Nogami Teruyo was the script supervisor and faithful assistant of Kurosawa Akira (1910-1998). This extraordinary woman was at his side from the making of Rashomon to the very end. After Kurosawa's death, she wrote down some of her personal memories for the Japanese magazine Cinema Club - she could not have done this while Kurosawa was still alive, because he would have told her, "You got it all wrong!
That was in the mid-nineties, and the Japanese pieces were published in book form in 2000. Thanks to the initiative of the late Donald Richie (who also wrote an introduction), this English translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter has been published by Stone Bridge Press. It is a beautiful book, with illustrations by the author.
[Kurosawa in 1953]
To be sure, this is not a biography or a complete analysis of Kurosawa's films. It is an intimate human record in which we get glimpses of the genius of the director and the way he worked. After a first chapter on Itami Mansaku, a director Nogami Teruyo never met but corresponded with as a schoolgirl and who inspired her love of film (later Mrs. Nogami would take care of one of the sons, Itami Juzo, when he was a young boy), and a chapter on the Daiei Kyoto studios where she started working just after the war, the story of Kurosawa begins with Rashomon (1951).
We see the then 40-year-old director working energetically with his crew. He was already the perfectionist he would always be. The most interesting episode is how they carried around mirrors to reflect the sun while filming in the woods - indeed, the contrasts between black and white in Rashomon are perfect. Also fascinating is the episode about the sudden fire at the Daiei studios, where quick action miraculously saved the negatives of Rashomon.
What we get from this book is how different filmmaking was before the invention of CGI. It was "waiting for the weather" - not just waiting hours for sunshine, but waiting for a particular cloud to move into just the right spot over the roof of a building. When filming the village in The Seven Samurai in the setting sun, with the seven samurai in profile in the foreground, the cameraman waited just a few seconds too long, and they had to do it all over again the next day. The ants marching in formation across the floor in Rhapsody in August were real ants, and a lot of "ant study" went into that scene. The same goes for the crows flying at the end of the Van Gogh episode in Dreams. The film crew had to catch real crows, put them in small cages, and open the cages at just the right moment. No wonder Kurosawa took months and even years to make his movies, while Miike Takashi could finish a movie a week...
Kurosawa ruled his crew like an "emperor" and could have terrible fits of rage. He and the people around him had a particularly hard time shooting Dersu Urzala under the most primitive conditions in Siberia. In the course of filming, Kurosawa went from drinking one bottle of vodka a day to two. Kurosawa worked well with people who had smaller egos, such as Mifune Toshiro, who despite his macho roles was a rather shy man - a pity that Kurosawa dropped him after filming Red Beard, simply because he had had enough of his acting style.
Katsu Shintaro was originally supposed to be the leading actor in Kagemusha, but the swaggering, rough and ready actor immediately clashed with the precise and perfectionist Kurosawa - their relationship lasted only one day, the second morning Katsu left in a huff and was replaced by Nakadai Tatsuya. This episode reads like slapstick, but the disputes with Takemitsu Toru were more serious. Takemitsu, who wrote the music for Ran, was Japan's most important composer of the twentieth century and naturally had a great sense of artistic integrity. He did not allow Kurosawa (who, as "Emperor", wanted to have his say in every little detail!) to interfere with his music. Takemitsu got his way, but with great difficulty, and never worked with Kurosawa again. On the contrary, he made a pointed remark about the group around Kurosawa, who acted only as yes-men and never dared to disagree (including Nogami Teruyo): "It's all the fault of the people around Kurosawa!"
But Nogami is certainly no flatterer, she shows us the great director in his many moods, including the nasty ones. Her book is a treasure trove of stories, and in the end we only wish for more.
Kurosawa left behind a large number of perfect films. The result of reading this book is that I want to see those movies again... maybe I will start with Rashomon!
Japanese Film