Christmas Day is not even a public holiday in Japan, and less than one percent of the population are Christians. Nonetheless, Akira Kurosawa seems to have had a special feeling for Christmas. He was in the habit of sending home-made Christmas cards to friends and associates, rather than the New Year’s cards that are almost universally exchanged by Japanese households and businesses.
Signed A.K.
There is no evidence that the great director was ever attracted to Christianity, but in his autobiography he described himself as “a man of the Taisho era”, meaning his formative years were spent in the reign of Emperor Taisho (1912-25).
That was a period of intellectual and artistic ferment in which many prominent cultural figures dabbled with Christianity, which was seen as an exotic import at the time, much as Buddhism would be in the West.
One such dabbler was the great writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who wrote the two short stories that became Rashomon (1950), the film that propelled Kurosawa to world-wide fame. Akutagawa’s eldest son became a successful actor who appeared in Wild Man Matsu (1958: Hiroshi Inagaki) alongside Toshiro Mifune. His third son was a composer with dozens of film soundtracks to his name.
It would come as no surprise if the young Kurosawa had been familiar with the debates about Christianity, as he was with Marxism, even briefly joining an underground Marxist group, though never going as far as to actually read any of Marx’s writings.
Indeed, Kurosawa could not have avoided thinking about Christianity, given his obsession with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky’s novels are saturated with his Russian Orthodox Christian beliefs, and none more so than The Idiot with its Christ-like central character, Prince Myshkin. Kurosawa adapted the novel for the screen in 1951, but his version was not a success and is only available today in a drastically cut form.
The one Kurosawa film in which Christmas plays an important part is the flawed but fascinating Scandal, made one year before The Idiot. In terms of narrative, Kurosawa had no particular need to include a fifteen minute Christmas sequence, but he obviously felt that it bolstered the themes of the film, which are corruption and the necessity of moral choice.
The first indication that the Christmas is upon us comes when the film’s villain, the scumbag editor of a gossip magazine, bumps into a big, tough-looking guy in a Santa Claus costume on the street. Tough Santa is holding a signboard offering a special deal on turkey.
The editor is surprisingly well dressed
Turkeys are not native to Japan, and it is not easy to get hold of one for Christmas even today. In December 1949, the only channel for accessing the rare meat would be through the black market, having been pilfered from the refrigerators of the American Occupation forces by crooked insiders.
Kurosawa makes no reference to the American Occupation – to do so would have been a breach of the censorship code – but they are an invisible presence throughout the film. This yuletide season, with its tacky decorations and shouts of “Merry Christmas” in the occupiers’ language, is, for better or for worse, an Americanized celebration.
Even the black market Santa growls “Merry Christmas” in bad English as he hands over a leaflet. The scandal-mongering editor tosses it to the ground. The confrontation is over in seconds, but it foreshadows what is to come later.
The next section starts on a jollier note as Toshiro Mifune’s character, a promising artist caught up in a bogus scandal, rides his motorbike through the streets with a fully decorated Christmas tree strapped to the pillion. He is delivering it to the impoverished family of his lawyer.
The jaunty strains of Jingle Bells shift to the more spiritual Silent Night as the scene changes to the interior of the home, where the lawyer’s wife and terminally ill daughter are celebrating Christmas. Mifune hardly knows them, but has decided to brighten up their difficult lives.
Now the music becomes diegetic, with Mifune playing a harmonium and his lady friend singing the carol. Significantly, the words of the carol are sung in Japanese.
Here, Kurosawa seems to be saying, is the authentic spirit of Christmas. Then in walks the aged lawyer with a heap of trashy Xmas presents he has got by trading away his integrity. There’s no escape from cunning and deceit, not even at Christmas.
The final Christmas section takes place in a bar called “Red Cat” which is draped in Christmas decorations. The clientele is composed of drunks, ladies of easy virtue and and hopeless fantasists. Mifune decides to order some turkey. His lawyer tells him to forget it. “You’re young, aren’t you! In this place the only difference between turkey and chicken is the price.”
So Christmas is just another opportunity for a scam. Is the post-war regime ushered in by the Americans also going to be a case of chicken disguised as turkey?
An aged drunk stands up and swears that next year he will be a reformed man. He will build a house and take care of his long-suffering wife. He implores everyone in the bar to stand up and sing along with him, which they do – blowsy good-time girls, teary drunkards, and Mifune and his guilt-wracked lawyer.
At Red Cat
This time we hear not a Christmas song or a carol but the melody of Auld Lang Syne. The lyrics, written in 1881, are totally different from the the tribute to friendship composed by Robbie Burns. Instead, the Japanese language version – which is known to every Japanese as the signal of the end of the school day – is a song of farewell that also celebrates solidarity and determination in the face of adversity.
Light of fireflies, snow on the window
Days and months spent studying
The years flash by, we open the door
And make our parting this morning
While they are singing, they mean every word. It is another moment of authenticity, albeit one that is pathetic and fleeting.
Blind drunk, Mifune – wearing a paper hat – and his lawyer stagger out into the night. In a pastiche of the Christmas story, Mifune claims to have witnessed a miracle, seeing clusters of stars reflected in a pond of dirty water. He blows a party whistle. The lawyer yells out “Merry Christmas, everybody” in English, then falls flat on his face in the mud. Cut to the New Year.
An inglorious end to Christmas then, or so it seems. But in the concluding section of the film, a miracle does take place, a tiny miracle of the human heart. To adapt the words of Mifune’s character, a glittering star appears amongst the reeking slime.
Kurosawa’s Christmas is like much else in Kurosawa-land – corrupt and tawdry and sad, but also offering the promise of personal redemption. These themes were to be worked out with greater depth and sophistication two years later in the masterpiece, Ikiru.