Walking Kurosawa's Road: Ikiru

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.


Ikiru (aka "To Live" aka 生きる)(Akira Kurosawa, 1952) For those who've seen more than just Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, this is the one that is most often cited as his crowning achievement.

Hard to argue.

Short on visual majesty, except in the sort of composition and eye for detail that Kurosawa brought to every film, with very little of what one would call "action," and inspired by the director's love for Russian Literature, Ikiru tells the story of a simple bureaucrat, a paper-shuffler, "a walking corpse," as the narrator describes "the protagonist." 

Set in contemporary Japan, it follows Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), a Kainan civil servant (with the uninspiring title of "Section Chief of Public Affairs") who has worked for the same department for 30 years and who (we are told) has been "dead for twenty years"—that's around the time his last white paper on steps to improve efficiency in his department was summarily dismissed by his "higher-ups".

We see a typical day at his office. Kanji rubber-stamping papers with barely a glance, the same way that he handles a request from Sakai (Haruo Tanaka) about the concerns of the Kuroe Women's Association—they want to drain a local cess-pool and create a children's park on the site, eliminating a health hazard and providing a benefit for Japan's version of "baby-boomers." Kanji basically runner-stamps them, sending them off to Public Works without any sort of entree or recommendation, where the mothers go through an all-day session of bureaucracy runarounds only to end up exactly where they started. 

Only when they return to his desk, Kanji is not there—he has uncharacteristically taken time off from his duties to go to the physician's office. He has certain symptoms—pains—which a fellow patient in the waiting room tells him could be stomach cancer, which is a death sentence. But (he's informed), the doctors, who wouldn't be able to treat the cancer, will tell him that it's merely a mild ulcer, there's no need to operate, and to eat whatever he wants (as long as it's easy to digest). The patient tells him that is his experience, and when Kanji is called to the doctor's office, his worst fears are answered. He's told he has a mild ulcer, there's no need to operate, and he can eat anything he wants (as long as it's easy to digest). That patient was telling the truth; the doctors will lie. His diagnosis is good news; it is a death sentence. The doctors can only watch as their cheery "spin" fills Kanji with despair. They know he is suffering, but they go on with their charade. That is how things are done, you see. To deviate from it might be disastrous.

At the doctor's office, Kanji has been given a taste of his own medicine and it is a bitter pill. He knows he has less than a year to live, but he has no idea how. Living has become a habit, something he has squandered, and, in his grief, he takes things to excess. "What would you do," his doctor asks his team after he's left "if you had only six moths to live?" Kanji staggers home, oblivious to the world, only to hear his son and his new wife arrive home, speculating on buying a new home with his money, and he recalls himself as a widower, raising the boy himself, the sacrifices, and can only cry himself to sleep.

The next day, he is not at work, nor is he for the next five days—¥50,000 has been taken out of his account—but no one can find him. It turns out he's been drowning his sorrows, pretty stupid for a man with stomach cancer, but the sake gives him oblivion and oblivion takes away the thoughts in his head—of his wasted life, his contemplation of suicide and his cowardice for not doing it. He blurts all this to a writer "of second-rate fiction" who finds Kanji's existential struggle romantic and vows to help him start living by taking him to pachinko parlors, cabarets, dance-halls and strip-joints, but it is all just drunken activity that only makes him feel worse. He is running in place and getting nowhere.

Still recovering from his night's activities with the writer, he has a chance encounter with a co-worker (Miki Odagiri) who is overjoyed to see him. Feeling stifled by the job at Public Affairs, she was been wanting to quit but has needed his permission signed to begin work at a new job making children's toys. Watanabe takes her to his house to provide the needed seal for her petition, but the girl's presence makes the old man's son think that his father is foolishly stepping out with a younger woman, risking his inheritance. But, Watanabe, feeling isolated and alone, is merely clinging to her for her vitality and energy. She makes him laugh and ultimately inspires him to start a new path...in the same place where he began, where he feels he's been wasting his life for the last 30 years. But, that will all change.

At this point, Kurosawa changes the strict timeline he's been following and moves forward five months in the story. Watanabe is dead and at his memorial, his family and past employees gather in remembrance. Even the Deputy Mayor is there. The children's park has been built, which the Deputy Mayor is only too proud to take credit for, dismissing Watanabe's efforts. But, a grateful appearance at the wake by the Kuroe Women's Association seems to belie that, and Watanabe's co-workers, perhaps inspired by the generous rounds of warm sake, begin to swap stories of Watanabe's zeal in his last few months, uncharacteristically bending rules, hounding department heads and getting the park built.

Watanabe at his lowest...and his highest.

"But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

To the point of even having his life threatened by local pimps who'd rather use the designated park-area for their own purposes. When they threaten retribution, he only looks at them with an ironic smile, at the joke only he can appreciate. By the end of the movie, the characters begin to appreciate the value of one, solitary life, however humble, however stifled. Appreciate it, but in a bureaucracy, maybe not inspired by it. Maybe.

 

But, the park is there. And it will be well-used, as Watanabe himself used it. No further marker is needed.

Ikiru is a quieter, less celebratory—and less dependent on angels, certainly—cousin to It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol (any of them). All tread a journey through darkness and the sorrow of the soul to emerge, at their respective ends, to the light and a celebration of life. It's why I offer this one for Christmas. As a sort of gift.

I can't recommend this one highly enough. I borrowed this from the Library and kept it for two months, revisiting it, picking details out of it, admiring how it blended tragedy and comedy, satire and spiritualism. If there was one Kurosawa film that I could choose in his entire work that I could view over and over again, it would be this lovely little miracle of a film.

It was remade (as, it seems, all of Kuosawa's films must) in 2022 as the quite decent British film, Living.

Kainan City Hall

 

Walking Kurosawa's Road: The Idiot

The Idiot (aka Hakuchi, aka 白痴) (Akira Kurosawa, 1951)

"Dostoevsky wanted to portray a genuinely good man. Ironically, he chose an idiot for his hero. But a truly good man may appear as an idiot to others. This is a story of the ruin of a pure and simple man."

Kurosawa's nearly three hour adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical novel (it was originally 4 hours 46 minutes before the distributor cut it down*), but relocated to perpetually snowed-under modern-day Sapporo Japan, has the feel of a film that has been sashimied by a studio looking to keep the highlights—apparently most of the 99 minutes of cuts is in the first few reels. It certainly feels that way with several overly-expository interstitials, one voice-over commentary, and brutally inserted swipe-transitions, one party sequence has them every seven seconds or so without any sort of transition indicated for time or space. Yes, the screen-wipes feel like Kurosawa moves, but one doubts that he'd have used them so frequently and in such places that didn't need them other than to cut time.

The film is in two parts—chapters, if you will—separated by a convalescence from an epileptic seizure by the titular character, Kinji Kameda (Masayuki Mori), a war veteran who was nearly executed as a war criminal but pardoned at the last minute and now suffers from "epileptic hysteria" (or "idiocy" as described in the film among the laymen). At the start of the first chapter (entitled "Love and Agony"), Kameda is returning home to Sapporo by train after rehabilitation in an asylum, his sleep interrupted by nightmares of waiting for his execution. One of those outbursts wakes up self-described "lout" Denkichi Akama (Toshirô Mifune), who would normally cuff one such as Kameda for annoying him, but the two strike up a friendship of sorts—after all, both are going to the same town.

Their purposes couldn't be more different: Kameda is returning home for the first time since the war, his father is dead, and he is going to meet with Mr. Ono (Takashi Shimura), his "only relative in the world". We'll get to Ono and his family in a minute, but Akama's story is that of a prodigal son. His father was abusive—Akama mentions that he hasn't laughed in years due to his childhood, but two things have brought him happiness: 1) meeting with the friendly Kameda on the train and 2) his meeting Taeko Nasu (Setsuko Hara), whom he met six months earlier. Even though she had been a concubine to the wealthy businessman Tohata (Eijirô Yanagi) since the age of 14—years in which Tohata abused her—Akama was so entranced that he stole money from his wealthy father to buy her a diamond ring. At that time, Taeko ran away from her oppressor and Akama fled the wrath of his father over the theft. His father now dead, Akama is returning to claim his inheritance and to find Taeko again. So, two fatherless men, untethered from their past, are returning home.

In a store-front window, they come across a portrait of Taeko, and Kameda is overtaken by the sadness that he can see in her eyes—Kameda's war-time experience has given him, inspired by the relief he felt at his death sentence being commuted, a gentle spirit reverent of all life, no matter the circumstances. He doesn't judge, as he was judged, and he is always first to see the good in whoever he meets, and responds with heartfelt empathy. Even a "lout" like Akama, he feels great affection for, and, unreservedly, despite Akama's past values him as a friend, something Akama has never known before in his life. Akama can't see the pain behind the eyes of Taeko's portrait, but he admires Kameda's sensitivity.

There are complications—of course, there are complications, as this is Russian Literature, after all, even if set in Japan!—involving just about everybody: Tohata is offering a ¥600,000 dowry to whomever will marry Taeko in order to disassociate himself from her and her bad public persona, and his own wretched behavior (of course!) and guess who's going to take him up on the offer? 

No, you'd be wrong if you thought Akama—this is Russian Literature, not a Grimm's Fairy Tale! Kayama (Minoru Chiaki) is willing to marry her! Who's Kayama? He's the guy renting a room to Kameda...at the behest of Mr. Ono, who also happens to be his employer. That's how our friend Kameda gets mixed up in all this! And, of course, when Kameda and Taeko meet, she's drawn to him because he's the only person in town who doesn't treat her like "used goods", and, in fact, speaks to her with warmth and empathy and no judgment.

Emotions run so high that they can become quite comical,
like this party-guest's shocked reaction to Kameda's selflessness.

All of this happens at the planned engagement party for Kayama and Taeko, much to the consternation of Kayama, Tohata, and Ono and the shocked amazement of the party guests, who act just like the gossipy town-hens in one of John Ford's movies. We won't even get into what happens when Akama (remember him? Mifune!) busts into the party with his gang of cut-throats and offers ¥1,000,000 for Taeko.

Leave it at that, because even there, it gets more complicated without the plot advancing. Because we haven't even gotten into people's psyches and second-guessing each other yet. Both Kameda and Akama love Taeko. Taeko loves Akama but realizes that Kameda is the better man, but since she's a concubine, she thinks she doesn't deserve a better man, but how can she settle for Akama when she's met Kameda, whom she doesn't want to shackle with a concubine and especially when Akama loves Taeko enough that even Kameda thinks she should be with him, except that Taeko thinks he deserves someone better, who is Ayako (Yoshiko Kuga)

Ayako? Who's Ayako?

Well, that is dealt with a bit in Part One, and even more in the second part, "Love and Loathing."  Ayako is Mr. Ono's youngest daughter, who is a bit of a brat and whose emotions turn on a dime, but is still quite a bit taken with Kameda, even though she still keeps referring to him as "an idiot", and who (by the way) is desired by Kayama (the guy who was supposed to marry Taeko?).

Small town, that Sapporo...

To his eternal credit, Kurosawa manages to keep this three-wedding-ring circus straight and easily understood by an audience, even at a length of nearly 3 hours. His compositions are fairly consistently triangular, emphasizing that two people in the frame is company, but three is a crowd, with no straight back-and-forth, but a constant caroming off into odd directions. Nobody thinks to ask what another person might want; they just make the decisions for them, and that can't come to any good. Extended periods of dialogue keep the shifting affections and best intentions clear enough, even if nobody spends any time questioning their decisions. One would think that with emotions at such a high boil, sometime they might simmer to a point of vacillation. But, no, people come to their conclusions and, like the ornate snow encrusting everything in the city, they remain frozen in place.

What works against the story...is the story. The high dramatics are sometimes so over-the-top that one is forced to suppress both the giddiness rising up in one's consciousness and the objective sensibility that might curb the more histrionic decisions that are come to in the course of the movie. Maybe that cut footage might have neutered some of the extremes in the film, but one doubts it, and by the time one gets nearer the end of the film, things have gone to such an extreme that one simple gives up and accepts that this is where the story will go, despite one's misgivings.

Despite its length, despite its histrionics, despite all of that, it was one of Japan's most 10 popular movies that year (it would not be released in the United States until 1963—indeed, the year of The Idiot's release in Japan would see only the first of Kurosawa's films to make its way to the United States, which was Rashomon which premiered here December 26, 1951). Its reputation is a bit dimmer than his other films, but, then, any film would when sandwiched between Rashomon, his previous film, and his next film, which would be one of the greatest—if not the greatest—films Kurosawa ever made.

* Kurosawa didn't want to edit it, but suggested it be released in two parts, instead. The studio insisted it should be one release with the film cut in half. "In that case," Kurosawa answered back, "better cut it length-wise." 

 

When working for the studio again in 1991, Kurosawa looked for the missing pieces...to no avail.

Walking Kurosawa's Road: Rashomon (1950)

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.

Rashomon (aka Rashômon aka 羅生門) (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) It all changed here. This is the point—and this is the film—where Kurosawa got "noticed" by an international audience. Oh, he'd been toiling in the fields for a decade. But a war got in the way. Then, an occupation, with its incumbent censorships. Lack of distribution and maybe a ticklish subject matter or two that had kept his films on the island also hindered the world knowing what Japan had known—they had a great film-maker in their midst. One who'd been watching other countries' films with interest, reading other culture's writers, and began melding and refining and merging his own culture with them to create something new and richer, an alloyed kind of film that spoke across divides, across seas and oceans and spoke to everyone.

 

He'd already made great films. Few had seen them. Rashomon, however, was a film that was so good, that happenstance of availability fell by the way-side. 

 

Rashomon was actively sought out.

 

It was, evidently, enough for America's Academy of Motion Pictures to give it an "Honorary Oscar" (in 1952) for "most outstanding foreign language film" and, eventually, to create a category to recognize excellence in "foreign films." Maybe to avoid the competition.

"I don't understand. I just don't understand. I don't understand it at all." 

A woodcutter (Takashi Shimura), a commoner (Kichijirô Ueda), and a priest (Minoru Chiaki)—from Kiyomizu Temple—sit out a down-pour at the ruined Rashômon gatehouse. The newly-arrived commoner finds the woodcutter and the priest in a confused stupor over "a strange story," "a horrible story" that they've just heard at the courtyard garden. A story, the priest says that "may finally make me lose my faith in the human soul."

 

The woodcutter and the priest have just from court where they have testified in a trial against a thief, Tajômaru (Toshirô Mifune), accused of rape and murder.

 

The Testimony

The woodcutter explains how three days previously he was walking the road between Sekiyama and Yamashina, when he stumbled on a woman's hat in the bushes, a trampled samurai cap, some cut rope, an amulet case...and a dead body.  

 

The priest tells of how he encountered the victims, a samurai and his wife (Machiko Kyô and Masayuki Mori) on that fateful road the day of the crimes.

Tajômaru, the bandit, is up next. In the woodcutter's telling of the trial, he is bound but defiant, his testimony is filled with braggadocio and contains little that doesn't make him seem a formidable man. The bandit tells of seeing the samurai and his wife on the road, and lusting after the woman, lured the samurai away with the promise of selling ancient swords. He attacked the samurai and tied him to a tree-stump. Then, went to the wife and told her the samurai had taken sick and leads her to the forest to where she sees him tied up and helpless.  

 

Kurosawa then starts a sequence of shots that sets up the power-dynamic between the trio as they glance at each other, realizing and assessing the situation. Stylized, almost ritualized, if you ever wondered where Sergio Leone got his ideas for staging his climactic stand-offs, it's here. The sequence ends with the camera moving around the wife's head, as Leone circled Henry Fonda's in Once Upon a Time in the West.

The wife, seeing her husband bound and helpless, takes matters into her own hands and attacks the bandit with a knife, but he overpowers her and rapes her. The wife, in her grief and shame, begs the bandit to duel her husband for the events, saying that she will go with whoever wins the battle. The men fight a masterful duel "crossing swords 23 times" according to the bandit (according to the woodcutter), but in the end, the bandit wins the battle. The wife has run off. He takes the samurai's sword and leaves.

 

The priest concludes that men lie because they are weak.

The wife then testifies on the events (as related by the priest). She says that after the assault, the bandit left, and she freed her husband. She begs her husband for forgiveness, but he only looks at her contemptuously, blaming her for the assault. She then tells her husband to kill her and relieve her of the shame, but  the husband does not move, continuing staring at her. In her distress, the woman faints. When she recovers, he husband is dead, stabbed in the chest with her own knife. She flees the scene, attempts to drown herself, but fails.

The commoner hears all this and contemptuously says that women use tears to hide their lies.

The samurai's story is heard through a medium (inserting one more layer of narrative prejudice). The samurai says that, after the assault, the bandit offered to marry the wife, which she accepted, but only if the bandit killed her husband. This angers the bandit who drags the wife before the samurai and makes him an offer: release the wife or kill her. The wife runs off with the bandit pursuing her, but he loses her in the woods. He returns to the samurai, releases him and apologizes, leaving the samurai alone. The samurai, defeated, dishonored, kills himself with his wife's dagger.

 

But, the spirit-samurai makes the assertion that the dagger was taken from his chest, although he couldn't identify who.

Who is right? Who is telling the truth? There is no question that Tajômaru is guilty of the crimes of stealing and rape—but the murder? Did he kill the samurai? Did the wife? Was it suicide? Those are the practical questions in Rashomon, and, unfortunately for those looking for absolute truths, the testimony and evidence are not conclusive. We've seen (or heard) the witness testimony and they conflict, due to circumstance, emotion, trauma, societal rigors, and with the ramifications of what had happened.

The truth is, there is one more version of the story in Rashomon. One more interpretation of events. But, one can't even trust that. Ultimately, this is not a detective story that reveals the truth at the end (and Kurosawa did have a yen for detective stories). At its core, it is a tale about how enigmatic truth is. Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth may be sworn to in courts of law, but they are a nearly unattainable goal, especially couched in a story format. Stories, in and of themselves, are interpretive, hued by perspective, the version of events, and who is doing the telling. Court lawyers are masters of spinning the truth, shading it, undercutting it, sewing doubt.

But, there are no lawyers in Rashomon, just common people...and a priest, who is sustained more on faith than proof. So, when all is said...and done...we are still left questioning what we have seen, with no reckoning of justice (whatever that is) being done or of a resolution in the tenuous balance between good and bad. There's no moral here in this telling of the tale and it's no fable. Ultimately, Kurosawa presents the argument that no film, no picture...no art?...can be trusted for truth as it's all interpretive, all suggestive. And though movies and their makers may strive for verisimilitude, truth will be forever out of reach.

 

All we can ask for is the good intention, the kind act, the unselfish sacrifice, the question "Can I help?" even knowing that truth cannot be trusted in anyone else but ourselves...if we're being true to ourselves. It's like a ray of sunlight dappling through the canopy of a forest. All the better to see ourselves true.