sake in films

[Peter Grilli]

Markus:

That's a fascinating story aoubt Seimiya and Homma, during the film of the
Sanrizuka films.  Certainly excellent testimony to the lengths that Japanese
assistant directors will go to do the director's bidding!

But if we go there..... there's no end of drinking stories.  Without sake,
shochu, whiskey, etc. I doubt that many films would ever have gotten made in
Japan!  There are many tales of Ozu's drinking bouts with Kogo Noda -- and
some critics have almost determined the success of their scripts by the
number of large (isshobin) empty bottles of sake lined up outside the
veranda of Ozu's mountain house where they would go to write their
screenplays.  Or Mizoguchi's drinking sessions with Yoda.  Every time I
visited a Kurosawa location, the sake and shochu flowed liberally -- but not
so much that AK couldn't go back to his movieola after eating and drinking
with his actors and assistants and put in several hours of editing rushes.
Nogami Teruyo and various assistant directors like Horikawa have written
about how much alcohol was consumed along the way to making masterpieces.

In connection with drinking or drunkenness that is in front of the camera
(as opposed to directors or crew drinking when preparing or shooting a
film),  Mifune and Nakadai and other actors have spoken occasionally about
how Kurosawa coached their drinking scenes or "drunken" performances.
Plenty of drinking going on in Ikiru, Lower Depths, Yojimbo, and other
films; more stately drinking scenes in Ran, and even in Maada-dayo.  And, in
Ozu films, more critical conversations take place in quiet little bars than
one can begin to count.  In short, remove drinking from Japanese film -- or,
for that matter, from Japanese society -- and what's left might seem pretty
thin and colorless!

Peter Grilli

  -----Original Message-----
  From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]On Behalf Of Mark Nornes
  Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 9:28 AM
  To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
  Subject: Re: sake in films


  Ah, sake....definitely one of the best things about Japan, both in taste
and style of imbibing. There are too many examples to list, but here is my
favorite sake story, in a quote from the book I'm working on. The film under
production is Nihon kaiho sensen: Sanrizuka (1970).

  Markus

  ------------

  While Tsuchimoto and Kansai Ogawa Productions filmed Prehistory of the
Partisans in Kyoto, Ogawa and the main unit continued their ?Taiga Drama?
behind the barricades in the fields of Sanrizuka. Up until this point, Ogawa
and his crew were living in an apartment in the larger town of Sanrizuka.
This building, near Sanrizuka Crossroads, was outside of the construction
site itself and they hoped to move into one of the nearby buraku (hamlets)
as soon as possible. The staff spread out to the entire area, looking for
possible places as they researched the development of the struggle. They
soon settled on two strong possibilities, Komaino and Heta. Both were
adjacent to the airport boundary, but the resemblances ended there. In Heta,
virtually everyone refused to sell; in Komaino all but one farmer had joined
the so-called ?joken-ha? (which might be translated, ?the side that sold out
for concessions?).

  They chose to live in Heta, where the Uriu family offered to lend them a
small outbuilding to live in and work out of. Heta sat in a small, narrow,
remarkably beautiful valley, and was home to 33 families. Two of these were
empty homes (one left the village, and the other was Kichiyoin Temple). Of
the remaining families, 28 were in the Hantai Domei and refused to sell.
This was a particularly politicized village. Above and beyond this
impressive statistic, the women were tough and spirited. Neighbor Ishii
Setsuko, one of the most familiar faces of the Sanrizuka Series proudly told
me, ?Ogawa always said he came here because we Heta women were always the
first to arrive at the very front lines.?

  In stark contrast, virtually all of neighboring Komaino was being sold to
the Kodan without a fight. The lone exception was Seimiya Tsutomu, a
grizzled old farmer who refused to move. Ogawa Productions was intrigued by
this man. They would make Seijiya the centerpiece of their next film. Much
to their dismay, however, Seimiya himself would have nothing of this and
refused to cooperate. Honma took up the cracking of Seimiya?s resistance as
his personal project. At the end of every day, he would bike the 20 minutes
over to Seimiya?s home and talk and drink for hours. Aside from learning
about the village and Seimiya?s life, Honma tried to make the filmmakers?
position clear to the old man. The problem was that Seimiya could not
distinguish between fiction and documentary. He figured the film was about
him; that made him an actor and this was a task he had no interest in. Honma
tried in vain to teach him the difference between fiction and documentary,
but the man was stubborn. Honma?s nightly visits continued for an entire
year, testament to how far Ogawa Pro was willing to go for their films.
Ogawa Pro members often joke that Honma?s own evidence became his battered
face. After one long night of drinking and discussion he returned home to
Heta knock-down drunk and lost control of his bicycle, smashing his mouth
into the handlebars and losing his front teeth. After that, he called this
toothless smile his memorial to Sanrizuka.

  Ogawa finally became impatient with the lack of progress, ordering Tamura
and Honma to shoot Seimiya one way or another. By this point in their
relationship, both sides completely understood the others? position. It was
time to shoot or forget it. The film had already expanded far beyond a
singular portrait of Seimiya, but art least they could include an interview.
Since Seimiya refused, they shot him cutting rice by hand. He attacked them
with a sickle; when they shot him out with a rifle, he pointed it at them.
Both scenes are in the finished film, along with a moving interview that he
finally granted. I will discuss this conversation below. Seimiya was also
featured in Ogawa Pro?s most powerful posters (a triptych with images of a
helmeted youth and a wasted construction site). His ruddy face looks to the
heavens with a quote from his interview: ?When a farmer sells his land, that
?s the end.?

  This extraordinary effort for a single interview evidences the lengths to
which Ogawa Pro was willing to go to build their filmmaking on honest
relationships with their objects. Nothing could be further from the hit and
run exploitation of television news, or the majority of documentarists for
that matter.


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