The China Lover (18 page)

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A
LL THE BIG
names in the Japanese movie establishment were there, in the main office of the Information Bureau at the General Headquarters of SCAP. I didn’t know any of them then, of course. They might as well have been a group of businessmen, except for one or two who wore floppy hats, as though about to embark on a fishing trip. But if a bomb had been dropped on the former Daiichi Life Insurance Building on that gray September morning, all the most famous directors and producers in Japan would have been wiped out in one blast. After a great deal of formality and smiling goodwill, the Japanese sat down in rows of uncomfortable wooden chairs in front of a desk placed on a kind of dais. From that elevated position, Major Richard (“Dick”) M. Murphy, a tall, ungainly man with red hair and pale Irish skin, went through the list of do’s and don’ts in the production of postwar Japanese motion pictures. The translator, George Ishikawa, later became a good friend of mine.

The do’s included “showing Japanese in all walks of life cooperating to build a peaceful society.” Movies also had to reflect the new spirit of “individualism” and “democracy” and “respect for the rights of men and women.” Notes were diligently taken by studio secretaries, while their bosses made throaty noises that might well have signified assent, but one could never be entirely sure.

Anything to do with the old spirit of “feudalism,” or “militarism,”
was of course a no-no. Swordfight pictures, long a staple of the Japanese movie industry, were out, since they promoted “feudal loyalty.” When one of the directors asked for other examples of unacceptable “feudalism,” Murphy paused for a second, to ponder this question, and then mentioned images of what he called “Mount Fujiyama.” This caused a degree of confusion in the audience. “But Fuji-san,” growled one portly gentleman with oily hair, “is a symbol of our culture.” The Major smiled, and said very slowly, to make sure everyone understood, whether or not they had any English: “That is why we are here together, my friends, to change the culture, to foster a new spirit of democracy.” When another gentleman pointed out that the Fuji was his company crest, Major Murphy put it to him, with undiminished benevolence, that in that case perhaps the symbol should be changed to something else.

If the Japanese were irritated, or perhaps a little nonplussed, they didn’t show it. On the contrary, most of them smiled back at the Major in the manner of grateful students. “Perhaps,” said a slim young man in a gray suit, “Major Murphy might be kind enough to suggest a few themes that would best suit the new age of democracy.” The Major, who had been a haberdasher in Black Foot, Idaho, in civilian life, was more than happy to oblige. “What about baseball?” he said, looking very proud of himself. “Now there’s a splendid theme. Baseball is a democratic sport. We play it, and now you play it too.” In fact, the Japanese had been playing it for many years before the war, but the Major wasn’t to know that. “Ah,” said the slim young man, whom I would soon get to know (it was the young Akira Kurosawa), “baseball.” “What did he say?” asked the balding producer. “Baseball,” Kurosawa replied, “films about baseball.” “Ah, yes,” said the producer, “baseball.” And everyone smiled.

One of my happiest duties as secretary to Major Murphy was to visit the movie studios, where we spent many hours in smoky screening
rooms vetting films for signs of “feudalism.” Watching endless reels of Japanese movies was a trial for the Major, who invariably used these occasions to catch up on lost sleep. For me it was an education. George Ishikawa would explain the action, in the way of a traditional storyteller, while I was all eyes. Gradually I began to see patterns in Japanese moviemaking. What had been baffling before started to make sense under George’s tutelage. It was a different way of looking, a different visual syntax, as it were: the discretion of Japanese camera angles, for example, keeping a distance even in scenes of great emotion, was actually more moving than the extreme close-ups which we are used to in the West. And stories meandered, following a poetic logic, instead of rushing from one scene to the next, tying up the narrative with a happy little knot. Japanese stories tended to be open-ended, like life.

I’m afraid all this was lost on Major Murphy. Like so many Americans, he had fine ideals but no imagination. A born missionary, he never tired of lecturing the Japanese about great abstractions. I bet he even dreamed about “democracy” and “civic engagement.” Every so often, a new notion of how to implement these fine ideals would take hold of him, and become an obsession.

One of these obsessions came to him when a script was submitted to our office about the romantic travails of a young woman. The story was unremarkable. It might have been a remake of many similar pictures. The girl’s father wants her to marry the son of his boss. She insists on marrying the man of her own choice. True love prevails. Murphy approved. Indeed, he was over the moon. “At last,” he cried, “the perfect expression of the new spirit of equality!” He loved the script so much that he summoned the filmmakers to his office for a special meeting. The director, Ichiro Miyagawa, was a veteran of some distinction. He listened patiently as Murphy gave him advice on how to make the script even stronger. Why, said Murphy, whose face was shining with enthusiasm, did one never see Japanese men and women
kiss in public? Wasn’t this a sign of feudalism? After all, he said, getting more and more agitated, “even the Japanese must kiss in private, so why be so sneaky about it? Why beat around the bush? Democracy is all about love, after all—open love, wholesome love, love of a spouse, love of family. That’s why it’s so important to include a scene of the couple kissing!”

Miyagawa, whose previous work was less known for its romantic content than for its deftly staged scenes of fighting samurai, questioned whether the Japanese public was quite ready for such an unusual innovation. People might feel embarrassed and laugh. Murphy waved away these objections, as though addressing a stubborn child. “No, no, no,” he said, “it’s up to you to teach the public how to change their ways and build a democratic society.” Miyagawa’s producer, a small man with highly polished black shoes, patted the director on the knee and said something soothing in Japanese. “What did he say?” asked Murphy. George translated that they would do their best to make a democratic film. “Good,” said Murphy, “good, very good. Gentlemen, together we’ll get there. I just know we will. It’s been a pleasure to do business with you.”

Less than a month later, Murphy and I traveled through the Tokyo suburbs in an Army car to see the movie actually being shot at the Oriental Peace Entertainment Company. The suburbs were slightly less ruined than the central parts of the city. But in many cases, white concrete storehouses were all that survived of what once had been fine mansions. The charcoal-burning buses were so full that people hung on the outside, like grapes to a vine. Men and women fluttered their paper fans to extract some coolness from the humid air, and swat away the insects that swarmed around the craters filled with stagnant water. Josephine Baker was singing somewhere on a radio set.

The Oriental Peace Studios, located near the Tama River, were the largest in Japan. Men with white kerchiefs wrapped around their heads
were running in and out of low gray concrete buildings. Everyone seemed to be in a tremendous rush. It was like watching a speeded-up movie, as though the Japanese couldn’t make films fast enough to still the national craving for motion pictures.

To get to Studio A, where
Sounds of Spring
was being shot, we had to pass by a remarkable reconstruction of a ruined Tokyo street, set around a bomb crater filled with water. The ruined houses, made of painted wood, looked disturbingly real. A handpump was inserted into the sump to produce noxious-looking bubbles in the slimy surface of the stagnant pool. An old shoe, a discarded doll, a broken umbrella, and other bits of flotsam had been artfully placed in the water. A man was hunched over a guitar. A fire hose was spraying water over the set to simulate a summer rainstorm. A pan-pan girl with piled-up hair, bright red lipstick, and high heels stood outside the facade of a neon-lit dance hall, from the back of which a handsome young man in a Hawaiian shirt and a white plastic belt came rushing in whenever the director cried: “Start!” A popular ballad was playing in the background. Apart from the large old prewar camera, the sound boom dangling from a bamboo pole, the lights, and the director in his floppy white hat, this scene might have been taking place in any backstreet of Tokyo.

Anxious to get inside the studio building, Murphy strode past the set with barely a glance. I made an awkward half bow at the director, whom I recognized as the slim young man at the meeting in GHQ. He smiled and nodded back. But Murphy told me to hurry up, so I was unable to watch any more of this intriguing scene being shot.

Inside Studio A, the air was even more stifling than outside on the open set. When the lights were on, the heat was suffocating. Miyagawa, the director, stood up when he saw us, and ordered an assistant to place two chairs beside his. The set, bathed in bright light, was a small garden outside a wooden Japanese house. The potted tree and bamboo grove were splashed with water to keep them looking fresh.
In this artificial garden stood a young man in a white summer suit with rather too much makeup on and a petite young woman in a flowered dress and white ankle socks. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. To prevent the actors’ makeup from running in the heat, a girl was busily dabbing their foreheads with a handkerchief. Miyagawa clapped his hands, called for quiet, and said something to the actors. George whispered that this was a rehearsal. Someone handed us a script in English. The lines went:
Man:
“I love you. For eternity I love you.”
Woman:
“You promise me, never let me go.”
Man:
“We will always be free.”

The actress had remarkably large eyes, which she opened even wider when she spoke her lines, while puckering her lips to receive her lover’s kiss. Miyagawa leaned forward in his chair, his face creased with concentration. He clapped his hands again. A sharp word was addressed to the actress, who nodded vigorously, while apologizing for her clumsiness. George explained that she should close her eyes when they kissed. They went through the scene several more times, the young man stooping to take her into his arms, and the girl closing her eyes in blissful anticipation, though always stopping short of actual contact. I was trying to think where I had seen her face before. I asked George who she was. He told me she was very famous and that her name was Yoshiko Yamaguchi. The name meant nothing to me.

“Okay, let’s go.
Honban!
” said Miyagawa. This word I knew. It meant something like “the real thing.” The actors received a final dab with the handkerchief. Miss Yamaguchi looked toward Miyagawa, clearly disturbed about something. He made a reassuring gesture and barked an order. The girl with the handkerchief rushed to the stage. In her right hand, now encased in a white glove, she held two tiny pieces of gauze, which had a faint chemical odor. Yamaguchi closed her eyes and offered her mouth to the girl, who carefully inserted the gauze between her lips, as though it were a host.

“
Hai
starto!” cried Miyagawa. The actor did his best with the lines. They embraced, his lips briefly brushing against her lips wrapped in gauze. Murphy was smiling, like a benevolent priest. I didn’t really appreciate it then, but we were witnesses to a great moment: the first kiss in the history of Japanese cinema.

The release of tension was palpable. Miss Yamaguchi did a little jig on the spot. The actor, whose name was Shiro Okuno, grinned and scratched the back of his neatly coiffed head. Even Miyagawa looked more relaxed, as he introduced us to his stars. “Hi,” said Miss Yamaguchi, as she shook my hand. “Nice to meet you. I like Americans.” “Well,” I replied, slightly taken aback, “I like Japanese.” This elicited a nervous titter. “Nooo,” she said, in protest. Perhaps she thought I was being patronizing. Murphy then took her hand in both of his and said: “It’s sure great to meet you, Yamaguchi-san. Our boys in intelligence know all about you. They all know your song, ‘China Nights,’ from Japanese class. They love it, just love it.”