Traditional Theater and the Film in Japan

Abstract

to be brief, there isn't any. All of the parallels, drawn in Japan as carelessly as elsewhere, are forced; all the pigeonholes are wrongly labeled; all the conclusions, so carefully jumped at, are as false as the assumptions upon which they are based. As an opening wedge let us take the celebrated example of Rashomon. One read all sorts of learned nonsense about the influence of Kabuki, and even the Noh. Akira Kurosawa, the director, read it too and eventually made the statement: I haven't read one review from abroad that hasn't read false meanings. .. . If pressed, he will then tell the story behind the acting style of Rashomon. One night, in Kyoto just before shooting started, Kurosawa and his staff looked at a print of a Martin and Johnson jungle picture. They were all much impressed by the animals, particularly with a sequence of a lion on the prowl. Kurosawa said: Well, Mifune, that's Tojomaru. Make the human like an animal. Thus Toshiro Mifune made his role of the bandit Tojomaru as lion-like as possible. A bit later, the head of the studio saw a movie in downtown Kyoto in which a black panther appeared. At his urging everyone went to see it. This is how they came across the model for Machiko Kyo's character in the same film. Kurosawa will at this point observe that, if he is not mistaken, the performances of animals in jungle pictures are somewhat removed from the Kabuki tech-