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

[Aaron Gerow]

Sorry not to respond to this earlier, but I've been busy writing.

First, as for sources for the film, these are the four (other than of 
course Kitano's own life) that were cited either by Kitano or by 
critics when the film came out:

1) the novel Heart: A Schoolboy’s Journey (Cuore) originally published 
in 1886 by the Italian writer Edmondo de Amicis
2) the Shitamachi films of Yamada Yôji, particularly the “It’s Tough to 
Be a Man” series (“Otoko wa tsurai yo”) featuring the itinerant peddler 
Kuruma Torajirô (Tora-san), which is one of the most popular film 
series in Japanese film history
3) various road movies
4) the long list of films from Chaplin’s The Kid (1921) to Walter 
Salles’s Central Station (Central do Brasil, 1998), from King Vidor’s 
The Champ (1931) to Dennis Dugan’s Big Daddy (1999), featuring a 
usually curmudgeony adult forced to care for a young child, frequently 
while traveling (the road movie pattern).

Especially with 3 and 4 one can add a lot of other movies if you like 
(like the Ozu film), but similarity and influence are different things. 
Kitano himself only cited 1 and 2.

A lot has been said about Kitano's life. Kitano has certainly made his 
life a central intertext in a lot of his work, from his writings, his 
TV work to his films. Quite a number of his films have autobiographical 
references that can be important in considering the text. But as many 
have said, Kitano's life is as much myth as fact, and just as Kitano 
creates different personalities for himself, I don't think it would be 
extreme to say he creates different lives for himself. Childhood 
friends have said that at least some of what he says about his life is 
incorrect, so we should take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps it is a 
"fact" that his father was a horrible person, but most of the 
representations of him on TV have been of a bumbling but ultimately 
good person. According to Kitano, the film Kikujiro is based in part on 
his memory that the only time he ever really spent with his father was 
when, actually lying to his mother, Kikujiro took him off to the beach 
with his work buddies (this from a Kitano who says he never spent any 
time with his own kids). True or not, that is one of the intertexts for 
the film.

Given all this rewriting of his own life, I would warn Lorenzo to be 
careful with what seems to be the original aim of his inquiry: to find 
a basis in traditional Japanese culture for the character Kikujiro. 
Perhaps there are similar characters, but again similarity and 
influence are different things and it is clear Kitano rewrites things 
at will. At some times, he seems to respect traditional culture, at 
others (like in some interviews for Zatoichi), he says that there is no 
need to follow tradition at all. I think Michael is right to look for 
more immediate cultural contexts such as Asakusa and manzai. Manzai has 
been around for centuries in one form or another (and with different 
kanji for the name), but it would be hard to justify connecting Kitano 
to pre-Meiji forms of manzai which were not all comedic. Modern manzai 
really begins in the 1930s with Achako and Entatsu and it is from there 
you should start looking. But do also remember that the comedy he 
learned at the Furansu-za was not manzai (Fukami was not a manzaishi), 
but conte (skit) comedy. He only took up manzai on Kiyoshi's 
suggestion. Asakusa is also an important intertext, but Asakusa in the 
Edo era, Asukusa in the 1910s (with the Junikai and Asakusa opera), 
Asakusa in the 1930s (with movies and  Enoken and the Kaji no Foru), 
Asakusa in the immediate postwar (the heyday of the strip joints), and 
Asakusa in the 1970s (when Kitano was there and it was already largely 
run down) are all different in crucial ways. In terms of Asakusa, 
Zatoichi is possibly his most Asakusa film, even though it doesn't 
appear there.

Hope this helps.

Aaron Gerow
Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University