Something Like An Autobiography

by Akira Kurosawa

eyes. How could the Kurosawa who wolfed down six bean cakes a day and the Kurosawa who now sat there drinking saké like a fish be the same person? I later noticed her staring at me through a slightly opened door, as if she were observing the movements of some kind of monster. The original idea for The Saga of the Vagabonds came from the film director Yamanaka Sadao. The screenplay was written by Miyoshi Juro, a playwright, but here and there Yamanaka’s brilliance shone through it. (I later wrote my own script based on Yamanaka’s original, and this was filmed by Sugie Toshio in 1960.) We were on location in the Hakone Mountains at the coldest time of the year, in February. A bitter wind blew across these plains at the foot of a pure-white Mount Fuji all day long, and our hands and faces became cracked and wrinkled like silk crepe. We left for the location while it was still dark outside, and when we arrived there the sun was just beginning to strike the summit of the mountain, turning it a rosy pink. I’ll never forget the landscape I gazed at every day on the way to the location before starting the shooting, again during break periods and yet again on the way back to the inn. It’s disrespectful of me to say this about Takizawa, but the landscape impressed me far more deeply than what we were filming. In the morning as we rode along in our car in the wan light of predawn, we could see the old farmhouses on both sides of the road. Farmers dressed as extras, wearing their hair...