La Storia e le tradizioni del Giappone: spunti cinematografici

Norimasa MoritaWaseda University, Tokyo

27 th MayAt Università per Stranieri di Siena

Cinema as a Window to Japan

• Japanese faces, landscapes, cultural characteristics, and history are introduced to people through cinema.

• Kenji MIZOGUCHI, Yasujiro OZU, Nagisa OSHIMA, and Takeshi KITANO

• Akira KUROSAWA

Recognition in Italy• Rashomon – Leone d’Oro at Venice 1951• Seven Samurai – Leone d’Argento at Venice 1964• Red Beard – OCIC Award at Venice 1965• Derusu Uzara – David in David di Donatello 1977• Kagemusha – David in David di Donatello 1981• Leone d’Oro alla Carriera at Venice 1981• Ran - David in David di Donatello 1986• Sergio Leone’s A Fist of Dollars and Kurosawa’s

Yojinbo

Film Career and Periodization

• Kurosawa’s career • The early half (1943-1965) → Dodes’kaden as

the pivotal point (1970) → the latter half (1975-1993)

• General tendencies - Open optimism in his early films and qualified optimism in his later films. Pessimism transformed into optimism in early films and pessimism not entirely resolved in later films.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Sanshiro Sugata spends an entire night in a freezing pond to prove his mettle and show his resolution that he is afraid neither to die or live.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• A punk and gangster portrayed by Toshiro MIFUNE is attended his gun wound by a drunken doctor. Mifune’s first appearance in Kurosawa film.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Rashomon Tajomaru again performed by Mifune is Kurosawa’s typical anti-hero. A thief who is not afraid to be executed and anti-authority.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Ikiru’s unexpected, surprise hero, portrayed by Takashi SHIMURA. He finds just before he dies solace and satisfaction in doing some public good rather than using his remaining time and money for himself.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• SHIMADA Kanbei in Seven Samurai – the great strategist who leads the fightings against 40 bandits with his six men.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• KATAYAMA Gorobei • Experienced and masterful samurai supporting

Kanbei as his right-hand man. Calm and self-controlled.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Shichiroji - he used to serve Kanbei before he lost his tenure. A model of feudal man of honour, loyalty and duty.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Kyuzo - self-disciplined and ascetic master swordsman on move. He believes he can trust in nobody but himself

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• HAYASHIDA Heihachi• Not a great swordsman but has a great sense of

humour cheering other samurais and villagers.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• OKAMOTO Katsushiro - Young, novice samurai. He is naïve and innocent to grow up under the tutelage of Kanbei.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Kikuchiyo - a son of peasants and war orphan. Utterly unconventional and fierce and reckless fighter in battles though he has no skills as a swordsman

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Japanese Macbeth in Throne of Blood – anti-hero to be killed as predicted by a witch.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Yojinbo – the bodyguard, Sanjuro, decides that both warring factions need to be destroyed for the sake of people

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• A group of idealistic young men, determined to clean up the corruption in their town, are aided by a scruffy, cynical samurai (TSUBAKI Sanjuro)who does not at all fit their concept of a noble worrior.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• In Red Beard (1965) the doctor named NI’IDE looks after the poor and wretched who can barely pays medical bills.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• YASUMOTO learns under Red Beard’s tutelage that he can do more good for working in his clinic than becoming a court doctor

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• High and Low (1963) - The wealthy company executive, GONDO agrees to use the money he has raised to buy out his company as the ransome to save the son of his chauffeur kidnapped being mistaken for his own child.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Dodeskaden – a holy fool as a unusual hero and a spiritual savior

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• A Russian tribesman is an unlikely hero who guides a team of a Russian topographical expedition in a Siberian journey in the extreme climate. Derus Uzala

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Kagemusha – a petty thief employed to impersonate the diseased lord but could not live up to the real lord.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• Ran – Kagetora is a Japanese King Lear. A tragic hero who learns an important lesson by being betrayed by his sons and going insane.

Kurosawa’s Heroes and Anti-heroes

• In Dreams Kurosawa himself becomes a hero – Kursawa visits the flying bridge immortalized by Van Gogh

Kurosawa’s Two Main Categories of films

Jidai-mono (historical drama), which is set anytime before the end of the 19th century

Gendai-mono (modern drama), which is set anytime after the end of the 19th century

Kurosawa’s Two Main Categories of films• Heroes and anti-heroes can be found in both

historical and modern dramas. • ‘I had something special in mind when I made

this film [Red Beard] … I wanted to make something that any audience would want to see, something so magnificent so that they would just have to see it.’ About Red Beard

• ‘I wanted to show that in this seedy world of corporate greed, there is someone who is willing to do something magnanimous.’

• The poor neibourhood of Drunken Angel and an alcoholic doctor talking to a local shirtless boy

• A thief is brought out to the court after his capture. He is defiant to the authority and the powerful.

• The hero in Ikiru is a petty setion chief in a city hall. Monotonous, uneventful, and loveless life of a petit bourgeois man.

• Seven masterless samurai without any trace of wealth and power.

• Yojimbo – is a ronin (unemployed samurai) who does look any different from peasants and poor townsfolk and has barely enough money to eat at the beginning of the film.

• Sanjuro – another ronin who is living in a shed of a temple. Scruffy and unshaven, but later turned out to be a hero

• Ni’ide and Yasumoto simply and thinly dressed in medical uniform even after snow fell, despite Red Beard is a renowned doctor.

• The protagonist in Dodeskaden is a slightly handicapped mentally living among the rubbish dump.

• Gagemusha – the impersonator or shadow of a dead warlord was originally a petty thief.

Heroes in the antiquity and medieval times

• Hero from ἥρως, hḗrōs in ancient Greek• Meant to be a demigod – Heracles (Hercules)

and Achilles• Humility is the condition for heroics• ‘… no virtue can possibly acquired or continue

without the grace of discretion.’ • In medieval epic: Men, not immortal

existence, could be a hero. Those who suffer pain and defies death

Heroes in modern times

• Heroes are sometimes mere protagonists of stories.

• Heroes in dramas and movies, they are often ordinary men or women in extraordinary circumstances, despite the odds stacked against them, prevail in the end.

Parallel between heroes and tragic figures• A historical parallel between heroes and tragic

figures• In classic tragedies, tragic figures are kings,

queens and princes• The bigger the fall from prosperity to adversity,

the greater sense of pity or fear can be felt in the audience.

• ‘He [tragic hero] must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous.’ Aristotle

• ‘… tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings.’ Arthur Miller

Age of Heroes and Age of Men

• Gianbattista Vico – Age of Gods, Age of Heroes, Age of Men

• Antiquity – Feudalism – Modernity• Heroes in the Age of Horoes and Heroes in the

Age of Men• Kurosawa’s heroes in his historical dramas and

in his modern dramas• Hero and heroic actions in a medieval sense

and in a modern sense

‘Good Westerns are liked by everyone. Since humans are weak, they want to see good people and great heroes. Westerns have been done over and over again, and in the process a kind of grammar has evolved. I have learned much from this grammar of the Western.’