{"id":35582,"date":"2016-12-19T14:34:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T20:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=35582"},"modified":"2023-08-11T18:07:06","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T23:07:06","slug":"action-and-essence-kurosawas-sanshiro-sugata-on-the-criterion-channel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2016\/12\/19\/action-and-essence-kurosawas-sanshiro-sugata-on-the-criterion-channel\/","title":{"rendered":"Action and essence: Kurosawa’s SANSHIRO SUGATA on the Criterion Channel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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DB here:<\/p>\n

Our contributions to\u00a0FilmStruck\u2019s Criterion Channel continue. Last month brought Jeff Smith\u2019s analysis <\/a>of musical motifs in Foreign Correspondent<\/em> and his celebration of the skill of Alfred Newman, supplemented by a blog entry here<\/a>. This month it\u2019s my turn, taking on\u00a0Kurosawa\u2019s Sanshiro Sugata<\/em> (1943; all Japanese names hereafter in Western order, family\u00a0name last). My presentation is here<\/a>, if you are a FilmStruck subscriber. A bit of it\u00a0is available to all at the Criterion site<\/a>. Today’s entry fleshes that out with some contextual background.<\/p>\n

If the streaming version of Observations on Film Art<\/em> is a bit like a bonus material on a DVD, think of these blog entries as liner notes with clips. This format allows us to tackle the films from an angle not covered in our videos.\u00a0We\u2019re sorry that not all of our readers can access the Criterion Channel. But if these entries inspire you to go back to the films in whatever form you can find them, that would be all to the good.<\/p>\n

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Conquering the self<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sanshiro<\/em> is\u00a0a film \u00e0 clef, using martial arts to promote a nationalistic cultural pride. The character of Sanshiro was based on Shiro Saigo (above), who was one of the first pupils of the founder of judo, Jigoro Kano. (In the film, Kano is called Yano, below.)\u00a0Kano learned the traditional fighting technique called jujutsu (aka jujitsu). Like jujutsu, judo involves grappling, locking, and throwing, and it deploys\u00a0the opponent’s force against him (or her). But Kano tried to refine the art, eliminating some of the harsher techniques, like biting and kicking, and aiming for maximum efficiency of energy.<\/p>\n

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By treating judo as a sport\u00a0and\u00a0encouraging sparring and public matches, Kano led judo to prominence. His pupils\u00a0defeated jujutsu challengers. In 1885-1886 matches against Tokyo police champions, Kato’s star pupil Saigo proved judo\u2019s prowess.<\/p>\n

In the hands of Kano and Saigo, unarmed fighting\u00a0techniques were turned to spiritual ends. Ju-jutsu<\/em>, \u201cflexible technique\u201d was replaced by ju-do<\/em>, \u201cthe path of flexibility\u201d\u2014a devotion to a way of life rather than mere\u00a0mastery of grips and throws. This distinction is enacted in the film, when Sanshiro, having learned enough technique to bully people with abandon, must learn to master himself.<\/p>\n

Judo\u2019s emphasis on spiritual seeking fitted an ideology that emerged in the Meiji period (1868\u20141912). Japan\u2019s elite was bent on incorporating\u00a0Western technology and social institutions while maintaining, or rather constructing, a distinct national identity. Accordingly, jujutsu, whose origin lay in\u00a0Chinese boxing, came into disfavor as part of \u201cfeudal\u201d traditions. With young people becoming entranced by Western sports like boxing\u00a0and wrestling, the government encouraged the development of judo as both modern and uniquely Japanese. As often happened, these \u201cinherently Japanese\u201d cultural forms were of recent invention.<\/p>\n

\"sanshiro-poster-250\"<\/a>Kano became a public figure and oversaw the introduction of judo into the public school system in 1908. At the same time his pupil Saigo featured in popular culture as a hero of novels, often as\u00a0the quasi-mythical\u00a0Sanshiro Sugata. By then, judo was well established as recreation. And by 1943, when Kurosawa made his film, he was at pains to show judo as the progressive force replacing old-fashioned jujutsu.<\/p>\n

There’s another dimension to the story. John Dower has pointed out that imperial wartime propaganda tended to emphasize not triumph over the enemy but the need to purify the self. Accordingly, judo\u2019s victory in the social sphere parallels Sanshiro\u2019s conquest of his anger and egotism.<\/p>\n

In the film, Sanshiro comes to Tokyo in 1882, the year Kano actually founded his school. After training, both physical and spiritual, the young man\u00a0proceeds to defeat the surly jujutsu master Monma. Bristling with youth and vigor, Sanshiro then comes to represent a rising generation capable of surpassing\u00a0its\u00a0elders. The next fight references Saigo\u2019s most famous combat during the 1886 police tournament. He must defeat the kindly jujitsu master Murai. But he is attracted to Murai\u2019s daughter Sayo, and so it pains him to trounce her father. But Murai acknowledges judo’s superiority and easily forgives Sanshiro. Judo, he says, awakens his senses.<\/p>\n

Most intently, Sanshiro\u2019s purity of spirit clashes with the foppish, Europeanized Higaki, who exploits judo for aggression and self-aggrandizement. Their big fight comes on a wind-swept hillside, perhaps a reference to Saigo\u2019s signature technique yama-arashi<\/em> (\u201cmountain storm\u201d). The polarity Japanese\/ Western would become even stronger in the film\u2019s sequel, Sanshiro Sugata II<\/em> (1945), in which Sanshiro must fight an American boxer. But from fight to fight, Sanshiro gains greater and greater self-possession, so that in the climactic combat, he can spare time to stare at clouds and envision lotus blossoms.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0film\u2019s plot reverses Saigo\u2019s actual life course: He became a street brawler after he won his tournament victories. More basically, Sanshiro Sugata<\/em> goes beyond its historical sources and political program, as ambitious films tend to do. Nationalistic messages appropriate to wartime are transformed, reworked\u2014”cinematized”\u2014through Kurosawa\u2019s remarkably dynamic approach to film style.<\/p>\n

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A resum\u00e9 film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Sanshiro<\/em> is a young man\u2019s first film. Kurosawa started on it when he was thirty-two (within my magic-number deadline<\/a>). In the Criterion Channel video, I treat the movie\u00a0as an occasion for an ambitious director to display his versatility\u2014a sort of resum\u00e9 film, as we\u2019d say nowadays, and maybe a little showoffish.<\/p>\n

He was ready for the project. He had a busy several years as an assistant director and screenwriter at the fast-moving Toho studios. He worked on twenty-eight dramas and comedies between 1936 and 1942. When he read Sanshiro<\/em>\u2019s source novel upon publication, he urged Toho to buy it, and he plunged into his project with fervor.<\/p>\n

Like other young directors in Japan, he was well aware of developments abroad. His autobiography records seeing many imported films, from\u00a0\u00a0Broken Blossoms<\/em> (1919) and\u00a0The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari<\/em> (1920) to Metropolis<\/em> (1927) and The Blue Angel<\/em> (1930). Interestingly, he claims to have seen Storm over Asia<\/em> (1928), Epstein\u2019s Fall of the House of Usher<\/em> (1928), Dreyer\u2019s La Passion de Jeanne d\u2019Arc<\/em> (1928), and even films by Bu\u00f1uel and Man Ray. His viewing included Hollywood fare by Ford, Lubitsch, Borzage, Wellman, Sternberg, and others. Indeed, he could have kept up with American cinema right up to Pearl Harbor; prints of Edison the Man<\/em> (1940), Morocco<\/em> (1930), and Mr.\u00a0Smith Goes to Washington<\/em> (1939) seem to have been playing\u00a0in Tokyo in late\u00a01941. Then all American films were banned.<\/p>\n

So he was a cinephile director, perhaps not quite as passionate as Ozu, but a young man who looked and learned. Like most Japanese directors, he had mastered Hollywood continuity staging and cutting. I\u2019ve argued elsewhere that many of his contemporaries were bolder stylists than the Americans. Whether it\u2019s a matter of long takes, camera movements, rapid cutting, or subtle transitions\u2014the Japanese found their own striking innovations.<\/p>\n

Ozu\u2019s distinctive 360-degree staging space, low camera height, and play with graphic editing constitute an extreme example of Japanese pictorial invention, but he wasn\u2019t alone. Take this passage from Naruse\u2019s Street without End<\/em> (1934). The heroine has left her husband\u2019s hospital bed after denouncing him, his mother, and his sister for selfishness. Servants and family rush past her; he may be dying. She hesitates in the corridor. Should she return?<\/p>\n