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Samurai Movies (3)

October 7, 2021

When he was researching about Kurosawa's movies, he happened to come across an interesting story about his samurai movie. In 1952, Kurosawas was shooting 'Ikiru', meaning 'To Live'. He saw this movie when he was a high school student. It was a great movie. The protagonist was a common public servant who was the type of person who avoided difficult things and couldn't wait for 5 pm so he could go home. After he learned that he was suffering from terminal cancer and his time was limited, he started to fight against gangs in order to build a neighborhood park for common people. Kurosawa's right-hand scenario writer, Mr. Hashimoto started to write a new scenario. They, Kurosawa and Hashimoto, talked and decided that their next movie would be about a common samurai, who lived and worked commonly like the guy of 'Ikiru', but had to die because of the Edo Era's unreasonable systems. Mr. Hashimoto wanted to get as much detailed information as possible, as he knew Mr. Kurosawa insisted on details. While writing, he would often go to the National Library to research about things in the Edo Era. Mr. Hashimoto had an outline of the story that was like this: The protagonist was a lower-middle ranked samurai who worked at an office in the castle in a particular domain. His daily routine started by washing his face, shaving his beard and parts of his head. A female servant set 'chonmage', an uniquely shaped bounded hair style. His wife would help him to wear a samurai costume called a 'haori', the upper outerwear of a kimono, and lower clothing called a 'hakama'. With a male servant following him, he went to the castle. He worked busily, reporting to his superiors about something, having a meeting about something, and going outside and negotiating about something with a merchant. His morning time finished busily, and lunch time came. It was his favorite and most relaxing time. He opened his 'bento', lunch box, talked with his coworkers, joking about each bento's ingredients; about their pastimes, like fishing; about their cute kids. The afternoon job started and suddenly, a big problem was found, and the protagonist was ordered to take responsibility of the matter, meaning he had to commit 'seppuku, or, 'harakiri', meaning to kill oneself by cutting one's own stomach in order to show one's sincerity for the matter. His colleague who had just eaten lunch with him was ordered to do 'kaishaku', meaning to cut off the 'seppuku' person's head in order for him not to feel pain anymore. The colleague cried hard, but started to prepare. At the protagonist's house, a samurai in charge of the 'seppuku' ritual with 12~13 lowest-ranked samurai started to prepare. They cleaned the garden grounds, covered the ground with white sand, they hung special curtains on the walls, they hung Japanese lanterns called 'chochin' under the eaves ... Hashimoto went to the National Library every day for more information about samurai lives. The scenario proceeded to a certain level, but after three months from starting to go to the library, he decided to give up his scenario. He couldn't know for sure about whether samurai at that time took their lunch to the castle or not. The lunch scene was an indispensable scene for the movie, he believed. He threw away his scenario and the documents that he collected, and went to Toho, a movie company, and reported its abrupt ending to the producer. After hearing about this, Kurosawa was furious, he accused Hashimoto of his self-decision making. Kurosawa's complaining was long and insistent. Listening to it quietly and for a long time, Hashimoto then asked, "By the way, how many times do you eat a day?" "What?" Kurosawa glared. Hashimoto continued, "This country's history leaves a lot of information about 'incidents', but as for people's lives, there were no records, when did they start to eat three times a day, when did they start to take a bath, nothing. In this case, nobody can make this type of movie with it being realistic." Kurosawa didn't say anything anymore. This story has another story: they changed to a new movie scenario, and the movie was a huge hit world-wide, it was 'Seven Samurai'.    (To be continued)

No.449



*public servant : 公務員
*terminal : 終末の
*sincerity : 誠意
*ritual : 儀式、様式
*eave : 軒（のき）
*for sure : はっきり
*indispensable : 不可欠の
*abrupt : 突然の
*insistent : 執拗な