A Japanese Legend
The location was in Gotemba, at the foot of Mount Fuji. I must have been 25 and was one of the young samurai in Kurosawa’s “Sanjuro.” I was waiting for my turn, dressed as a samurai with a sword. It was a real sword. Since I had plenty of time to kill, I decided to try the sword. The place was full of bushes, so I kept slashing them nice and clean. A prop man came rushing and said angrily, “Stop it. The blade will be nicked.” Kurosawa was watching all this and came over. I thought I was going to be scolded. Instead, he said, “Leave him alone. That’s the way he learns how to use a real sword. Why in the world do you think we have sword polishers?”
He was a genius [when it came to exploring] human nature through movies. He was [also] a perfectionist who studied everything about the period [in which] the story was supposed to have taken place.
In “Red Beard,” there was a scene of an old man, Rokusuke, dying. As usual, Kurosawa spent days studying how a man dies–how he should breathe and how his eyes are supposed to look at the last minute of his life. He had his staff polishing the walls and corridors of the setting of a clinic every morning to get exactly the right feeling.
I had heard so much about Kurosawa being strict and demanding to a point where he was even called Emperor Kurosawa. But he never really scolded me. In [one scene during the filming of] “Red Beard” I was getting bored and my feet were becoming numb. Luckily, I found two sets of puzzle rings in my sleeves. I took them out quietly and was absorbed in playing. “Stop, Kayama. It’s distracting.” That was all he said. I put them back into [my] sleeves right away.
I had Kurosawa and three other movie colleagues over for supper about 20 years ago. Over supper and drinks, he talked about movies until 5 in the morning. From the start to the end, our conversation was all about movies and moviemaking, and nothing else. I realized once again how much Kurosawa loved movies. He used to say, “If you take movies away from me, there will be nothing left.”
Would the viewers love the film, or would they be bored? My thoughts were interrupted by shouts of “Heil!” from the throng. Hitler had arrived and, together with several other men… sat down in the center box. After the end of Part One, the applause swelled into a crescendo, and Hitler was the first to congratulate me: “You’ve created a masterpiece, and the world will be grateful to you.”… I couldn’t distance myself completely from him until a few short months before the end of the war. Shortly before the macabre fall of Germany, Hitler was presenting Iron Crosses to children in front of the battered Reich Chancellery and calling them “brave soldiers.” By then I hated him.
