Kitano/Kijujiro/Buffoon--Addition re Furansu-za

[Michael McCaskey]

The one thing is that, in light of Kitano's books Kikujiro to Saki, ISBN4-10-122524-9, a memoir of his early years, and Asakusa kiddo, ISBN4-10-122512-5, about his days in Asakusa in early adulthood at the Furansu-za, etc., it seems as if much of the Kikujiro no natsu film is really Kitano's own story.

Kitano's father was in fact named Kikujiro. He was a house and interior painter, who apparently was drunk part of the time he was home, and bullied all his kids sadistically almost all the time. Kitano speaks, or writes, of him with fairly undisguised hatred, and if Kitano's accounts are true, the hatred was fully justified.

Kitano's mother was a bit nicer, but spent a lot of time crticizing Kitano and making little of everything he did, even after he became successful. She ended with Altzheimer's, and never made peace with Kitano. She is Kikujiro's mother in the film.

Kitano and his brother and sister were at least semi-orphans. Sometimes they went off and hid when their father was home, and their mother was not very sympathetic.

Kitano gave his father's name to Kitano's character in the film--perhaps partly because the character is irresponsible, and at times violent, like Kitano's father. But the Kikujiro film character is really nice--to his wife and to the kid, at least.

But from Kitano's descriptions, his own father was never nice at any time--he enjoyed doing cruel things to his children, such as one day casually killing his young daughter's pet chicken, for no reason, and having it boiling in a pot to greet her when she got home from school--apparently because he had nothing better to do that day. He was never at all sorry after doing things like this--just a so-what, who cares, attitude all the time. He was most likely psychotic.

The Kikujiro in the film is perhaps more like the hoped-for father that might have been nice after all, and the kid is Kitano, looking for a real parent.

Please feel quite free to disaree with my amateur psychoanalysis if you wish.

Michael McCaskey
Georgetown


----- Original Message -----
From: Lorenzo Javier Torres Hortelano <ljth2006 at gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, August 10, 2006 7:22 pm
Subject: Re: Kitano/Kijujiro/Buffoon--Addition re Furansu-za

> That's an interesting relation, Michael. What do you think then, 
> about the
> relation with Chaplin's "The Kid": you can find some similarities 
> in the
> plot (searching the lost mother), some atrezzo elements (angels) 
> and some
> significant graphic matches (movie poster with Kikujiro and Masao 
> on the
> beach looking back that is very similar to the classic one of 
> Chaplin and
> the kid with the mother's house in the background).
> 
> Thanks for your interest.
> 
> Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
> Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
> Madrid, Spain
> 
> 
> 2006/8/11, Michael E Kerpan <kerpan at attglobal.net>:
> >
> > I would also suggest that Kitano's Kikujiro needs to be seen in 
> relation> to
> > Ozu's "Nagaya shinshiroku".  Many elements of Ozu's film (which also
> > featured
> > a problematic adult forced to care for a taciturn little boy) 
> show up in
> > Kitano's.
> >
> > Michael Kerpan
> > Boston
> >
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
>