An Ode To Japanese Film Directors - Part I

Coming back to the blogging world after nearly a yawning gap of almost twenty months, it is not too easy to pick up from where I left last. Just like a person, who exercises regularly and then stops for some reason, be it health or otherwise, finds it difficult to come back to the proper routine, something of that kind happened with this writer as well. The time away from blogging was spent exploring newer avenues, like painting, reading books, conceptualizing short stories and traveling to places. Apart from these, the writer was fortunate enough to watch some of the classics, especially from master film makers like Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi and Kihachi Okamoto. This two-part blog entry will discuss the works of Japanese directors, namely, Kurosawa, Kobayashi and Okamoto.

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is considered, and rightfully so, one of the best directors that the world has ever seen. He is on the same league of the directors that include Satyajit Ray, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Orson Welles. The references to the world cinema would be incomplete without the mention of timeless classics like "Rashomon", "The Seven Samurai", "High and Low", "The Red Beard", "Dersu Uzala", "Kagemusha" and "Ran" being the most famous ones, that were universally acclaimed by the film critics and the viewers world over.


The first ever Kurosawa movie this writer watched was "Rashomon", which is a fascinating tale of murder of a man by a bandit thug. Before the judges can deliver their verdict, they need to know about the incident and its motivations from the alleged perpetrator, the surviving victim and the witness. The movie deals with the idea that there is nothing such as "objective truth" and it is more of a subjective entity, that varies from person to person and place to place. The ending of the film is intentionally left open ended. While, this movie has been considered as the "the coming of age" movie for Kurosawa, it was in fact the first Kurosawa movie on the "Samurai" genre, that he remained committed to for the most part of the 1950s, like "Seven Samurai", "The Hidden Fortress", "The Throne Of Blood", "Yojimbo" and 'Sanjuro". During the 1950s, he also worked on two non-Samurai movies, namely "Ikiru" and "I Live In Fear". Ikiru, which means "To Live" in Japanese, is a moving story about a soon-to-be retired Japanese bureaucrat Watanbe (Takashi Shimura), who has done nothing worthy of notice in his entire career except robotically moving files from his table. One day, Watanbe is diagnosed with an ulcer that is in advanced stage and he is given six months to a year to live by his doctor. Aghast at the prospect of an impending death, he tries to regain his wits and wonders aimlessly, where he meets various people, prostitutes that wean his mind away from his misery, though only momentarily. Meanwhile, a young girl, who worked in his office comes to meet him to get his signature on a letter of reference for the new job she just landed up with. His interactions with the young woman makes him realize that taking pride in the work one does, by setting goals and objectives and being happy by making other people happy, will ultimately give one happiness and a sense of fulfillment. The very next day he joins his office and sets off on a mission.

Then in 60s came Samurai flicks such as "Yojimbo" and "Sanjuro" that became the inspirations for Italian director Sergio Leone's first western "A Fistful Of Dollars". The 1960s also saw the unfortunate parting of ways between Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, arguably the one of the best director-actor combination in the history of modern cinema. The parting was so bitter that Kurosawa and Mifune never worked together for the rest of their lives. After a long period of inactivity and a major cinematic failure (Tora! Tora! Tora!) in between, Kurosawa came back with thunder named "Dersu Uzala". This was Kurosawa's first international venture, being a Soviet-Japanese co-production. This movie's story about a Russian captain and his group of Russian army soldiers in Czarist Russia, who are out in the wild, surveying the vast Russian landscape. They enlist one lonesome asiatic hunter, Dersu Uzala, who has a good grasp of the region, to be their guide. The story basically tells of human bonding that develops between the main character (Dersu Uzala) and the other individuals, who are from a different ethnic background, different culture and speak different languages and how human feelings of friendship, trust and faith transcend the manmade boundaries of ethnicity, language and culture. The film also shows that people, who we may, owing to our own ignorance, dismiss as "Tribals", "Primitives" for being technically and culturally inferior to us, are actually people who have better understanding of the nature, the environment they live in and diversified forms of life that they share their earthly habitat with. Echoes of similar thoughts are found in Satyajit Ray's last movie "Agantuk" (The Guest), where Ray successfully infuses such thought in the mind of the viewer through a scene that has no dialogues but just a group of tribals celebrating their festival and dancing around. That scene from Agantuk had a powerful effect on this writer and it made him realize that cultures are such a powerful expressions of mankind, it is their identity, each is unique in its own respect, inferior to none. . It was not felt when I saw the movie for the first time sometimes in the late 1990s but years later I watched it again sometimes back in 2009-10.


The 1980s saw two epic classics from Kurosawa,Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985). Kagemusha is simple story of a thief who has striking resemblance in appearance, almost spitting image, to the ruling feudal lord and how he dons the mantle of the feudal lord after his death to keep the rivals of the shogunate guessing about him. Ran is based on the Shakespearean tragedu "King Lear". In both the movies, the cinematography is brilliant, so are the battle scenes which are one of most iconic battle scenes ever shot on film. Both the films deal with power struggle, betrayal, lust, love, greed, defeat and death. Both of these films have another famous Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai, who gives fantabulous performance, just like he did in other Kurosawa movies but his role was always overshadowed by Toshiro Mifune's character. Tatsuya Nakadai was used to his full potential by another great Japanese film director Masaki Kobayashi, who would be discussed in the next installment. Akira Kurosawa did a few movies more towards the end of his career, the most famous one being the "Dreams", which was the cinematic expression of the dreams that he had during his life, from childhood to adulthood. These dreams include stories of boy of disobeyed his mother, to young man moving around in a world full colors. It also contains a movie story about a returning Japanese army officer who is confronted with the ghosts of the soldiers of his company, who were annihilated in the war, to a creepy segment , known as "The Weeping Demon" that shows the after-effects of a nuclear holocaust, to finally the "Village of Watermills", where people live happily and in complete harmony with their  natural surrounding.


Like any other person, Kurosawa was never a person without faults. He had his triumphs and he had his downfalls. He made timeless classics and he made average movies too but in all his contribution to the world cinema has been enormous and he is credited with bringing out raw but now widely recognized acting talents, Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai. Kurosawa's legacy will continue to live on for years and he will continue to inspire generations of film makers for a long, long time to come.