Pathway to Japanese Literature

I think it was the autumn of Meiji 39.

At seven years old, I was taken by my father to a temporary shed in Kobe Port Shin-kaichi and found myself gazing at moving pictures there.

The wind entering through gaps in the tent’s canopy caused the projection screen to undulate like waves, upon which was projected a "live" (?) coverage of the Russo-Japanese War.
We stood in the audience seating—though it was nothing more than a patch of damp ground partitioned by lumber and cloth—and watched while jostling one another.
Of course, a child like me couldn’t see the screen unless I went all the way to the front.
Though the ground was too dark to see clearly, moving my feet would brush against orange peels or soda bottles, and attempting to walk meant tripping over large clumps of weeds—altogether a scene of utter desolation.

In a grove of slender-trunked trees, field artillery soldiers who had set up their position were vigorously firing upon the enemy.

Each time a round was fired, white smoke burst up, and the recoil sent the gun carriage lurching backward.
The artillery soldiers dodged and scattered in a flash.
They immediately regrouped and proceeded to their next action.
They bustled about with remarkable diligence.
Their movements were so unnaturally swift that one could hardly believe such speed was possible in reality.
But tragically, these artillery soldiers who bustled about so diligently were gradually picked off one by one, until finally only a single soldier remained.
But the efforts of this last remaining soldier were truly worthy of the Golden Kite Medal.
No sooner would you see him carrying a shell than he had loaded it in the next instant.
No sooner had he done that than he was already taking position at the gunner’s seat without a moment’s delay.
White smoke.
The gun carriage’s recoil.
Cartridge cases discarded.
Ammunition transport.
Ah.
It was so fast that watching it made your eyes ache.
That was no longer the work of a human.
A demon god must have possessed him, unleashing super-speed artillery fire for Japan’s sake.
However, the time finally came for even this demon god’s work to end.
The enemy’s shell exploded right beside the gun carriage, and just as the screen became filled with smoke, this last artilleryman too collapsed within that smoke like a falling stick.

On the screen, countless pale streaks of rain were running from top to bottom.

To the best of my recollection, my history as a spectator of moving pictures seems to have begun at this time.

Near Minatogawa Shrine, there was a place called Yachiyo-za Theater.
(I believe there was also one called Daikoku-za, though my memory is unclear on this point.)

Around the same time, I have a memory of being taken by a relative to see moving pictures there.
They were all Western films, and one of them was a short story featuring children.
The house’s entrance was situated high up, and a wide staircase had been built from there down to the ground.
On one side of the stairs was a sturdy, decorated railing, and women and children went up and down along it.
That is all I remember about that film.
It may have been because I was envious of the staircase with a railing.

There were two or three other live-action films.
One was likely the San Francisco World’s Fair or some other exposition.
There was a large artificial pond.
A narrow slope had been constructed from a point higher than the heavens down to the pond’s surface, and a boat loaded with people came sliding down this slope at terrifying speed before plunging into the pond.
The moment the boat reached the water’s surface, a spray of water rose pure white, making it impossible to discern what became of the boat and its passengers.
But in the very next instant, breaking through the spray, the boat’s bow emerged in a curve resembling a swan’s neck.
Before long, as if nothing had happened, the men and women on the boat rowed away, laughing and enjoying themselves.
And by that time, the next boat was already sending up a spray of water.
This scene left such a vivid impression that it was hard to believe they were moving pictures.

Next came a dance like that of a heavenly maiden. From the atmosphere it exuded, I think this had a distinctly Italian flavor. The beauty danced while swinging the large cloth wrapped around her body as if it were an extension of her own flesh, manipulating it freely to sketch strange beauty through intersecting curves and curved surfaces. Yet this cloth was ceaselessly dyed in colors both beautiful and eerie, shifting from one hue to the next—and when it turned a garishly vivid crimson, it presented a spectacle as though she were dancing upright amidst flickering flames.

At the very end, there was also a live-action film of beautifully colored fireworks with dazzlingly intricate patterns.
The ever-changing, mysterious beauty left me utterly dumbfounded.
And I earnestly hoped this beautiful magic would never end.
My chest felt constricted by the anxiety that it might cease at any moment.
And when the end finally came, I felt a deep, despairing loneliness.
My memories of the moving pictures I saw in Kobe end here.

At eight years old, I returned to my hometown of Matsuyama.
There I remained until the spring of my eighteenth year.

The permanent theater came to Matsuyama when I was thirteen.

Until its establishment, we watched films brought by traveling troupes either at playhouses or in temporary sheds during spirit-enshrining festivals.

I have a memory of seeing something called the chronicle of General Nogi at a temporary shed during the Spirit-Enshrining Festival.
The film chronicled General Nogi’s life from his boyhood onward. In one scene, a young Nogi—still wearing his forelock—walked along a desolate country road, where specters like a giant monk, a one-legged umbrella creature, and other grotesque beings materialized in succession, each crafted with elaborate flair.
Each time a new specter appeared, General Nogi would chuckle dryly and repeat the same line time and again: “I am Munan (the general’s childhood name)—I don’t startle at trifles like this!”
Of course, that was merely the benshi’s clumsy vocal imitation, but considering how even now, at my age, the cadence of his delivery still lingers in my ears, one cannot help but marvel at the whimsical selectivity of human memory.

At that time, there were four playhouses in Matsuyama.
Two of the four were in prominent locations, and of these, the one called Shinei-za was first-rate while Kotobuki-za was second-rate.
The remaining two were in the outskirts and both third-rate, but as I had never set foot in one of these third-rate theaters, I cannot speak to it.

The one I knew was a hut called Suehiro-za, situated right beside Matsuyama Station of the Iyo Railway.

Suehiro-za appeared to be a relatively new name, for my grandmother and others always used its former designation of Onishi-za.

This hut has since vanished, but it was an utterly peculiar structure—not merely adjacent to the station, but entirely within its grounds.

The stage and audience seating used the second and third floors of the building, and this hut had no first floor.

The space corresponding to the first floor housed the station’s sidetracks, resembling a warehouse without doors, and was freely accessible to anyone passing through.
In exchange, at night it was pitch-dark, and one had to walk carefully to avoid tripping over the railway tracks—sometimes nearly bumping one’s nose against a pitch-black freight car parked in the darkness, or at other times finding salt bales piled mountain-high along the walls, leaving no path through and leaving one utterly bewildered.

Since it was located within the grounds of a station that was not particularly large to begin with, it was not far from the station’s central area.
Therefore, the sounds of steam whistles, hissing engines, clattering wheels, departure bells, and all other noises incidental to railway operations would brazenly invade the theater and seize the audience’s attention—so much so that even while watching a performance of *Chūshingura*, the unfortunate patrons of this hut could never quite forget that their bodies were situated near the platform.

Looking back now, it occurs to me that this hut may have been operated by the Iyo Railway Company given its location; but if that were indeed the case, the relationship between these two enterprises would have been rather peculiar.

As a conceivable location for a theater, there would seem to be few places more unsuitable than within the station grounds.
For it was designed to let them hear the most piercing, most realistic sounds while constantly shattering their illusions as they watched plays and moving pictures—so from the audience’s perspective, it was hardly something they could endure.
It was nothing more than this: whenever you began to feel in the mood for amusement, debt collectors would appear one after another.

Sure enough, this theater was soon demolished, but when sifting through my remaining memories of the films seen in this hut, titles like *Goban Chūshin*, *Taki no Shiraito*, and *Yūten Yoshimatsu* come to mind.

I have no idea about the actors or such things.

Indeed, I also first saw what could be considered American films in this hut.

A conflict broke out between white people and American Indians, with horseback chases and gunfights—it was so utterly thrilling it made one leap up.
This may have been the first time I saw what could be called an action film.

Near this hut, there was a cobbler with the unusual surname Mido.
In the evenings, we would go to that house to play and keep ourselves ready until after eight o’clock.
When it became past eight o’clock, we all would troop along to the front of the hut and commence our campaign against the old shoe attendant.
Of course, this was our campaign to expedite provisional free admission approvals.

Yet strangely enough, this campaign always proved effective, so I never had to pay a single coin at this hut.

It was an utterly desolate hut where they would occasionally open its doors as if on a whim, but for most of the year, the entrance remained shut.

The types of performances included puppet theater, political plays by activist troupes, moving pictures, and others; I also recall seeing amateur jōruri recitals and educational exhibits there.

When a puppet play was being performed one time, a neighborhood child I knew began going to assist on stage.

When I inquired, it turned out that the child’s father was actually a puppeteer who usually worked as an artisan or in some other respectable profession.

Even so, when I wondered what exactly the child was going to assist with, it turned out that whenever the Akagaki Genzō puppet placed a sake bottle, his role was to hold it steady.

Indeed, since puppet plays were performed atop a wall-like structure, it stood to reason that sake bottles and such would each require someone to support them; otherwise, they’d fall below the wall and break.

When we heard this story, we immediately launched our usual campaign and conducted a grand inspection of the sake bottles.

When Akagaki Genzō placed a sake bottle, a small figure draped in black cloth emerged and supported it with both hands.

It was regrettable that we couldn’t see his face, but there was no mistaking that this black-clad figure was indeed that child.

From our side, we couldn’t see anything, but apparently they could see us clearly from theirs; if you paid attention, it seemed the black-clad figure was watching us and laughing from within the cloth.
Perhaps because of this, the sake bottle kept moving, so I became very concerned.

I thought it would be a disaster if the crowd noticed the sake bottle moving and started laughing, but it seemed everyone had already forgotten about it—not a single person laughed.

At a second-rate theater called Kotobuki-za, I saw the film *Zigomar*.
I was in my fifth or sixth year of elementary school then.

A man named Komada Yoshihiro brought this film and provided his own explanations.
I remember him using “extremely very” so relentlessly it grew tiresome—even my childish self recognized this as poor style.

Later on, after reading the book *Zigomar*, Pauline Detective became our hero.

Pauline Detective had a hairstyle that covered the upper half of her square forehead, and whether in triumph or in trouble, she would bring her index finger to her pointed chin and ponder with an air of deep contemplation, her eyes cast upward.

Pauline Detective’s assistant was Nick Carter.
This person was taller than Pauline Detective and appeared somewhat gentle.
We found it difficult to imagine Pauline Detective smiling, but Nick Carter seemed the type to laugh readily or crack jokes.

It was also at this hut that I learned two different names: Shin-Baka Taishō and Usu-Baka Taishō. Yet to this day, I remain uncertain whether they referred to separate individuals or one and the same person.

When I later entered middle school, upperclassmen practicing for the sports day band taught me the name "Shin-Baka March."
Indeed, whenever I heard that familiar tune, a conditioned reflex would occur in my mind, making Shin-Baka Taishō's actions appear vividly before my eyes.

When I try to recall the benshi’s way of speaking from that time, it seems they didn’t simply call him *Shin-Baka Taishō* but instead referred to him as *Shin-Baka Taishō Andrew*.

Among the films I saw in that hut, I particularly recall one exceptionally beautiful natural color film.

The protagonist swam down to the deep, deep seafloor and reached a separate world like the Dragon Palace, but I do not remember a single thing about what happens after they arrive.

Only the scene where the protagonist—inverted—slowly and deliberately swam down into the depths of dark-hued water remains etched in my memory as an oddly vivid image.

I can recall about two types of Japanese Shinpa films as well, but since I don’t know their titles or plots, I cannot convey them to others.

I remember that as one of those films neared its conclusion, the benshi repeatedly urged the audience to take note of an upcoming camera repositioning—explaining at length that while the field of view would abruptly shift, the scene itself remained unchanged and the action continuous, so they should not misinterpret it.

Just as the benshi had forewarned, the cut changed: what had previously been a full-body scene against a partial view of the hill now transformed into an extreme long shot revealing the hill’s entirety, with the action unfolding across both its summit and base.

From how insistently the benshi had explained it beforehand, we must conclude that at that time, such sudden changes of cuts mid-scene were still a rarity.

Next, among what I saw at Shin’eiza Theater—the city’s premier venue—the most deeply memorable was a peculiar piece called *Universe*. In it, whenever the benshi shouted during a scene of Yamazaki Highway under a sudden downpour, clouds would begin surging violently across the sky. It seemed to blend live action, actual footage, and *honmizu* techniques all at once—though to this day, I still can’t quite grasp how it worked.

Talking Moving Pictures also came. Alongside the Western films, I thought I heard something like a monster’s growl coming from somewhere—and then it was over. In old-style plays, I saw one called *Yagyū no Nigaasa* there. As for the Western films I saw there, I have no recollection of them whatsoever, yet it is strange how I cannot separate the image of that red rooster mark from this hut. Even after permanent theaters were built, I saw only Matsunosuke’s *Chushingura* and *Soga Brothers* at this hut. Whether it was intended as a special screening or not, I can’t quite say for certain.

This is also a later story, but when I was in my fifth year of middle school, Jitsukawa En’ichirō came to this hut for a live performance, so I went to see it.
The program included *Higo no Komageta*, *Osen Hisamatsu*, *Tsuchigumo*, *Terutora Haizen*, and others. En’ichirō performed a quick-change act with Komahira and Osen using puppet-style techniques, while *Terutora Haizen* was presented by other actors without his involvement.
At that time, En’ichirō was a handsome man with bright, shining eyes, but by the time I came to work with him, he had become a wrinkled old man whose eyes had grown dim.

And every time we met, he would clasp my hand with nostalgic familiarity or rest his hand on my shoulder while saying “Please use me again, won’t you?”—such was his nature.
When talkies arrived, even brief lines required endless retakes from him.
Upon finally succeeding, he would immediately come lean against my knee and lament “Why does this happen? Why does this happen?” as though personally wounded by each mistake.
Uncertain how cruel it might be to suggest “It’s your age,” I could only offer this kind old man a wordless, melancholy smile—having no comfort to give.

Let me return to the main story.

The permanent theaters began with Sekai-kan, first established when I was in my first year of middle school, followed by Matsuyama-kan around the following year.

The film shown at Sekai-kan’s opening was Matsunosuke’s *Miyamoto Musashi*. At this theater, I learned the names Matsunosuke, Sekine Tatsuhatsu, and Tachibana Teijirō. At Matsuyama-kan, I came to know Yamazaki Chōnosuke, Kinoshita Rokusaburō, Sawamura Shirōgorō, Inoue Masao, and Kinoshita Yachiyo.

Among Western films, one titled *Meiba Tenma* was screened at Matsuyama-kan.

The benshi at Matsuyama-kan would often chant, “The sky spreads clear in olive—perfect weather for flying.”
To this day, I still don’t fully grasp what an olive-colored sky truly entails.

Inoue’s films were few, but I remember an adaptation titled *Jigokudani*.

Due to where I lived, around my third year of middle school I frequented Matsuyama-kan more often, and in my fourth and fifth years, Sekai-kan became my regular haunt.
By my fifth year, my portraits of Matsunosuke had markedly improved, and I took pride in showing them off to friends.

To make the portraits closely resemble him, I meticulously analyzed and studied each part of Matsunosuke’s face from photographs, but I could not confirm that his eyes were larger than those of ordinary people. In his face, the only feature larger than those of ordinary people was his mouth. Particularly, there was a muscular bulge beneath his lower lip shaped like the body of a drum laid sideways, and this was Matsunosuke’s most striking distinguishing feature from others. Because I was researching such trivial things, my intellectual development at the time seems to have been significantly delayed.

When I finished middle school, I immediately had to go to Karafuto due to family circumstances.

On my way there, when I stopped in Tokyo, I saw a film called *Aka Wa* at Asakusa Denkikan.

At that moment, I was astonished to realize moving pictures could be this bright.
The projection differed in luminosity from rural theaters, and since the film prints were new, they weren’t damaged.
Moreover, rural areas received films one or two years late—meaning we were shown works that had skipped their natural developmental phases.
What’s more, that particular film contained numerous location shots, all under clear skies, giving the entire picture a quality saturated with sunlight akin to Arizona’s.
Even now when I reflect on it, I feel there were scarcely any films as radiant as that one.

After that, I saw a film called *Jūkon* in either Hakodate or Otaru.
And I came to remember the actor Francis Ford with his long sideburns.

After spending about half a year in Karafuto, I came to Tokyo.
Right around that time, the golden age of Blue Bird Films arrived.

I became busy memorizing the names of Ella Hall, Mae Murray, Lon Chaney, Monroe Salisbury, Eddie Polo, and other foreign names rendered in katakana.

Since I aspired to be a painter, I spent my first year in Tokyo working at the Ministry of Railways, but before long I quit there and resolved to study art while drawing illustrations for boys’ magazines and the like.

However, I continued to watch moving pictures.

At this time, I was a fan of the Italian actress Pina Menicheli.
I was overwhelmed more by her beauty than her artistry.
I have not seen an actress who possessed such classic beauty and stature since.
When beauty reaches that level, the acting itself ceases to matter.
As long as she moved in various ways and showed her beauty from different angles, I could enjoy it as if observing a sculpture—that was more than enough.

When I was nineteen or twenty years old, Shochiku began its film business and recruited trainees.
Around that time, I had a friend named Itō who worked as a naval clerk in Kure while passionately pursuing amateur theater on the side.

He had come to report performing in Gorky’s *The Lower Depths* as Natasha or some such role, frequently voicing his desire to pursue theater professionally. Thinking film offered better prospects if he were to choose between the two, I suggested he apply for Shochiku’s examination.
Itō promptly came up to Tokyo and arrived at the three-tatami room I was renting.

The house in Nezu Sukachō was one with an ordinary lattice door, the kind you could find anywhere in that cramped, densely built-up narrow street—but what set it apart was the broken airplane propeller nailed above the entrance’s lattice door and a small sign bearing the name of something like the Japan Aviation Association.

The landlord was a man over fifty, his hair already thinning considerably and his frame on the smaller side, yet he carried himself with a strangely roguish and tough-looking air.

This old man was often away from home, and on the rare occasions he returned, he would spend his days doing nothing but smoking and napping. He always wore a loincloth and belly band, over which he would drape a thin garment that reached down to his buttocks.

His manner of speaking was so crude that it created a kind of comical effect, occasionally making people laugh—yet he himself never once cracked a smile.

The way he would blurt out things like, "Well, that old woman of mine—" right in front of her, bluntly spilling the secrets of her body to us, left not only his young wife but even us listeners caught between embarrassment and dumbfounded silence.

Moreover, he would deliver such stories without moving a single muscle in his face, maintaining a cold, stern expression and unbroken breathing, leaving no room for vulgarity to intrude upon the scene—instead, it began to feel as though an eerie miasma had filled the entire room.

Once, I borrowed a girl of about seven from the neighborhood for roughly two hours to sketch her, but after she returned home, when comments arose that she seemed somewhat precocious for her age, this old man promptly followed up by declaring that child to be a perfectly viable sexual target.

“Such nonsense,” his wife laughed dismissively, but the old man scolded her with such ferocity that his face seemed to change color, then fiercely asserted his conviction was not mistaken.

In all matters concerning sexuality, this old man’s attitudes and ideas clashed irreconcilably with societal customs and order. Moreover, his conviction carried such an acute sense of reality—as though he had already acted on what he claimed was feasible or might yet do so—that it terrifyingly overwhelmed those who heard him.

Before meeting this old man, I had never encountered anyone who spoke about matters of sex so explicitly, so unabashedly, and with such single-minded intensity—nor had I ever seen anyone who could adopt such thoroughly immoral attitudes with such complete ease—and I was utterly astonished.

I think I lived in this house for over half a year, but in the end, I never managed to learn what this old man did for a living, nor could I discern why he felt compelled to display that broken propeller fragment at the entrance.

Now, at the time when Itō had come, there was another lodger in my room, so with three people to accommodate, the three-tatami room had truly reached the limit of its capacity.

Even Propeller Old Man seemed taken aback by this, and one day he suddenly came upstairs to demand our immediate evacuation.
Before long, Itō also passed the exam and became a student at the Shochiku Kinema Acting School, receiving a regular stipend to commute there, so we moved to a boarding house in Yanaka Majimachō and settled into separate rooms.

Around this time, Itō began working on trial film scripts, and whenever he completed one, he would first read it aloud to us before having Mr. Osanai review it.

Mr. Osanai’s critiques were typically unsparing, and Itō would usually return looking thoroughly dispirited.
Yet Itō’s efforts bore fruit relatively swiftly, with his scripts being employed in numerous films during Shochiku Kinema’s foundational years.

When Shochiku Kinema’s inaugural works received their public premiere at the Meiji-za Theater or some such venue, there naturally existed a film he had adapted—so I went to view it together with Itō.

In the twenty years of my friendship with Itō, I had never seen him look as happy as he did that night.
Thus, the name Itō Daisuke, which had belonged solely to a few of us, passed into public ownership from that night onward.

In May of my twenty-first year, I enlisted.
(It seems Itō had moved to Kamata around this time.) It was a three-month supplementary service in Hiroshima’s field artillery unit.

On the eve of my enlistment, in Hiroshima’s bustling district, I watched moving pictures with my father who had come to see me off.
That film was Inoue and Mizutani’s *Kantsubaki* (Winter Camellia).

Even during my enlistment, Itō diligently sent me letters containing several frames of positives from films he had adapted at that time.
Since all positives were dyed then, turning an envelope upside down would send multicolored frames fluttering down onto my bunk’s blanket—the sole burst of color in my drab military life.

The following year, I was again called up for a three-week training exercise, and upon completing it, when heading to Tokyo, I had requested Itō in advance to secure a room for us to live in together.
It was on the second floor of a house near Aoyama Gakuin, slightly closer to Shibuya, with a room measuring eight or ten tatami mats.

By that time, the research institute had already disbanded, and Itō had become a scriptwriter at Shochiku Kinema; at the time, his monthly salary was ninety yen, and moreover, he was being made to work without limits.
Urgent scripts were forced out of him in two or three days, while works like *Ohatsu Jizō* were written nearly overnight.
Thus, he did not receive a single penny beyond his monthly salary.

Meanwhile, I had an income of around a hundred yen per month from illustrations, so our life together should not have been particularly difficult; yet perhaps due to poor money management, we were always scraping by.

Around this time, the theaters we went to see were mainly the Akasaka Teikoku-kan and Aoi-kan, and I remember those featuring Charles Ray among others.

And among the actors of that time, both of us liked Frank Keenan, and we nearly always watched the films he appeared in.

Among the research students, the person Itō associated with most closely was a young man named Fuchii-kun, who was skilled at toe dance; this person continued to visit often even after the institute disbanded. It seems we’ve since lost all contact with him, but even now, whenever I meet Itō, we still occasionally talk about this person. He was somehow the kind of person who gave off an air of sharpness.

Prior to that, Shochiku had used the research students as extras in kabuki. Itō and Fuchii-kun were naturally among those used, but there was a time when they were employed as foot soldiers during a performance of *Battle of Kawanakajima* at the Kabukiza.

According to Itō’s account from that time, while playing a foot soldier who was driven into a corner by Nakagoro’s Yamamoto Kansuke, he said that when Nakagoro glared sharply at him, he genuinely grew frightened and felt himself involuntarily freezing up.

I think it was probably around the time when Fuchii-kun and others came to visit the second floor in Aoyama that I heard such stories.
The communal life in Aoyama was dissolved after a little over half a year.
Itō ended up moving to Kamata, and I came to stay with relatives in Shinjuku.
After moving to Shinjuku, I often accompanied my cousin and went to Musashino-kan.

I remember seeing Tarzan and Kick-In there.
At that time, this theater had a rule that the orchestra would always perform one piece—such as excerpts from operas—between films, so for me, who had just begun taking an interest in music around then, this became a particular delight.
The conductor there was a man named Kegeya Heikichi.
Recently, when creating the film *The Capricious Lord* and recording its music, I spotted Mr. Kegeya Heikichi among the musicians who had come from Osaka, playing the violin, and was struck by a wave of nostalgia—yet his appearance had not changed in the slightest from over a decade prior.

During this time, I had come to feel the need to study painting more desperately, and since a friend I couldn’t afford to lose had contracted tuberculosis back home and taken to bed, I resolved to return to my hometown for a visit.

And I immediately carried it out.
It was the autumn of my twenty-third year.
After that, I began studying in earnest.
By immersing myself in my studies, I began to grasp the meaning of life, and at the same time, my perspectives on various things started to take shape.
At the same time, my own opinions began to take shape gradually.

Around that time, my interest in moving pictures began to gradually wane.
Even if I completely excluded the viewing of moving pictures from my life, I no longer felt any further pain.

Not only with moving pictures, but I had ceased to feel any pain in excluding all other diversions from my life. Yet the pleasure drawn from literature alone remained one I could never forsake until the very end.

One night, I was suddenly seized by an impulse to read Mr. Mushanokōji’s novel *Kōfukusha*.
I tried fighting this impulse but ultimately could not prevail.
I tried to delay it by at least a day, but even that proved impossible.

As I hurried through the late-night streets toward the town with used bookstores, my heart was boiling over with frustration.
At this moment, my heart had completely split in two.

“Aren’t you a painter?
What’s literature?
What’s Mushanokōji?
Can’t you find peace with just painting?
What are you searching for that you must desperately roam like a gaunt dog until night?” one part of my heart kept crying out through tears.

Nevertheless, one part of my heart mercilessly drove my body toward the used bookstore.

The suffering of that night seems to foreshadow the tragedy of my entire life.

Thus, I welcomed the new year having completely neglected moving pictures.
That year as well, I continued painting in my hometown, but in May, a friend with tuberculosis died, and when autumn came, I was startled by the Great Kantō Earthquake.

When I returned to Tokyo at the end of the year of the earthquake disaster, I took a liking to Nagasaki Village where Mr. Hatsuyama Shigeru lived, so I promptly rented a small house near his and began living on my own.

For the next three years, until the autumn when I turned twenty-seven, I lived there; these three years were marked by severe material hardship that left me hardly seeing any moving pictures, yet during this time I did manage to watch *Crime and Punishment*, *The Idiot*, and *The White Rose of the Railway*.
Among them, the performance by Victor Kumara in *Crime and Punishment* still leaves a strong impression.
Around that time, I went to see some revived foreign film—likely a re-release of *Zigomar*—at the Heiwa-kan in Ikebukuro, where I was shown Sakatsuma’s *Shadow Figure*.

In those several years before and after, the Japanese films I saw amounted to almost nothing more than this single film.

As I went on like this, my life grew increasingly difficult day by day.
By the autumn of my twenty-seventh year, I could no longer make a living.
Either kill myself as a painter or kill myself as a human being—there were only two methods.
Just at that time, a man from my hometown who was also doing painting came to propose starting an oden stall together in Matsuyama.

He said the money would somehow be arranged.
Since it was a far better prospect than dying, I gladly agreed.

Thus, the first oden stall appeared in Matsuyama.

This oden stall initially had average daily sales of twenty to thirty yen and went well, but gradually worsened and became unable to continue.

Before long, both friends who had been working with me quit one after another, leaving me behind at the very end along with the debt.

The following summer, I disposed of the oden stall in difficulty, yet debts still remained.

Thus I finally became nothing but debt.
From summer through autumn, I loafed about while depending on friends' goodwill.

During that time, I constantly heard the voice declaring "Originally there is nothing" right beside my ear.
Not a single book, not a single sen—I could no longer find anything in this world that counted as my own possession.
It was a lonely yet truly lighthearted state of being where both body and mind felt unburdened.

Having been stripped of all accessories and decorations, I was nonetheless grateful for having obtained the opportunity to calmly evaluate my unadorned self without any pretense.

I gazed intently at a being no larger than a poppy seed.
That was the unvarnished form of my true self.

It was truly a miserable fact, yet this discovery soon brought me an easygoing sense of relief. This was likely because I had realized that, no matter the circumstances, I would never become any smaller than this—nor any poorer than this.

This unadorned version of myself became an invaluable standard for correcting my worldview thereafter; however, as these facts bear no direct relation to this manuscript, I shall omit them entirely. Now, that autumn, I wrote to Itō to request his assistance in finding employment. Since I had lost contact with Itō in the year before the earthquake disaster, I had even reached the point of not knowing his address. Having addressed it simply as "Kyoto Shimogamo Nikkatsu-nai," the postal worker must have been perplexed, but the letter apparently did arrive, for I promptly received a warm reply from Itō. And so, in that October, I came to lodge at Itō's house in Kyoto; during that interval—that is, the year from when I returned to Matsuyama to open the oden stall until I left Matsuyama again—there were several films I saw.

They included Itō’s *Ruten*, *Chūji Travel Diary: Kōshū Chapter*, the modern play *The Five Women Around Him*, Sakatsuma’s *Taigi*, Udaemon’s *Murasaki Zukin*, and Kataoka Chiezō’s *Mangekyō Jigoku*, among others.
And through those films, I came to know for the first time the faces of Ōkōchi, Okada Tokihiko, Udaemon, Chiezō, and other gentlemen.

At that time, Itō, who was in Daishōgun, was supporting three boarders including me.
The residents were Kagawa Ryōsuke—now at Chie Pro—Nakagawa Tōkichi—author of *Gero*—myself, and three cats as well.

My aspirations were not yet clear at this time. In short, as long as I could somehow manage to support myself with my own strength, I had no other desires. Then Itō suggested I write a script.

Even if told to write something like a script, I didn’t think I could readily produce one, but since Itō insisted I write, I reluctantly wrote one called *Hanabi*, and some time later, another called *Date Mondo*. I later retitled this *Hōrō Zanmai*.

Itō never clearly stated whether they were good or bad, but when Ōkōchi-kun and others came to visit, he would talk about the plots of the scripts I had written, saying things like, “He’s the man who writes those kinds of scripts,” so I wondered if he thought something of them after all.

Before long, a production company led by a man named Tanizaki Jūrō was established in Nara, so all the boarders at Itō’s house were exported there en masse; consequently, I began living on my own in Nara starting in November.

During my time as a boarder at Itō’s house, I saw several films as well; the main ones were Itō’s *Gero*, King Vidor’s *The Big Parade*, and others.
The production company in Nara apparently did not fare well.
For about a month, I had been working solely as a catcher, yet was never once driven to work by car.
I was always made to walk.
However, strolling leisurely around Nara Park wearing a topknot felt somewhat absentminded and peculiar.
Putting aside the content, the form alone truly transcended contemporary times.

Even the great Chogyū must have failed to recognize that such a method existed.

During my month in Nara, I found time to write a script titled *Waraji*.

Later, when I became a director, this was the script I used first.

As Nara's production company wouldn't readily pay our wages, we all eventually quit working and began gathering daily at the studio solely to await payment for work we'd done.

During this time, the young members of our group, after deliberating over whether there was any decent food to be had, devised a plan to take down a deer.

Even I could not bring myself to endorse this illegal scheme and thus stayed out of the action team, but once arrangements reached the stage where the aroma of roasting venison began wafting our way, I feel I can’t take much responsibility for what transpired afterward—even now as I reflect on it.

The young members went out for nighttime ambushes over two or three consecutive nights armed with sharp Japanese swords, but after repeated failures, they ultimately abandoned their efforts.

Even so, it seems the last one managed to inflict a rather deep wound, for when they went to check the next morning, the area was apparently drenched in blood.

When the end of December came, Kagawa-kun, with whom I had been sharing meals, found an opportunity for a tour in Taiwan and asked if I would like to go along with him.
The production company seemed to have absolutely no prospects left, and no matter how I thought about it, there wasn’t a single reason for me not to go, so I decided to go.

The Taiwan tour continued until April of the following year, during which time I found myself playing nothing but samurai who were cut down and passersby, exposing myself onstage; yet it seems the experiences from this period provided important insights into my theories on acting.

The films I saw during the Taiwan tour included Kataoka Chiezō’s *Three-Day Daimyō*, Tsukigata Ryūnosuke’s *Secret Travel Chronicles*, Arashi Kanjūrō’s *Devil Thistle*, and Itō’s *Chūji Shinshū Kesshō Hen*, among others.
This was likely the first time I saw Tsukigata’s film.
I didn’t think it was particularly good, but as an intimate production meant for insiders, I found both the performances and those involved rather likable.

As our ship entered the Seto Inland Sea on the return voyage from Taiwan, the vivid green of the pine trees struck me like a revelation, and I was astonished to realize Japan was such a beautiful country.

When I returned to Itō’s house, Nara’s production company had vanished without a trace, and in its place, an entity called the Japan Film League had been established in Sogatsuka, Kyoto—where it had been decided that I would join as both a scenario-writer and assistant director for its Kataoka Chiezō Production.

No sooner had I returned than I was thrown into disarray by this sudden request—like a bird taking flight at one’s very feet—to write the script for their first independent production within a week. Yet despite this, I somehow managed to cobble together something titled *Tenka Taiheiki* by the deadline and handed it over, receiving a hefty sum of 100 yen in cash on the spot.

After all, during the Taiwan tour, hardships had followed one after another and I could scarcely receive any pocket money; having persisted through a life where we literally wrestled over a single cigarette, that hundred yen at the time was truly a kingly sum.

That night, I went to see a play at the Minami-za Theater and, while having the hundred-yen note broken into smaller bills at its office, delightedly pictured in my mind how to use the money.

My chronicle as a bystander to moving pictures hereby reaches its provisional conclusion.

From this point onward, this being now my trade, I find myself at a stage where maintaining such bystander status has become quite untenable.

However, sooner or later, there would surely come a time when I once again became a bystander.
The question of from what position and how I should observe at that time remained a rather pressing issue for me.
(December 8, 1936)