the responsibility for the existence of yakuza, I still can’t approve of their behavior. In the very same human society that gave birth to such evil, there are also good people who are living honest, decent lives. I can’t excuse those who make their living by threatening and destroying the lives of these good people. Nor do I accept the criticism that opposition to people like yakuza is merely the egoism of someone speaking from a position of strength. Granting that there is some truth to the theory that defects in society give rise to the emergence of criminals, I still maintain that those who use this theory as a defense of criminality are overlooking the fact that there are many people in this defective society who survive without resorting to crime. The argument to the contrary is pure sophistry.
Uekusa claims that he and I are fundamentally different in character, but I think we are fundamentally the same. It is only on the surface that we differ. He says I have never known regret, desperation or defeat; that I was born strong. He describes himself as someone who was born weak, who has always lived in the vale of tears with pain, moaning and bitterness in his heart. But this viewpoint I find shallow. In order to combat the pain that life brings, I wear the mask of a strong person, while Uekusa, in order to indulge in the pain that life brings, wears the mask of a weak person. He is only wearing a mask. But this is what happens on the surface; superficially we differ, but underneath we are essentially the same type of weak person.
The reason I have brought up these personal differences between Uekusa and me here is not because I am trying to attack him. Nor is it because