An Ode To Japanese Film Directors - Part II

When we speak of the Japanese cinema, Kurosawa' name is the one that gets the first mention. While, Kurosawa rightfully gets the due credit for his highly immense and influential contribution to the world cinema, we have to look at the works of his contemporaries, who were as good as Kurosawa, if not better. This writer has not seen much of the Masaki Kobayashi's work apart from Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri and Kwaidan, while Human Condition, an epic war movie, depicting the insanity and the savagery of war, is on the "wish list".

This writer's first introduction to Masaki Kobayashi was through the 1968 flick "Samurai Rebellion". The only reason this movie was picked up, was because it featured actor Toshiro Mifune in the lead (after his parting with Kurosawa post-Red Beard) whose acting mettle had left me indelibly impressed in the earlier Kurosawa movies. The movie also had Tatsuya Nakadai, in an important cameo. The movie is about an aging Samurai (Mifune) who is asked to have his young son marry the wife of the feudal lord, as she had insulted him, earning herself banishment from the clan. After much opposition from Mifune's wife, the family finally have their son marry the ex-wife of the feudal lord. While the new family adjusts itself with their daughter-in-law, the house of the feudal lord demands that she come back and what follows is battle for family pride, honor, love and sacrifice. While, this writer saw many parallels between the styles of Kurosawa and Kobayashi and the movie nonetheless leaves impressed with the story line, acting, editing and directing. If shown to an unknowing audience many will relate this feature to Kurosawa.

Impressed with Masaki Kobayashi's style of story-telling and directing, left this writer wanting for more. The next movie in the line was, Harakiri (Seppuku) released in1962. It is a brilliant masterpiece, that is miles ahead of any other Samurai film made in that era, even Kurosawa flicks might not be close to it by a mile. The film features another great actor from the sixties era, Tatsuya Nakadai, int he lead role and is perhaps one of the finest tragedies ever depicted on celluloid in the history of cinema. If you just wanted a Samurai story perfectly blended with poetic tragedy, this is the movie. The movie starts with an old and half fed, aged samurai swordsman who comes to the house of a feudal family, requesting to commit "Seppuku" or Harakiri. The people of the house of Iye try to discourage him from committing "Harakiri" by recounting the tale of an earlier "Ronin" who came to their place asking to commit harakiri but instead wanted to extract some money out of the house. A "Ronin" is basically a "Samurai" or a "Bushido" but one who has lost his master due to death, defeat in battle etc. With a loss of a pay-master, a Samurai or a Bushido was considered a "Ronin". Many unscrupulous ex Samurais and Bushidos came to the house of rich people asking to perform "Harakiri". Many households abhorred the idea of someone committing suicide in their premises and usually paid money to the Ronins to go somewhere else to do the act. The officer tells the old man the story of a coward "Ronin" was moving around with nothing but a bamboo made sword and to teach him a lesson they "forced" him to commit harakiri with his own bamboo sword and made him suffer a painful, slow and a horrible death. The aged Ronin is still adamant at committing the act of harakiri and the feudal household  heeds his request and they ask him, if he would like any man to act as his second (the samurai who will severe his head when he has cut his entrails) The aged Ronin takes names of three of the members of Iye clan, but as the story unfolds, we come to know that all the second man requested by older samurai are at home, down with some terrible illness, wanting to see or meet none one and that aged Ronin definitely has something up his sleeve.

Harakiri is like an exquisite wine. It takes it own sweet time to go down on you and then it intoxicates and stimulates you with an experience that leaves you satiated at the end. It is tragic tale that hits upon the "established" norms for Samurais and how it was convenient to bend the rules to suit one's own mean ends and that honor was nothing more than a facade for these type of people, to hide their own cowardness, their insensitivities, their false bravado. On the other hand the story deals with tender story of relationship, trust, love and respect.  For any person, interested in eclectic, artful, high standard cinema, Harakiri is one of the top options. Harakiri is also a movie that tells a viewer that Akira Kurosawa, though a brilliant director, was not the only director of huge talent and substance to come from Japan and that there were others too, like Masaki Kobayashi.

Kwaidan, is a collection of four ghost stories, another great masterpiece from Kobayashi. The stories all tell the tales of love, betrayal, bravery, trust, faith, loyalty and inner demons. The first story is of a poor Samurai who leaves his loving caring wife and marries the daughter of rich nobleman. Though he has money and wealth, he has no inner happiness and still longs for his wife. He comes back to his house after several years and finds his wife welcoming him lovingly and joyously and he confesses his true love for her and asks for her forgiveness and vows to start a new chapter in their lives together.

The second story is of young woodcutter (Tatsuya Nakadai) and his friend who get caught in a snow storm and take refuge in an abandoned hut. The hut is visited by a ghost woman (Yuki Onno) at night, who kills his friend but spares Nakadai on the promise he will not spit out a word about the incident. Years later, under some strange circumstances, he recounts the story to his wife and finds out a horrifying truth.

The second story is special because it uses surrealist artwork to serve as backdrops for the scenes, almost giving them a fairytale feel.

The third story is of a blind singer, who sings songs of war that took place in ancient times between the two powerful dynasties in Japan. He is called to sing for a noble family every night and one day when he refuses, the ghosts exact a horrifying revenge on him. The segment of the story uses studio sets to beautifully create the aura, the surrounding and the eerie atmosphere essential towards the story telling.

Masaki Kobayashi has not received the attention he deserves and his works are slowly being credited with praise that they rightfully deserve. Kobayashi, like Kurosawa, was a survivor of the WWII and hence his movies have a strong anti-War, anti-Militarist, anti-Authoratarian sentiment in them, in at least in two of the movies, Harakiri and The Human Condition. While, it is too early to say anything on Masaki Kobayashi, as there is a plethora of movies that have yet to be seen by this writer, still three movies mentioned above prove his worth both as a skillful film maker and that he is undoubtedly one of the best directors of the world cinema.

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.

मन व्यथित था, सुकून न मिला
जीवन के अंधड़ में, एकांकी पल न मिला I

बाहर जीवन का कोलाहल है, गहन में श्मशान की निशब्दता है
पंछियों के नाद के पीछे गगन की नीरवता है I

हर मुस्कराते मुखौटे के पीछे, एक अवसाद भरा मन है
एक अज्ञात तृष्णा से त्रस्त अन्तरमन है I

पथ है पर पथिक नहीं, यात्रा है पर गंतव्य नहीं
मंच है पर वक्ता नहीं, संवाद है पर श्रोता नहीं I

Common Wealth Games 2010

India is patting itself on the back at the seemingly smooth running of the Common Wealth Games 2010, after all the bad and negative publicity it received prior to the opening ceremony. Yes, events have gone on smoothly but was it worth all the effort, time and money that was poured into it? Empty stands, tickets found in a recycle man's bag and not to mention the on going issues, like players experiencing stomach ailments, scoreboards falling off etc. The damage done to India's image is going to stay there for a long, long time to come. The same money could have been utilized to improve infrastructure services, education and accommodation. Perhaps, just like the BJP sponsored hogwash of "India Shining" we want to declare to the world that we are a super power, when in fact, we compete with sub-Saharan nations in poverty, malnutrition and human development. The way Common Wealth Games was preparations were finished, especially the last phase, tells us how the dictatorship and fascism operate. While the big, the influential and the wealthy made millions, the poor labor class was forced to out-stretch themselves beyond humanly possibly limits to complete the work on time and lived under hazardous working conditions. Then, as the foreign athletes, delegates and tourists started arriving, the poor people were rounded up by the police and packed off to their native lands. Instead of spending the money spent on Common Wealth Games, India could have very well carried slum-rehabilitation program, instead they chose to put artificial wall to cut out the sight of dirty, unsightly slums in the national capital.

Anybody, who condones the games has his/her priorities misplaced. Sorry!

Uttarakhand: Is it ready for another mass movement?

(This write up was published in response to an ongoing thread on a web bulletin board).

[Image Source: Prayaga Org.]

The photograph has in some way, we may not like to hear it, come to symbolize "Pahaad". All one needs is a photograph of a woman in drab outfit with a bundle of wood on her head or a tied up basket on her back stuffed with grass. Nothing else defines a "Pahaad" than a woman or a group of women carrying back breaking load on their heads and their backs and smiling for the photographer. It is my understanding that the progress that a society makes and development that it experiences, is somehow reflected through the life of the womenfolks of that society. We have seen this scene in thousands of myriad photographs taken by hundreds of known and unknown photographers, since the invention of camera and film. While the camera technology has significantly improved since the inception of the photographic technology, the subjects, on the other hand, have remained the same in all the relevant terms of human development.

We must not forget that unlike Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh, Uttarakhand was the result of the decades long struggle waged by the masses without any political party in toe and without any political ideology. What started out as a lone voice emerged as the biggest peaceful mass movement the world had ever seen. The people of the state have been innovative and often relied on community based cooperative actions to build roads, micro-hydroelectrical power plant, planted trees and have done various things together towards greater communal benefit. It is my opinion that a mass movement sterile of any political ideology will falter once the main objective has been achieved. What could be that political ideology would be, I am leaving that to the readers' discretion. I might point it out here as well, that a well intentioned political ideology would have taken care of Uttarakhand and it's needs without surrendering the interests of the people, their language and their culture.

Just read the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's report on Uttarakhand. Out of forty-eight hydro-electrical projects sanctioned in the last 16 years, only 10% of the projects have been completed and that rest are in various stages of construction. Uttarakhand has managed to barely produce some 418.05 MW of electrical generation, out of the projected electricity generation of 2423.10 MW. The CAG report says that 52% of Uttarakhand's own needs are met by its own power resources while it has to import or buy electricity from outside to meet the remaining part of electricity needs. So there goes our "Urja Pradesh" (or Energy State) slogan. It is not "Urja Pradesh" but rather an "Ujda Pradesh" (ruined state). So, sensing that I am going a bit off track, nevertheless I thought to share it with the readers here.

If the delimitation inspire another popular uprising, then it is only inevitable that such a thing would occur. The fighting spirit of the people of Uttarakhand will be tested once again, as they are being cunningly manipulated into the role of lesser important entity. The only saving grace for the Indian nation is, that chances of Uttarakhandis joining hands with anti-India forces is remote, yet they can send enough shivers down the spine of the Indian policymakers sitting in New Delhi. Proximity to China and Maoist Nepal (Darchula in western Nepal is a Maoist stronghold) can run enough scares in New Delhi. It is to be seen, whichever way the Uttarakhandis choose, but whatever be it, it would be borne out of frustration, feeling of being neglected, manipulated and tossed around by all and sundry of national politics.

India: World's 3rd Most Powerful Nation

My Underwood is still having some problems. Of late, it has not been typing properly. The ribbon holder does not exactly pushes itself up when the typebar strikes the platen and hence the letters are not getting properly imprinted on the paper.

India third most powerful nation, says US report

Anyway, let me state what I see through this. I do not know what the American think-tank was thinking, when they declared that India is the world's third power after themselves (of course!) and China. Well, they claim to have taken several "insights" from experts from various countries and have conjured up fictional future scenarios to put up the theory. Fictional future scenarios would be as scientific as children's fairy tales. India's ranking in Human Development Index stands at 134. On the Global Hunger Index, India ranks at 66, whereas on that scale Sri Lanka and Pakistan are well ahead of India in rankings at 39 and 61 respectively. The GDP (PPP) per capita ranking of India is at 121 (World Bank) and 128 (IMF). Of course, one could say that India's clout has arisen in the international arena and that India can now boast of 57 billionaires, which in affect shows the that India is progressing and catching up real fast. While, it is true that India has billionaires, the poverty has also increased at alarming levels, especially post-1991 economic liberalization. What good is it to have billionaires affording world class luxuries, while grain is rotting in the godowns and warehouses across the country and people are dying of hunger, malnutrition and have no access to health care, education and accommodation. We have spent some Rs. 3500 crore to organize the Common Wealth Games, most of which has ended up in the pockets of the corrupt ministers, bureaucrats and businessmen. While the budget has shot up by 250% since it's initial estimate, yet nothing seems that will get completed on time. The CWG has come to symbolize how corruption has sunk into the national consciousness and that people hardly care if the likes of Suresh Kalmadi and Co. are making good of their greed. Suresh Kalmadi attacked Mani Shankar Aiyyar when he said he wanted the CWG to fail and called Aiyyar an anti-national. Well, who is the real anti-national here? The whistle-blower or the minister who was writing checks to pay firms that never existed?

A real super power is a country where every section of the society, every individual citizen is taken care of, where every penny every action can be accounted for and justice is dispensed as honestly and as early as possible. We do not find those things in the contemporary Indian context and hence we know that India is NOT global power but a third rate "wanna be".

The Typewriter