Virtually unknown outside Japan until his 1997 breakthrough with the haunting Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's subsequent rise to fame has been meteoric. In 1999, less than two years after first having one of his films projected on a foreign screen, he pulled the unique stunt of having three different films at each of the world's three major film festivals. In February of that year, his family drama License to Live played the Ber
lin Film Festival. In May, the bizarre eco-alle
gory Charisma was screened in Cannes, and in September the Venice Film Festival showed the equally unclassifiable Barren Illusion. That same year, the film festivals of Toronto, Edinburgh, and Hong Kong held mini-retrospectives of his work. Not since Takeshi Kitano had a Japanese director been so quickly and so widely embraced by the international film establishment.
In a way, it was almost a vindication. By the time the West got wind of him through Cure, Kurosawa had already been directing feature films for fourteen years and had come to be seen as something of a leading light among the gen
eration of filmmakers that had emerged in the late '70s and early '80s. It's doubtful, however, that Kurosawa would have made as strong an impact overseas if he had emerged with one of his earlier films. Much of his work before Cure consisted of genre exercises that occasionally showed a willingness to experiment, but which
92
on the whole would have been unlikely to entice proclamations of genius.
Born in Kobe in 1955 to an ordinary middle
class family, Kiyoshi Kurosawa left for Tokyo in his teens to study sociology at Rikkyo Univer
sity. Once there, his already considerable inter
est in cinema was given a new incentive when he started attending the lectures of Shigehiko Hasumi, one of Japan's leading film theorists.
Inspired by Hasumi's vision of cinema and film
making, which placed a great deal of emphasis on the American cinema, and in particular genre cinema, of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Kurosawa began making his own films with a Super 8 cam
era. To this day, Kurosawa praises Hasumi for the crucial influence the latter had on his life:
"I took his cinema class in university by chance, but it was a very decisive event for me. If I hadn't met him in that period, I wouldn't have become a film director and my view of cinema would be completely different.
He was a crucial person for me. It's difficult to sum up what his influence on me has been, but he taught me that cinema, and exploring what cinema is, is worth devoting your life to.
Also he insisted and repeated numerous times that, In cinema you can't shoot the things you can't see. It sounds so obvious, but love, peace, hate-such abstract concepts cannot
be shown on film. But that doesn't mean you can't express them. Many directors have tried hard to express them, using their skill, talent, and the support of their crew. You may suc
ceed in expressing them with such effort, but you can never think that you can show them with just your camera. I was really impressed by that. "
Hasumi not only inspired his filmmaking, it also shaped the way he looked at film, as well as his personal cinematic tastes. He adopted Ha
sumi's predilection for American genre cinema, with a preference for such action-men directors as Robert Aldrich, Don Siegel, Sam Peckinpah, and Richard Fleischer, as well as a liking for horror specialists like Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter. At the same time, European art film
makers like Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, and Eric Rohmer, who had themselves been weaned on American cinema, as well as U.S.
mavericks like John Cassavetes, formed another considerable strand of influence on Kurosawa.
Kurosawa continued to make 8mm short films throughout his university years. His efforts culminated in a prize for Vertigo College, a paro
dy of gangster films set on a university campus, at the 1 980 PIA Film Festival, Japan's foremost event for independent film and young filmmak
ers. The prize allowed Kurosawa to enter the professional film world, where he went to work as an assistant director to such independently minded filmmakers as Kazuhiko Hasegawa, Shinji Somai, and Banmei Takahashi.
After three years of apprenticeship, Kuro
sawa was hired by the Million company, a now defunct player in the erotic pinku eiga field.
He made his directorial debut with Kandagawa Wars ( 1 983), the story of two apartment blocks on opposite sides of the titular river and the erotic encounters of their tenants. The execu
tives were not entirely satisfied with the results, which frequently interrupted the all-important sex scenes with such images as the tribulations involved in crossing the river, the sudden
ap-Bright Future
Kiyoshi Kurosawa 93
pearance of a choir on the roof of one of the buildings, and the frequent quoting of film ti
tles. His experimentations on his next film,Joshi Daisei: Hazukashii Seminar [trans: College girl:
shameful seminar], went so far that Nikkatsu refused to release the film, allegedly because it was not erotic enough.
In an effort to salvage the film, Kurosawa asked the independent Director's Company (formed by several filmmakers including his for
mer employers Kazuhiko Hasegawa and Ban
mei Takahashi) to buy the film from Nikkatsu.
Kurosawa reshot parts of the film and released it in a re-edited version under the title The Ex
citement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl in 1 98 5 . The resulting film had more in common with mid
period Godard than with a Nikkatsu sex romp, featuring its lead actress Yuriko Doguchi parad
ing in a nightgown carrying an AK-47 machine gun like an Asian Anne Wiazemski. Echoes of Seijun Suzuki's clash with Nikkatsu fifteen years earlier became all the stronger when the studio, having seen themselves overruled by a single young filmmaker, spread the word about Ku
rosawa's troublesome behavior to the other ma
jors, effectively exiling him to the fringes of the film industry. (The studio later redeemed itself by co-financing Charisma, one of Kurosawa's most enigmatic and uncommercial films.)
His banishment was to have a decisive in
fluence on Kurosawa as a filmmaker, but not in an entirely negative way. Although he wouldn't direct a film for the next four years, the course he would take following the clash with Nikkatsu
allowed him to explore his fascination for genre cinema and to discover his own relation to genre cinema as a filmmaker. most attentive listeners to Kurosawa's lectures.
Among them were people who would later make their own mark on Japanese cinema in the latter part of the '90s, including Shinji Aoyama, Ma
koto Shin ozaki, Akihiko Shiota, Masayuki Suo, and Kunitoshi Manda (director of the Takenori Sento production Unloved, 2 00 1 ).
Kurosawa's return to filmmaking came in 1 989, when Jiizo Itami, who had been enor
mously successful throughout the decade as both a director and an actor, asked Kurosawa to di
rect Sweet Home, a haunted house thriller in the
tradition of Robert Wise's The Haunting ( 1 963) and Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist ( 1 982). Itami had been an actor in The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi
Fa Girl and he also appeared in Sweet Home, giv
ing the lead part to his star actress wife, Nobuko Miyamoto. For the abundant special effects, Ku
rosawa and Itami flew in Hollywood make-up ef
fects master Dick Smith, best known for his work on The Exorcist ( 1 973). The result was a spec
tacularly entertaining horror film, but Kurosawa again met with interference when Itami, after the film's theatrical run, reshot and re-edited parts of the film for video and TV release. Infuriated, Kurosawa took the unprecedented step of suing his producer, which did nothing to improve his standing in the Japanese film industry.
After directing a segment of the Director's Company omnibus horror film Dangerous Sto
ries the same year, Kurosawa's "exile" saw him drifting into made-for-television horror produc
tions like The Wordholic Prisoner ( 1 990), Yorokobi no Uzumaki ( 1 992) [trans: Vortex of joy], and the Kansai TV horror anthology series Haunted School (1 994 ) before being scooped up by the fledgling V-cinema industry.
Filmography
1974
with Kunitoshi Manda]
1983
sha: Jigoku no Misogura) [TV]
1992
• Rokk6 [short]
1975
• B6ryoku Ky6shi: Hakuchu Daisatsuriku [short]
1976
• Shing6 Chikachika [short]
• Fukakutei Ryokoki [short]
1977
• Vertigo College (Shigarami Gakuen)
1982
• Tos6 Zenya [short, co-directed
• Ningensei no Kejime [short, co-director]
• Kandagawa Wars (Kandaga
wa Inran Sens6) 1985
• The Excitement of the Do-Re
Mi·Fa Girl (Doremifa Musume
• Dangerous Stories (Abunai Hanashl) [co-director]
1990
• Wordholic Prisoner (Modae Kurushimu Katsuji Shoji Takano, Kazuya Kona
ka, and Zenboku Sato]
Kiyoshi Kurosawa 95
In that period, however, he did see some of his dignity restored when he became the second Japanese filmmaker invited to Robert Redford's Sundance Institute Screenplay Workshops on the merit of an early draft of the screenplay for Charisma, which he would bring with him to Utah and would continue to work on for the next seven years. After his return, he was offered a new chance to direct a film for theatrical release, albeit one with the kind of low budget and tight shooting schedule more commonly associated with V-cinema, as well as getting the opportuni
ty to publish his first book. The film, The Guard from Underground, was an interesting variation on the slasher formula that received good notic
es, while the book EiZQ no Karisuma [trans: The charisma of the image 1 allowed him to indulge his own passions as a filmmaker with essays on some of his favorite directors and films.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Although the invitation, the film, and the book went some ways toward restoring his pride, the major studios still wanted little to do with him. His outlaw status put him in a perfect posi
tion for the emerging V-cinema industry, which offered opportunities to fringe filmmakers and
assistant directors where the minimal allocated budgets would not afford production compa
nies to hire seasoned professionals. With the creative freedom given to directors who agreed to stay within budget and on schedule, and its reliance on genre filmmaking, V-cinema would prove to be an important transitional phase in Kurosawa's career.
"It's been very valuable for me to have the ex
perience of making program pictures. Generally
Shiyagare Dashutsu Keikaku) with Tetsu Maeda and Ta
kashi Shimizu) 1999
• License to Live (Ningen Gakaku)
• Barren Illusion (Oinaru Genel)
• Charisma (Karisuma) Yaguchi, Norio Tsuruta, and Akira Ogata)
2002
• 2001 Eiga no Tabi [short]
2003
• Cop Festival (Deka Matsuo) [co-d i rector)
• Bright Future (Akarui Miral)
• Doppelganger (Dopperu
geng8) 2004
• Kokoro, Odoru [short]
Dangerous Stories
in that type of production environment, the subject and the story are already fixed. Also, you recreate the same type of film several times with only a slight difference. When the studio system still existed, many directors went through that experience. Today, there is only V-cinema that can give you a similar expe
rience. For me, compared to before the time I started working in V-cinema, I came to handle the subjects as well as the technical aspects of my films better and with more flexibility.
"Also, I think film is a combination of real
ity and fiction. Both factors are there. When you start making a movie from scratch, you have to create the fiction. You have to spend a lot of effort and pain creating the story and the screenplay, and only then can you make the film. But the things you actually record on film are real. After spending so much energy creating the fiction you are tired, and you will become careless when making the film
and recording the reality. But in the case of program pictures, the fiction-the story and subject-are already fixed. That means you can concentrate on recording reality. That's a big difference. It's not just true in my case, it's true historically and internationally. Generally you can say that program pictures are often more real than other films. The fact that you can concentrate on reality is the big advan
tage of program pictures."
Indeed, Kurosawa's films for the video market show an increasing devotion to formal experimentation. Although early works like Yakuza Taxi, a comedy about gangsters who find themselves running a taxi service, are still large
ly dime-a-dozen video productions, the later Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself! series demon
strated a tremendous growth. Six films made in less than two years, they show Kurosawa de
veloping from a cautious experimentalist into a
full-blown artist with a signature style, themes, and voice.
Named after the Japanese title of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (A Bout de Souffle, 1957jJapa
nese title: Ktltte ni Shiyagare), Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself was also Kurosawa's first encounter with actor Sh6 Aikawa. Aikawa was, and is, one of the main stars of straight-to-video yakuza films, but rus acting abilities and willingness to experiment surprised Kurosawa, and the pair would go on to make over a dozen films together.
His work in V-cinema also saw Kurosawa greatly increasing his productivity, churning out the horror film Door III and the two-part cop drama The Revenge (also starring Aikawa) in ad
dition to the above-mentioned six films, all be
tween 1995 and 1997. This efficiency is another element that would come to characterize him for the rest of his career.
"I'm just a very fast filmmaker. I usually take about two to four weeks to shoot. Also, there's not a lot of money for filmmaking in Japan, so if you only make one film a year, it's very dif
ficult to stay alive. "
The great turnaround for Kurosawa came with 1997's Cure. Produced by the recently res
urrected former major Daiei, whose own mar
ginal position in relation to the other studios was reflected in their adventurous output and choice of directors, it was Kurosawa's return to the lime
light and rus biggest rut. Popular with foreign fes
tivals and distributors, it made Kurosawa's name internationally and put him back on the map in his own country, with a best actor award for star K6ji Yakusho (the director's other frequent lead actor) at the Japanese Academy Awards and a nomination for Kurosawa as best director.
Kurosawa had now truly come into his own as a filmmaker. Cure was the crowning achieve
ment of a rapid development that started with the final episodes of the Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself series and ran through Door III and The Revenge. Combining an openness to genre
Kiyoshi Kurosawa 97
cinema, a postmodern willingness to borrow discreetly from his favorite filmmakers, and an eagerness to explore the darker side of our own behavior as individuals and as a society, Kurosa
wa developed in the course of these films a the
matic and stylistic language that he would come to apply and refine in every film that followed.
While their thematic weight and sometimes purely unclassifiable nature at times seem to in
dicate differently, Kurosawa claims that every film he makes always starts with a genre basis.
"Which genre my film ultimately belongs in Is up to the audience when it's finished, but certain
ly as a starting point I always start my next project considering which genre I would like to work in. So in that sense I am a genre director.
Actually, I'm often misunderstood. I don't start with a philosophical or thematic approach. In
stead I start with a genre that's relatively easy to understand and then explore how I want to work in that genre. And that's how a theme or an approach develops. The genre is first. "
Although often regarded as an art filmmaker rather than a genre filmmaker, his admiration for American genre directors of old makes Ku
rosawa the last to treat genre cinema with elitist disdain. His own philosophy toward genre is that he works in genres "in order to better distance myself from them," an expression that perfectly sums up his work in V-cinema. Perhaps the best example of his approach is Charisma, whose final result at first glance seems to bear no similarity to any genre known to filmdom.
"It's a sort of American-style Indiana Jones/
two-teams-vying-for-a-treasure film. That's how I started it. But instead of a box of gold I de
cided to make the treasure a tree that's in a forest. Then you start to imagine 'what value does the tree have?' and 'what is the condition of the forest it's growing in?' Then you start to realize that you're not making an Indiana Jones movie at all, but that you're making a much
more complex film. That's the process of my filmmaking. The reason I take this approach to filmmaking is that although film needs a fictional story element, it also is a medium that allows you to record the reality around you. You're filming real forests and real people.
I think that film for me is a medium point be
tween a fictional story and reality. You start with the genre, which is fiction, and gradually move toward reality. Somewhere in between you find film. To put it simply: I would like to make a movie like Indy Jones, but there aren't any real people like Indy Jones. That's the be
ginning of my filmmaking. "
Closely related to his openness to genre is Kurosawa's consistent appropriation of elements from other films. Although this postmodernist practice is sometimes referred to as meta-nar
rative (narrative about narrative), in Kurosawa's case the reference rarely exists for its own sake.
Elements are applied discretely and assimilated into the larger whole in a similar way to the dis
tortion of a film's genre roots. His use of existing titles (the aforementioned Katte ni Shiyagare!!, but also Oinaru Genei, the original title of Bar
ren Illusion as well as the Japanese title of Jean Renoir's Grande Illusion) is by far the most overt example of this tendency. Koji Yakusho's stained overcoat in Charisma, Ren Osugi's chainsaw in License to Live, the solitary lamppost in Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself The Hero, and the re
curring white backgrounds in driving scenes are much more inconspicuous cases of appropria
tion, which for the most part acquire their own significance within the framework of the film.
Kurosawa occasionally even borrows from him
self: the two main ghostly encounters in Pulse are refined variations on a scene from Door III.
Perhaps only the habitual close-ups of flashing police sirens are self-acknowledged references, though in this case to a genre cliche rather than to an individual film.
Postmodern or not, Kurosawa's films are undeniably his own. Genre base and
occa-sional references play a decidedly minor role in the overall result of his work compared to themes and style, both of which are uniquely his. Although Kurosawa believes that there is no single motif to his work ("You can never sim
ply grab the motifs and apply them rationally.
ply grab the motifs and apply them rationally.