Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

by John W. Dower

To Kurosawa, GHQ’s controls were trivial compared with those imposed by wartime censors, whom he regarded as idiots perverted by, among other things, emperor worship and repressed sexual fantasies. Kurosawa had made his directorial debut during the war, and all four of his wartime films—Sugata Sanshirō (the name of the film’s hero) and its sequel; Ichiban Utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful); and the incomplete Tora no O o Fumu Otokotachi (Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail)—were included among a total of 236 “feudal and militaristic” films that SCAP ordered destroyed in November 1945.49 This did not prevent Kurosawa from quickly emerging as the most influential cinematic innovator of the new Japan. Between 1946 and 1952 he produced eight films, beginning with the naively idealistic “democracy film” Waga Seishun ni Kuinashi (No Regrets for Our Youth, 1946), which was followed by a meandering tale of romance and mishap amid the ruins entitled Subarashiki Nichiyōbi (One Wonderful Sunday, 1947).