Book Review: Long Take – Our Culture

When it comes to literature on the acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, the English language market is blessedly rich—with texts ranging from career studies (e.g., Donald Richie’s The Films of Akira Kurosawa) to biographical tomes (Stuart Galbraith IV’s The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune). Other releases include translations of Japanese books offering glimpses into the minds of not only the director in question but his collaborators; among these are screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto’s Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I and—of course—Kurosawa’s own memoir, Something Like an Autobiography. Not as well-known among Occidental readers, however, is another tome wherein the great director wrote about himself. It was published in Japan shortly after his 1998 death and comes to us now under the title Long Take.

For personal reasons, Kurosawa chose to end Something Like an Autobiography with the making of his 1950 film Rashomon, before he’d achieved international fame. The book told the story of a misfit whose childhood and early adult experiences included surviving the Great Kanto Earthquake and World War II; whose career began with him advancing through the directorial apprentice program at P.C.L. (Photo Chemical Laboratory—one of the entities that’d later merge into the studio Toho) and helming eleven early-career movies*; and who in that span of time never set foot outside Japan. Long Take, recently converted into English by Anne McKnight for University of Minnesota Press, follows a mature filmmaker with several masterpieces to his credit, who’s now seeing the world, and whose continued career and recognition has taken him to new places—and to new people.

Long Take is not a traditional memoir—rather, it is a collection of essays (some by Kurosawa, others by his daughter Kazuko) mixed with roundtable conversations with writer Hisashi Inoue and fellow director Yoji Yamada. Looking back on a post-Rashomon time, the director remembers attending international festivals and mingling with filmmakers from other countries—while his fellow Japanese artisans kept to themselves. Subsequent travels result in rendezvous with contemporaries like Andrei Tarkovsky, Sidney Lumet, John Cassavetes, and Werner Herzog. A missed encounter with John Ford on the set of 1945’s The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail pays off with multiple meetings outside Japan. All the while, Kurosawa describes his impressions of the filmmakers he meets and occasionally shares opinions of their works from other Japanese—such as close friend Ishiro Honda’s reverent words for Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955).

Which is not to say Kurosawa neglects discussing his own filmography; one of the book’s highlights is his transcribed conversation with Yamada and Inoue wherein he recalls challenges endured on Seven Samurai (1954)’s mud-soaked finale. And in what makes for a pleasurable read, Kurosawa assumes a humble, unpretentious demeanor, noting his preference to be labeled an artisan rather than an artist and expressing distaste for films that have no function but to talk down to the viewer. (He argues great movies should, first and foremost, entertain and make audiences feel something as they watch.) As in Something Like an Autobiography, the director offers industry insights—e.g., how television negatively impacted the film business—and contrasts the rewards afforded to Japanese makers of hit movies versus their Hollywood counterparts. Honda, he remarks, should’ve lived in a castle after Godzilla (1954), a film Kurosawa includes in a list of 100 favorites.

Said list is published in Long Take and derives from conversations between Kurosawa and his daughter Kazuko. The latter writes in her own essays about working on her father’s later movies (she sometimes doubled as a mediator during moments of tension), discusses veteran members of the crew, and documents how she became a caretaker after a fall left the great director chairbound. Kazuko likewise paints an intimate portrait of who Akira Kurosawa was outside the studio, revealing his at times charming naïveté (there’s a funny bit stemming from him being tasked with fetching rice for dinner) and his forward-thinking attitude about life. The latter is particularly inspiring, as it comes from a man who survived not only the earlier mentioned calamities in Japan’s history but also the loss of a spouse and a failed suicide attempt in 1971. Long Take doesn’t answer the long-asked question of why Kurosawa slashed his wrists and throat that day (it’s a secret he seemingly kept to himself), but the philosophy behind how he moved on from it—and from other tough moments—is one the reader can take and apply to their own life. And that makes this newly translated tome equally inspiring as it is informative.

Like all worthwhile texts on film artists—sorry, artisans!—Long Take delivers behind-the-scenes information while simultaneously probing its subject’s mind and heart. Readers will surely come for stories from the set but will walk away feeling they got to know Akira Kurosawa: a man who made extraordinary films and had extraordinary experiences, but who felt the emotions we’ve all felt, who loved movies (as we do) for the reactions they produce within us, and who was—as he would’ve been first to point out—every bit as human as everyone who will read this book.

* I’m counting the early-career pictures that Kurosawa included in his official filmography: Sanshiro Sugata (1943), The Most Beautiful (1944), Sanshiro Sugata Part II (1945), The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945), No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), One Wonderful Sunday (1947), Drunken Angel (1948), The Quiet Duel (1949), Stray Dog (1949), Scandal (1950), and Rashomon (1950). I am not counting the 1941 picture Horse, which was technically directed by his mentor Kajiro Yamamoto (even though Kurosawa took charge of large sections) or the 1945 labor union film Those Who Make Tomorrow, of which he only directed a part and completely disowned.