SOMETHING LIKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY A Neighborhood with an Open Sump The idea for DRUNKEN ANGEL actually originated in a pre-existing film set. Right after the war Yama-san had made a film called SHIN BAKA JIDAI (THE NEW AGE OF FOOLS), portraying the conditions we lived in during those chaotic times. The company had built a huge open set of a shopping street with a black market for this film, and later they came to me asking if I couldn't use it to film something, too. Yama-san's film had been about the black markets that sprang up everywhere like bamboo shoots after a rain in post-war Japan. Included in this phenomenon -- and in his film -- were the yakuza gangsters who put down roots in the black-market environment. I wanted to pursue these figures even more intensely than Yama-san had -- I wanted to take a scalpel and dissect the yakuza. Exactly what sort of people are they? What is the code of obligation that supports their organization? What is the individual psychological make-up of the gang members, and what is the violence of which they are so proud? To investigate these questions, I decided to set my film in a black-market district and make the hero a gangster who has charge of that particular territory. In order to bring his personality into high relief, I decided to pit another character against him. At first I thought I would make this antagonist a young humanist doctor who was just setting up his practice in the area. But no matter how hard Uekusa and I worked at it, we couldn't bring this idealized doctor to life -- he was so perfect that he had no vitality. The gangster figure, on the other hand, had become almost real enough to breathe; his every move reeked of flesh and blood. This immediacy arose from the fact that he was based on a real-life model, whom Uekusa was meeting with regularly. Uekusa was, in fact, becoming so immersed in the gangsters' way of life, so absorbed in and sympathetic toward the underworld, that he and I later quarreled over it. As background to the characterizations, we decided to create an unsightly drainage pond where people threw their garbage. It became the symbol of the disease that was eating away at the whole neighborhood, and it grew clearer day by day in our minds. We despaired all the more that our second protagonist, the young physician setting up his practice, remained a lifeless marionette and refused to move of his own accord. Every day Uekusa and I sat glaring at each other, surrounded by piles of crumpled and torn paper with scribbles on it. I was beginning to think we would never find a way out; I was even thinking of scrapping the whole project. But at some point in the writing of every script I feel like giving the whole thing up. From my many experiences of writing screenplays, however, I have learned something: If I hold fast in the face of this blankness and despair, adopting the tactic of Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen sect, who glared at the wall that stood in his way until his legs became useless, a path will open up. On this occasion, too, I made up my mind to endure it. Day after day I sat glaring in my mind's eye at the puppet-like image of the doctor who refused to grow into a real character. After about five days Uekusa and I had a sudden revelation at just about the same moment. We both remembered a certain doctor. Before we had begun writing we had "script-scouted" as many black-market areas as we could find. In a slum in the port city of Yokohama we had come across an alcoholic doctor. This man fascinated us with his arrogant manner, and we took him with us to three or four bars to listen to his stories while we drank. It seems he operated without a physician's license, and his patients were the streetwalkers of the slums. His talk about his illegal gynecology practice was so vulgar it nearly made us sick, but every so often he said something bitterly sarcastic about human nature that gleamed with aptness. He also interspersed his talk with peals of loud laughter, and in that raucous wide-open mouth there was a strange feeling of raw humanity. He was probably a rebellious young man ending his days in cynicism, but Uekusa and I remembered, looked at each other and simultaneously felt, "This is it!" Once we had recalled this alcoholic doctor, it seemed altogether strange to us that we hadn't thought of him sooner. The marionette-like young doctor who was the picture of humanitarianism was blown to bits. At last the "Drunken Angel" came on stage. The character immediately took on life and breath and began to move. He was a man past his mid-fifties, an alcoholic doctor with his own clinic. Turning his back on fame and fortune, he settled among the common people. As a physician, he went after tangible results with extreme obstinacy, and this stubborn character of his won him popularity. He always had a straggly three-day beard, his hair was always a mess and he would always retort in a dangerously blunt fashion to those who spoke to him arrogantly, but behind this careless exterior he harbored an honest and superior heart. 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. Drunken Angel IT'S NOT POSSIBLE for me to talk about DRUNKEN ANGEL, which was released in 1948, without devoting some attention to the actor Mifune Toshiro. In June of 1946, in order to get into the spirit of post-war activity, Toho conducted open auditions to recruit new contract actors. Using the headline "Wanted: New Faces," they got a tremendous number of applicants. On the day of the interviews and screen tests I was in the middle of the shooting of NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH, so I couldn't participate in the judging. But during lunch break I stepped off the set and was immediately accosted by actress Takamine Hideko, who had been the star of Yamamoto Kajiro's HORSES when I was chief assistant director. "There's one who's really fantastic. But he's something of a roughneck, so he just barely passed. Won't you come have a look?" I bolted my lunch and went to the studio where the tests were being given. I opened the door and stopped dead in amazement. A young man was reeling around the room in a violent frenzy. lt was as frightening as watching a wounded or trapped savage beast trying to break loose. I stood transfixed. But it turned out that this young man was not really in a rage, but had drawn "anger" as the emotion he had to express in his screen test. He was acting. When he finished his performance, he regained his chair with an exhausted demeanor, flopped down and began to glare menacingly at the judges. Now, I knew very well that this kind of behavior was a cover for shyness, but the jury seemed to be interpreting it as disrespect. I found this young man strangely attractive, and concern over the judges' decision began to distract me from my work. I returned to my set and wrapped up the shooting early. Then I proceeded to look in on the room where the jury were deliberating. Despite Yama-san's strong recommendation of the young man, the voting was against him. Suddenly I heard myself shouting, "Please wait a minute." The jury was made up of two groups: movie-industry specialists (directors, cinematographers, producers and actors) and representatives of the labor union. The two groups were equally represented. At that time the union was gaining in strength daily, and union representatives appeared wherever something was happening. Because of them, all decisions had to be made by voting, but I felt that for them to voice their opinions on the selection of actors was really going too far. Even the expression "going too far" doesn't do justice to the suppressed anger boiling in me. I called for a time out. I said that in order to judge the quality of an actor and predict his future capacities you need the talents and experience of an expert. In the selection of an actor it isn't right to equate the vote of an expert and the vote of a complete outsider. It's like appraising a gemstone -- you wouldn't give a greengrocer's appraisal the same weight you would a jeweler's. In evaluating an actor, an expert's vote should have at least three if not five times the weight of an amateur's. I emphasized that I wanted a recount of the votes with more appropriate weight assigned to the experts' opinions. The jury was thrown into an uproar. "It's anti-democratic, it's monopoly by directors!" someone shouted. But all of the production people on the jury raised their hands in approval of my suggestion, and even some labor-union representatives nodded their assent. Finally Yama-san, who was head of the jury, said that as a movie director he would take responsibility for his opinion of the quality and potential of the young actor in question. With Yama-san's pronouncement the young man squeaked through. He was, of course, Mifune Toshiro. From SOMETHING LIKE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Akira Kurosawa, translated by Audie E. Bock, copyright © 1982 by Akira Kurosawa. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. For online information about other Random House, Inc. books and authors, see the Internet Web site at http://www.randomhouse.com.