Ishiro Honda. Steve Ryfle

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СКАЧАТЬ on the lot. In 1936, PCL chose ten prospective assistant directors from the general public for the first time to help bolster the ranks. All the new recruits had degrees from top universities except for one. Akira Kurosawa, at twenty-five, had just a junior-high-school education, but his enthusiasm and knowledge of the visual arts impressed the examiners.³

      “[We] were placed in a sort of cadet system, like at military schools,” remembered Kurosawa. “We had to train in every area, even film printing. We rotated through a series of departments.”⁴ Only after thorough schooling in camera operation, editing, writing, costumes, props, scheduling, budgeting, and other areas could a trainee ascend from the ranks of third and second assistant to earn the coveted title of first assistant director.

      PCL’s assistant directors put in long, hard days, worked well into the night, longed for sleep, and put saliva into their weary eyes to help them see clearly. Kurosawa quickly noticed Honda’s energy and diligence; he nicknamed his new friend “Honda mokume no kami”—Honda, keeper of the grain.

      “[Honda] was then second assistant director, but when the set designers were overwhelmed with work, he lent a hand. He would always take care to paint following the grain of the wood on the false pillars and wainscoting, and to put in a grain texture where it was lacking … His motive in drawing in the grain was to make Yama-san’s work look just that much better. Probably he felt that in order to continue to merit Yama-san’s confidence, he had to make this extra effort. The confidence Yama-san had in us created this attitude. And of course this attitude carried over into our work.”⁵

      Born on March 23, 1910, in Tokyo and standing five foot eleven and a half, Kurosawa was a year older and several inches taller than Honda and seemed worldly and larger than life. He was introduced to the cinema by his father, “a strict man of military background” who nevertheless loved movies and believed they had educational value.⁶ Growing up, Kurosawa was exposed to many different types of films, from Japanese silents to the Zigomar crime serials to Abel Gance’s The Wheel (La Roue, 1923). While Honda’s career was interrupted repeatedly by the war, Kurosawa apprenticed under Yamamoto for five straight years, becoming Yama-san’s “other self.”

      Having just returned from China, Honda had no place of his own. He moved in with Kurosawa, who had a one-room apartment on the second floor of PCL’s employee dorm, Musashi-so, located near the studio in the Seijo neighborhood of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward. They were opposites: Kurosawa opinionated and driven, Honda quiet and unassuming.

      “Kuro-san was like a mentor-friend to me,” said Honda. “Even though he was the same age, I felt that way towards him because of his great talent.” Kurosawa, a gifted painter from a young age, introduced Honda to the work of calligrapher and artist Tessai Tomioka, an originator of the neotraditional Nihonga style, and other painters he was passionate about. The two friends discussed art and film at great length. And as years passed and Honda would go to and from the battlefront, they discussed the war and Japan’s escalating militarism.

      “Honda and I agreed that it would be a disaster if Japan won, if the incompetents in the military stayed in power,” Kurosawa recalled. “Honda said this too. What we’d most hate was to see those military guys have their own way if we won the war, and drive the country into a deeper mess.”⁷ Thanks to his father’s respected name in the military, Kurosawa was exempted from duty. A draft official generously classified him as physically unfit to serve.

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      On the PCL back lot they were known as the Three Crows: Akira Kurosawa, Senkichi Taniguchi, and Ishiro Honda, three up-and-coming assistant directors who, as Kajiro Yamamoto’s top protégés, commanded a bit of respect. No one remembers how the nickname came about, but they seemed significantly taller than everyone else, a trio of “very handsome fellows” who had “a little different vibe,” as a friend remembered. They seemed to be together constantly, during the workday and after hours. Theirs was a close-knit and sometimes tumultuous camaraderie based on shared interests and ambitions.

       The three crows—Kurosawa, Honda, and Taniguchi—with mentor Kajiro Yamamoto, late 1930s.Courtesy of Kurosawa Productions

      Each crow was a bird of a different feather. Taniguchi was the youngest, born February 12, 1912, in Tokyo. He wore eyeglasses, was perpetually tan, and was known for his ever-running mouth, sense of humor, and sharp tongue. Yamamoto encouraged his assistants to speak freely, and Taniguchi didn’t hesitate. “Taniguchi was merciless,” said Kurosawa. “One day he said, ‘Yama-san, you’re a first-rate screenwriter but a second-rate director.’ Yama-san just laughed.”

      Taniguchi served in the war, but his stint was shorter than Honda’s and didn’t stall his career. “[Honda] had really bad luck,” Taniguchi said in 1999. “He was drafted when he was young, and just at a time when he could have learned so much about making movies.”⁸

      Kurosawa was the most volatile among them, complex and opinionated and uncompromising. When he first arrived at PCL, Kurosawa had no place of his own so he’d crashed on Taniguchi’s futon, but Taniguchi grew annoyed and kicked him out. Honda was the quiet and contemplative one, not nearly as aggressive. As Kurosawa biographer Stuart Galbraith IV writes: “They called one another by nicknames after the Kanji characters in their family names: ‘Kuro-chan’ (‘Blackie’), ‘Sen-chan’ (‘Dear Sen,’ ironic, given his temperament), and ‘Ino-chan’ (‘Piggy’).”⁹

      They drank, talked, and argued, and in between films they would camp in the mountains for several days. Honda, the Yamagata boy and soldier, was an able hiker, as was Taniguchi. Their trips invariably began peacefully but ended with Kurosawa and Taniguchi arguing incessantly, with Honda playing peacemaker.

      Each man took what he learned from Yama-san and forged his own path. Kurosawa became a relentless pursuer of perfection. Taniguchi would make a number of notably ambitious early films, including the first adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of the Waves (Shiosai, 1954)—a film that created a sensation for hints of erotic nudity¹⁰—then finished his career with a series of mainstream programmers. Honda most closely emulated his mentor’s example by becoming a versatile maker of successful program pictures and putting his heart and soul into those that mattered most to him. The friendships endured long after their early struggles. While Honda went to war, Kurosawa would help his wife care for their children, and much later Kurosawa would make Honda his most trusted adviser. Taniguchi would be like an uncle to Honda’s kids; and years later, when Honda later bought a bigger house in Okamoto, a neighborhood in the western part of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, Taniguchi and his third wife, actress Kaoru Yachigusa, star of Honda’s The Human Vapor, liked it so much they built a home nearby.

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      In the mid-1930s, with PCL struggling financially, founder Yasuji Uemura had sold a controlling interest in the studio to Ichizo Kobayashi, a railroad executive, real estate tycoon, and the entertainment mogul behind the legendary Takarazuka Grand Theater and its famous all-girl music and dance revue. Kobayashi also owned a chain of cinemas, and acquiring PCL was part of his strategy to supply his movie houses with product. Together with studio chief Iwao Mori, Kobayashi also aimed to shake up the business, building on PCL’s innovative model to create Japan’s most modern film company.

      On August 27, 1937, Kobayashi merged PCL with another small production outfit to form Toho Motion Picture Distribution Company, later the Toho Motion Picture Company.¹¹ According to film critic Jinshi Fujii, “Toho’s entrance into the film business caused the structural reorganization of the Japanese film СКАЧАТЬ