Sugata Sanshiro
Devdutt Trivedi
Akira Kurosawa debuted with Sugata Sanshiro based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita, after his training at the P.C.L. studio as director Kajiro Yamamoto’s star pupil. According to Stephen Prince, Kurosawa was thirty two years old when he saw an ad for Tomita’s upcoming novel and chased the text down and worked on its filmic adaptation until he got a chance to direct it in 1942. Although the film survives only in its fragmented form, inter-titles provided by Toho in the 1952 restoration of the film, serve as an effective device that break up the images written in movement with text which refer to the form of the original novel, also composed of words.
The film deals with the rivalry between two rival Japanese martial art forms, judo and jujitsu. The central character Sanshiro played by Susumu Fujita, serves as medium to the film’s constructed dichotomy between physical strength and spiritual strength, which would become Kurosawa’s favourite theme in his Mifune films later. This is best communicated in the dialogue between the judo master Yano Shogoro and Sanshiro. The character of the monk appropriates the idea of Zen to the physical discipline and its link to violence, which the master also mentions to Sanshiro as being the spiritual aspect of judo that Sanshiro has been unable to master. This relationship to Zen with an explicitly physical practice with a Japanese identity, alongside the dressing of the villain Gennosuke Higaki in Western clothing, appropriates a transcendental quality to the idea of physical violence, and at the same time links contemporary Japan’s situation in 1943 to the ongoing World War and consequently Japan’s perception of the West.
In this way Kurosawa continues the feudal relations that he continues to draw between father and son, through the figure of the master and the pupil i.e. with the master being a domestic form of the Emperor (of Japan) and therefore an embodiment of virtues. According to Tadao Sato, the master is unashamedly idealized so that ‘[b]y mastering the secrets of his martial art, he is able to face any situation with tranquility.’
Although the film is completely shot in the studio and is produced on a fairly small scale as compared to Kurosawa’s better known later works, it does unveil some of the techniques that the Japanese maestro would be known by. Most prominent is the wipe which serves as transition communicating to the viewer that only necessary details in the forwarding of narrative are being shown, and that, at the same time several details are being left out.
The film uses sound in remarkable ways, most noticeably the tap of the bare feet of the martial artists as they compete. Even more striking is the sound of silence which distances the viewer from the repetitive nature of the aggressive actions in the succession
of duel sequences, to give more importance to the visual. An example of this is the sequence where Sanshiro picks up and throws the lusty Moma of the jujitsu practice. With an absent soundtrack, Kurosawa pans the breadth of the room until he reaches the sprawling figure of Moma on the floor. This is followed by a closer take of Moma with a part of the wall falling off in slow motion continuing the silent soundtrack. Kurosawa cuts back to Sanshiro looking at Moma, followed by a scream from Sayo Murai whom Sanshiro begins to date much later.
The most important trademark that Kurosawa would use in his masterworks such as Rashomon and Ran is the use of nature in all of its fury to serve as background for the taking of a shot. Kurosawa presents an outstanding example of this, at par with his best, in the climactic battle where the duel is set up in a raging windstorm.
The film was received negatively with critics pointing out the Hollywood influence in the editing. According to Prince, it required Yasujiro Ozu’s resounding support of Kurosawa’s film to silence critics. The film stands alongside quirky period dramas or jida gekis or ‘period drama’ of the time particularly the films of Sadao Yamanaka (whose masterpiece is Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)) which combine an Ozu-like haiku-inspired formalism with a jidai geki narrative set within indoor spaces. These films usually commented on class structures and at the same time refer to the Zen practice underlying Japanese society and the formal temporality of the film itself. The film however does show an influence of Hollywood in underlining those parts of narrative development that the audience must pay attention to and in this way goes out of its way to hold the audience’s attention: a very un-Japanese approach.
Courtesy:
Stephen Prince; The Criterion Collection
Current in Japanese Cinema, Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, Tadao Sato, 1982