Something Like an Autobiography Read Free

old in the same way he did.
    There is one more person I feel I would like to resemble as I grow old: the late American film director John Ford. I am also moved by my regret that Ford did not leave us his autobiography. Of course, compared to these two illustrious masters, Renoir and Ford, I am no more than a little chick. But if many people are saying they want to know what sort of person I am, it is probably my duty to write something for them. I have no confidence that what I write will be read with interest, and I must explain that I have chosen (for reasons I will discuss later) to bring my account to a close in 1950, the year in which I made
Rashōmon
. But I have undertaken this series with the feeling that I must not be afraid of shaming myself, and that I should try telling myself the things I am always telling my juniors.
    In the course of writing this thing resembling an autobiography, I have on several occasions sat “knees to knees” with a number of people and talked frankly to refresh my memory. They are: Uekusa Keinosuke (novelist, scriptwriter, playwright, friend from grammar-school days); Honda Inoshiro (film director, friend from our assistant-director days); Muraki Yoshiro (art director, frequent member of my crew); Yanoguchi Fumio (sound recordist, a cherry tree of the samebloom as I at P.C.L., the pre-war predecessor of the Toho Film Company); Sato Masaru (music director, pupil of the late composer Hayasaka Fumio, a frequent collaborator of mine); Fujita Susumu (actor, star of my maiden work,
Sugata Sanshir
ō); Kayama Yŭzō (actor, one of many I put through severe training); Kawakita Kashiko (vice president of Tōhō-Tōwa Films, a lady who has aided me greatly abroad and who knows much about me and the reputation of my work in foreign countries); Audie Bock (American scholar of Japanese cinema, a person who when it comes to my films knows more about me than I do about myself); Hashimoto Shinobu (film producer, scriptwriter, collaborator with me on the scripts of
Rashōmon, Ikiru
and
Seven Samurai
); Ide Masato (scriptwriter upon whom I have relied as collaborator for my recent films, my adversary in golf and shogi chess); Matsue Yōichi (producer, Tokyo University graduate, graduate of the Italian Cinecittà film school, a man whose activities are completely mysterious, very strange to me; my life abroad has on many occasions been shared with this handsome Frankenstein); Nogami Teruyo (my right hand, frequent member of my crew beginning as script girl on
Rashomon
, and in this endeavor as well, from start to finish, the person I make suffer). I would like to express my warmest thanks to all of these people.
    AKIRA KUROSAWA
    Tokyo, June 1981
    * Jean Renoir,
My Life and My Films
(Jean Renoir Autobiography), Misuza Shobo, Tokyo. Translated from the French by Norman Denny, p. 12. New York: Atheneum, 1974.

Babyhood
    I WAS IN the washtub naked. The place was dimly lit, and I was soaking in hot water and rocking myself by holding on to the rims of the tub. At the lowest point the tub teetered between two sloping boards, the water making little splashing noises as it rocked. This must have been very interesting for me. I rocked the tub with all my strength. Suddenly it overturned. I have a very vivid memory of the strange feeling of shock and uncertainty at that moment, of the sensation of that wet and slippery space between the boards against my bare skin, and of looking up at something painfully bright overhead.
    After reaching an age of awareness, I would occasionally recall this incident. But it seemed a trivial thing, so I said nothing about it until I became an adult. It must have been after I had passed twenty years of age that for some reason I mentioned to my mother that I remembered these sensations. For a moment she just stared at me in surprise; then she informed me that this could only have been something that occurred when we went to my father’s birthplace up north in Akita Prefecture to