Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People (27 page)

- Satisfied?

- Yes, the Ozu films all got excellent reviews, and the foreign rights were sold.

- Oh, yes, I do believe I heard something about that.

- I think that means that they were understood and liked.

- Hey now, wait a minute, not so fast, he said with that laugh of his: Don't you go jumping to any conclusions.

- But, look ...

- Okay. So a few were sold. Well, good. But I don't think that means anything. You know what they saw, those people? Exoticism. Modern Japan must look pretty weird to people in Berlin, I bet. That's all they saw.

- Did you read the reviews?

- How could I? They're in German.

Yet, despite company skepticism and indifference, the films of Ozu did gradually make their mark abroad. When
Tokyo Story
opened in New York and there was a line at the box office, I visited Momma again, with a newspaper picture of the event.

- Look, he said finally: What do you want?

Forced to examine my motives, I replied: I want you to admit that Ozu's films can be loved and understood abroad.

He stared at me, for once not smiling: Now, how could I do that?

Suddenly, I saw the world through his eyes. It was black and white and divided down the center; they were on one side, we were on the other.

I wondered what made such orthodoxy so necessary; what made its continuation so imperative.

- I'm not saying that
you
don't understand Ozu, if that's what's worrying you, he went on: I
know
you do, because you've been here so long. And that's just fine.

He glared. It wasn't just fine. I ought to have gone back to my own country long, long ago.

- No, he continued: It's the others over there that I'm talking about. Look, be sensible. How could they understand?

How could they, indeed!

- They can understand Ozu, I said, but I don't think they could ever understand you.

He looked at me, surprised, and his smile slowly reappeared. He was pleased at the thought that he personally was a mystery.

- Do you understand me? he asked, the smile broadening, waiting for me to say no, waiting to have his prejudices fully confirmed.

Suddenly, I saw the world through my own eyes. It was all gray, everything sliding about, love and understanding whipping up little waves on its surface. And there I stood, right on the brink. For I had been about to confirm all my own prejudices as well, about to turn into a person who needed an orthodoxy too, who felt its continuation was imperative.

- Yes, I understand you, but I don't approve, I finally said.

His laugh was genuine: And I don't approve of you either.

At this I also laughed.

Then we sat down and had a business talk. I pointed out that if foreigners were prepared to go and see the Ozu films, as they apparently were, then it didn't make any difference if they got the point or not, did it? No, he was the first to admit that, not as long as they actually bought tickets and went to see them. Well, I answered, this is what they were doing, so the company ought to send out more prints, ought to do a catalog, ought to sponsor a major retrospective—as a business venture, mind you. A small initial outlay should bring in considerable returns, I suggested.

And it was not until much later, years later, that I realized how very like an Ozu sequence—both of us busy at his desk—this had all been.

It was 1958 and Chishu Ryu had been asked by
Kinema Jumpo,
the big film magazine, to write something about Yasujiro Ozu, the director, his mentor.
Equinox Flower
, Ozu's latest, was about to open.

But he did not know how to begin. Usually when he talked about Ozu, people said: There you go, off on Ozu again. And it was true, he often talked about him. But how could he talk about himself without mentioning Ozu? It was the director who had formed him, turned him into an actor.

How to begin, that was the problem. And I can imagine him looking puzzled, that boyish pursing of the lips, so like the fifty-two-year-old actor on the screen, so like Ozu.

They had been together almost from the first, director and actor; in fact, he claimed to have appeared in all but two of Ozu's fifty-odd films. And then in 1930, despite his youth and inexperience, Ozu gave him one of the leads in
I Flunked, But ...

Ryu had no idea how to begin there, either. Ozu helped him, gave him something to do, indicated where hands, feet, eyes should be. But he never once told him what the character was like.

- I remember one time, he wrote later, when I was playing the father, the leading role in
There Was a Father
(1942). And there was this difficult scene. And I didn't know how to start. So Ozu told me to stare at the end of my chopsticks, then stare at my hand, and then speak to my child. The simple act of doing these things would convey a certain feeling, an atmosphere. But Ozu never explained what the feeling was. The actions came first. Ozu merely told me what to do and then let me discover how it felt. That can be very difficult. I remember once, in one scene, I tried to follow his precise instructions up to twenty times and each time I failed. So I finally gave up.

Ozu arranged the look of his cast just as he arranged the look of his set. They did what he said, and it usually worked—the Ozu atmosphere being founded on the simple premise that if the outside is all right the inside will take care of itself.

Ryu's outside was perfect. Later on, critics were to say that without him the Ozu atmosphere could not exist. And Ryu was aware at a very early stage that he was the Ozu persona, nothing else.

- I was so awkward, so raw and untrained at the beginning. Ozu showed me everything. He gave me absolute support, as long as I followed his directions.

- Since everyone in the studio knew that I wasn't very good, the whole staff used to take a break when the time came for me to do a big scene. They just walked out and left Ozu and me alone. It was then that we rehearsed, endlessly, he giving me all sorts of advice, showing me just how he wanted it. This went on until somehow I managed to get it right.

- Then at the first screening of the film I would see what I'd done and I was always surprised to find my performance so much better than I'd expected.

Whoever Ryu had been before Ozu, he now became an Ozu character. He felt, he said later, as if he were one of his colors, one of the colors with which he was painting his picture.

- There was this 1936 film called
College Is a Nice Place
and I played a student. In one scene I had to take my new suit to the pawnshop. Then, when I received the money, just two bills, I was to look sorry for what I'd done. I had no idea how to do it. So Ozu told me that when I got the money I should look first at one of the bills, then look at the other, and then look up.

And there it is, up there on the screen—sorrow. In the midst of a comedy we have these poignant few seconds, where the fact that the eyes have looked at the bills at all means surprise or concern or disappointment, and the fact that the actor then looks up implies knowledge, comprehension, and the fact that the two are joined to what we know of the story results in sorrow.

- There was another film, made in 1947,
The Record of a Tenement Gentleman
. I was supposed to be reading someone's palm and was drawing the lines of the hand on a piece of paper, one by one, with brush and ink. Every time I pressed the brush I bent my head forward. Ozu stepped in and stopped me.

- When I saw the film I realized why. My bent head would have ruined the unity of the composition. At the same time, the fact that I did
not
bend my head, as one would normally have done, lent the character a kind of comic charm which is just what Ozu must have wanted. At least that's what we got on the screen when the picture was released.

Then, in 1963, on his own birthday, Ozu died. And shortly after that, on a train returning from Osaka, I happened to meet Ryu again. He was fifty-seven at the time, about the age of the father he had played in
Tokyo Story
some ten years before. We spoke about the dead director.

- Ozu used to tell me, you know—and not just me, told everyone—that Ryu wasn't a very good actor. And that's why I use him, he would say. And it's true. I can't think of myself without thinking of him.

I wonder now if that death seemed like a betrayal. Deaths often do. There is a dreadful sense of being left behind. For who was Ryu now that Ozu was dead?

The bullet train raced on and we sat in silence and thought about Ozu. And, though I said nothing, I wondered about Ryu's future.

But his future was assured. He later appeared in picture after picture and with director after director, and he was always good, a fine actor, and he always played the Ozu character.

I have seen monster-films in which the scientist is the Ozu character, teen-age singing star films in which the schoolteacher is the Ozu character, lurid murder-mysteries in which the inspector is the Ozu character. Always the same person, whether mad scientist or wily police officer—and always Ryu.

It was 1985 and I had just seen Juzo Itami's comedy,
The Funeral
, and there, playing the Buddhist priest, was Ryu. He mumbled the sutras gorgeously and played with his tassel and averted his eyes when the money appeared, and then extracted a present from the head of the mourning family. It was a perfect performance, one straight out of Ozu—a posthumous Ozu comedy.

Ryu was at the party afterward. He was now about eighty. He had that old man's way of blinking his eyes as though in constant surprise, that blinking which he so brilliantly showed us when he was only in his late forties, in
Tokyo Story.

Is it because he is eighty that he blinks like a man eighty years old, I wondered, or because he knows from experience that this is how men of eighty should blink?

And there, amid the beer and the orange juice, the strips of dried squid and the peanuts, the posters for the film and, someone having thought to bring it, the picture of Ozu—amid all this I suddenly remembered what the director had told one of his actresses who, baffled, had asked him what she was supposed to be feeling.

His answer was: You are not supposed to feel, you are supposed to do.

And I looked at Ryu, that wonderfully skilled unskillful actor. He was raising his glass. We were drinking to his health. And soon he would begin a little speech. It would be the one he always gives.

- I don't know quite how to begin. When I talk people say, there you go, off on Ozu again. And it's true, I often talk about him. But how could I talk about myself without mentioning Ozu?

It was in 1954, on Christmas Day, that Hiroyasu, then a twenty-year-old university student, met the thirty-year-old foreigner in the ancient capital of Kyoto.

They had something in common. The foreigner was studying Japanese and was much interested in the old culture of Japan. Hiroyasu was studying English and was much interested in the new culture of the United States of America, a country from which, it fortunately happened, the foreigner had come.

The day was also an auspicious occasion, fittingly foreign, and seeming to augur well not only for the coming year but for the future of the young Japanese. This is what he attempted to communicate after he had asked the time in English, after accepting the cup of tea at the grand hotel, after ascertaining that their interests seemed to coincide.

Hiroyasu's English had proved inadequate to his needs, but back in Tokyo, where the student's university was located, he saw to it that he and his new friend often met. Yet, though indeed they frequently met during the months that followed, the Japanese's English got no better while the American's Japanese did.

Also, the student learned little of foreign ways, while the foreigner learned more and more about things Japanese. This was because, though their interests were similar, their aims were different. The foreigner, when asked by Hiroyasu, said that he truly wanted to understand life. The Japanese, when asked by the American, said that he truly wanted to become rich.

Out of university—which he quit—Hiroyasu, with the help of some acquaintances he had made in the boxing club, opened an office that sold and rented apartments. From these small beginnings he extended into the lucrative demolition business.

He tore down old dwellings to make way for new. And here he oc casionally had to avail himself of the services of some friends in the local gang, friends he had made while still in the rental business. They proved invaluable in evacuating widows or deserted mothers and children so that he could demolish the house. Business prospered.

When the foreigner heard about this, however, he was troubled. Hiroyasu, who had now known him for some years and considered him a close acquaintance, carefully explained that this was business—and, in any event, it was not much different from the way things had been done back in the old Japan of which he was so fond.

The American criticized, but the Japanese naturally went ahead with it. Soon he had made enough to open his own construction company. He now built new apartment houses from the old lumber he removed from homes that had been knocked down. This proved a great saving. Nevertheless he experienced some initial financial difficulties.