The Human Condition began to appear
in 1959.
You discovered Tatsuya Nakadai.
Your own wartime experiences in the army,
and perhaps in a coal mine while filming in Hokkaido,
and as a prisoner of war were all embodied by Nakadai
and condensed into this film, which took five years to make.
You changed your cinematographer for this film to Yoshio Miyajima.
Yes, this was the first film to be produced
by Ninjin Club, an independent production company.
They didn't want a cinematographer under contract with Shochiku.
They wanted the best cinematographer in Japan,
so we asked Miyajima.
Had you seen his work before?
Did anything particular in it make you decide on him?
Yes, he'd worked on a film called War and Peace.
- By Fumio Kamei? - Yes.
And I'd also seen most of the films he'd shot at Toho.
I heard a story about Miyajima.
When he set up a camera at Shochiku,
he used a tripod instead of Shochiku's usual camera mount.
You couldn't adjust the height very much with the mount.
But with a tripod,
you could change the height and angle with great precision.
Any angles, including flat level angles, could be set exactly.
That precision
wasn't found in Shochiku's films.
In tracking or pan shots, he'd sometimes use a rolling motion.
He could sense that that was necessary sometimes.
I guess that's why he used tripods.
Did his instinct mesh well with your artistic temperament?
Well...
say you're planning a shot.
As a director, I'd envision the shot in my mind.
When I'd watch the dailies, they'd be even better.
That is, better than what I'd seen on the set.
You'd have extraneous things on the film set,
but all that would be eliminated,
and the shot would be impeccable.
After all, a cinematic image is what's captured on film.
So after Miyajima, I wouldn't trust any cinematographer
who couldn't produce an image better than what was on the set.
Working with Nakadai and Miyajima on this film
must have been the happiest time in your career.
It may seem that way after the fact,
but it didn't feel that way while making it.
I'm well aware of how hard you had to work and struggle.
Parts 1 and 2 were especially hard.
When we came back from the location shoot in Hokkaido,
we still had about 3/5 of the studio shots left to do.
We got back in November.
We filmed all through December, but we still weren't done.
We finally finished on the 30th.
And dailies had been piling up,
so I had to watch all of them that New Year's Eve until 5:00 a.m.
It was the first time I'd seen most of them,
and the film was to be released on January 15.
To get editing and sound done by then was impossible.
The preceding month, I'd only slept four hours a day.
And then came the tight post-production schedule.
And Uraoka, the editor, was new on the job.
- His first time. - That's right.
I'd hired him thinking he had the stamina to survive the ordeal.
And I thought I'd be able to sit at his side, but that wasn't the case.
So I think it was tough on him,
but just getting through it gave him confidence.
I kept hitting him with a golf club when he'd fall asleep.
We started watching just before midnight on New Year's Eve,
and finished watching at 5:00 a.m. - You pulled an all-nighter.
We had about half of the footage to watch.
Then, at 5:00 a.m., I took the guys to my house,
where there was chicken stew waiting for us.
As we ate, we discussed the work ahead.
The guys say they still remember that stew.
They must have been really exhausted.
There must have been a sense of getting a big project done.
But we were running out of time
for editing and cleaning up the film.
So we cut out a lot of footage.
A fully restored version has recently been released.
Not really. I once tried to find those outtakes,
but they're all lost.
They were thrown away.
Anyway, just when we finished post-production,
the Berliner Ensemble from East Germany came to Japan.
I think they staged Chekhov's Three Sisters.
Right here, in this theater.
Masayuki Sato said I should see it and got tickets.
I sat over there with my wife,
and I slept through the whole thing.
Apparently I was snoring, and my wife tried to wake me up.
I honestly wanted to watch it, but I was too exhausted.
So that's one anecdote around The Human Condition.
It was the first Shochiku film
to win an international film award, at the Venice Film Festival.
It won the San Giorgio Prize...
which meant that it had achieved international recognition.
We got word of that while shooting Parts 3 and 4.
I think that
while there are many Japanese war movies,
The Human Condition stands indisputably at the top,
both for its degree of perfection and for its message.
But reviews were mostly bad when it came out.
Really?
They thought Kaji's character was too immature.
Seeing Parts 1 and 2 only, people didn't grasp
our intention to show him growing and changing over time.
But in Parts 1 and 2 of the film, there's a scene
where Aratama tries to stop Nakadai from going to the execution ground.
It lasts three minutes, maybe even longer.
When we shot the scene,
some of the Giants baseball team came to watch.
The Giants?
That scene is my favorite.
Nakadai gets up and the camera tracks his movement for three minutes.
When we finished shooting the scene,
I felt tears falling on my knee, and they were Miyajima's.
"Tears from the toughest heart," as they say.
That tells you how much he liked that scene too.
And the guys from the Giants said,
"Wow, filmmaking is really tough!"
There's another story about Miyajima.
There's a scene where a woman is raped by a Soviet soldier
and then thrown out of a truck.
Japanese refugees rush over and gather around her.
The truck comes into the scene sort of chasing the refugees,
and then the woman gets thrown out of it.
I had a certain image in mind for shooting that scene.
But since Miyajima was a Communist,
I had some reservations,
so I had it done in a long shot.
Then Miyajima said, "We need to get in closer for this."
I was impressed.
Miyajima would decide where to place the camera while watching rehearsals.
Sometimes I didn't agree with him.
Then he would gradually move the camera without being told to.
In the end, he'd find almost the exact position I'd had in mind.
Other directors would just tell him to move the camera,
and his pride would be hurt.
I don't think he was childish about it, though.
In that sense, I was good at dealing with Miyajima.
He was really precise
in his technique and sensitivity.
He was also a real man's man
and always wore wooden sandals,
while you've always been a sharp dresser.
I often used to wonder how you two communicated.
Well, I was basically trained under Shochiku's system,
which gave the director free reign.
But making this film with an independent production company
made me realize for the first time
that it's a collaborative effort involving the whole crew.
My films began to change after that realization.
When Kinoshita or Ozu,
who were at the top of the director system, directed films,
people did their jobs by watching the director's every movement.
Also, another first for me was -
Directors at Shochiku basically didn't make storyboards.
Especially Kinoshita. He'd frame a scene right on the spot.
But working with Miyajima, I used storyboards for the first time.
- You hadn't made them before? - Almost never.
I showed them to him.
What impressed me was
that he really valued other people's ideas.
He'd treat even a lowly crew member's ideas
with great respect.
So he would thoroughly study my storyboards.
Then he'd give his own opinion with regard to lighting and such,
and he'd tell me where the lights should be aimed.
So he was very respectful of other people's ideas.
That surprised me a bit.
Shochiku's directors would work by improvising on the set
and would skillfully capture the feelings of the actors.
The sort of directing style practiced by Yasujiro Shimazu prevailed.
I think Ozu was the only director to use storyboards.
I don't think he did back in those days.
- I've seen his copy of a script - - He began after the war.
Perhaps beginning with Late Spring.
He'd use red pencil for one angle and blue for another,
and he'd mark close-ups in certain ways.
I think Ozu enjoyed making storyboards.
- Using all those colored pencils. - I got that feeling.
His approach never really changed over his career.
His films were all sort of -
So I think he enjoyed making storyboards.
He liked drawing things.
And he remained a bachelor.
Miyajima the cinematographer
was like a towering mountain standing in front of you.
When you began your collaboration with him,
did the storyboards become a springboard for discussion?
Yes, and a way to communicate my ideas to my whole crew.
For them to know how the next shot would be filmed
made a big difference.
After I set up my own production company,
my crew and I wouldn't start shooting without storyboards.
- Directors in the old days - - They'd tell you nothing.
They'd say, "We shoot scene 21 today," and nobody had a clue.
Directors loved keeping us in the dark.
Assistant directors had to fish for what the director had in mind.
Directors gave us ADs a hard time.