Ishiro Honda. Steve Ryfle
his own so he’d crashed on Taniguchi’s futon, but Taniguchi grew annoyed and kicked him out. Honda was the quiet and contemplative one, not nearly as aggressive. As Kurosawa biographer Stuart Galbraith IV writes: “They called one another by nicknames after the Kanji characters in their family names: ‘Kuro-chan’ (‘Blackie’), ‘Sen-chan’ (‘Dear Sen,’ ironic, given his temperament), and ‘Ino-chan’ (‘Piggy’).”9
They drank, talked, and argued, and in between films they would camp in the mountains for several days. Honda, the Yamagata boy and soldier, was an able hiker, as was Taniguchi. Their trips invariably began peacefully but ended with Kurosawa and Taniguchi arguing incessantly, with Honda playing peacemaker.
Each man took what he learned from Yama-san and forged his own path. Kurosawa became a relentless pursuer of perfection. Taniguchi would make a number of notably ambitious early films, including the first adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of the Waves (Shiosai, 1954)—a film that created a sensation for hints of erotic nudity10—then finished his career with a series of mainstream programmers. Honda most closely emulated his mentor’s example by becoming a versatile maker of successful program pictures and putting his heart and soul into those that mattered most to him. The friendships endured long after their early struggles. While Honda went to war, Kurosawa would help his wife care for their children, and much later Kurosawa would make Honda his most trusted adviser. Taniguchi would be like an uncle to Honda’s kids; and years later, when Honda later bought a bigger house in Okamoto, a neighborhood in the western part of Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, Taniguchi and his third wife, actress Kaoru Yachigusa, star of Honda’s The Human Vapor, liked it so much they built a home nearby.
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In the mid-1930s, with PCL struggling financially, founder Yasuji Uemura had sold a controlling interest in the studio to Ichizo Kobayashi, a railroad executive, real estate tycoon, and the entertainment mogul behind the legendary Takarazuka Grand Theater and its famous all-girl music and dance revue. Kobayashi also owned a chain of cinemas, and acquiring PCL was part of his strategy to supply his movie houses with product. Together with studio chief Iwao Mori, Kobayashi also aimed to shake up the business, building on PCL’s innovative model to create Japan’s most modern film company.
On August 27, 1937, Kobayashi merged PCL with another small production outfit to form Toho Motion Picture Distribution Company, later the Toho Motion Picture Company.11 According to film critic Jinshi Fujii, “Toho’s entrance into the film business caused the structural reorganization of the Japanese film industry … [S]trict budgetary control was put into practice, the producer system was set up, and vertical integration of production, distribution, and exhibition was achieved … [T]he Hollywood-style system was transplanted to Japan almost completely.” Before long, observers would note that Toho had also “[overwhelmed] other companies in terms of film technology … [it] imported new filmmaking equipment from America four or five years [earlier].”12
For Honda and Kurosawa, the excitement of working at the upstart new studio was tempered by long hours and a meager salary of ¥28 per month.13 Assistant directors were paid less than office workers because, with location pay and other incentives, it was possible to earn much more, though it rarely worked out that way. Their social life revolved around drinking, and if Yama-san wasn’t buying, they drank on credit. Often there was no cash in their pay envelopes, only receipts for vouchers redeemed at the studio commissary and IOUs collected by local bars and clothing stores. On payday, they were already broke.
The dormitory where Honda roomed with Kurosawa had a pool table, an organ, and other diversions. When Honda, Kurosawa, and their friends weren’t hitting the bars, they would congregate there, often in Kurosawa’s little room, drinking and discussing art and cinema. This group included Sojiro Motoki, a future producer who would play an important part in the careers of both Honda and Kurosawa, and a pretty editor’s assistant named Kimi Yamazaki.
Kimi was six years younger than Honda, born January 6, 1917, in Mizukaido, Ibaraki Prefecture, the youngest of eight children. She was different from other women her age; she could hold her own in serious film discussions with the boys and hold her liquor when the beer and sake were poured. Kimi was self-confident and assertive, a modern Japanese woman intent on being more than an office lady or salesclerk, the typical woman’s jobs then.
It was Morocco, the film that Honda had spent so much time studying, that compelled Kimi to join the industry. She worked briefly for a small newsreel outfit, then passed Toho’s entrance exam and became assistant to Koichi Iwashita, one of Japanese cinema’s most respected editors. One day, Honda stopped by the editing room to say hello, and Iwashita introduced the young assistant director to his new employee. Sparks didn’t fly right away, though. “I still remember how he was wearing this weird looking suit,” Kimi recalled. “He was unfashionable, so unpolished, just back from the war. Compared to guys like Kuro-san then, he was hardly dashing.”
After she was promoted to the position of “script girl,” Kimi worked late hours on movie sets. Commuting from her parents’ home was impractical, so she moved into the dorm and became Kurosawa and Honda’s neighbor. The boys grew so accustomed to her presence that if she didn’t show up for their nightly klatch, one of them would rap on her door. One night, Kimi begged off with a severe headache, and Honda went to fetch some medicine. “This was the first time I thought, ‘Wow, he is such a nice guy.’ But it wasn’t like I was head over heels … As time passed, I got to know everyone [in the dormitory]…. But I think I was most attracted to his warmth, his heart.”
Honda immersed himself in his job, working on more than a dozen films between 1937 and 1939 and slowly ascending the ladder. Though Yamamoto was his primary teacher, he also apprenticed under other prominent studio directors, studying their work styles and habits. Honda was an assistant director on Humanity and Paper Balloons (Ninjo kami fusen, 1937), an acclaimed early jidai-geki and the last film by director Sadao Yamanaka, a fellow army recruit who would die as a soldier in China the following year. Honda also worked for the jidai-geki specialist Eisuke Takizawa. Sometimes, Honda would visit the set of a Mikio Naruse production to observe the celebrated director at work, which led Naruse to tap Honda as third assistant on two acclaimed early pictures, Avalanche (Nadare, 1937) and Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro (Tsuruhachi Tsurujiro, 1938).
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Summer 1937: Honda and Senkichi Taniguchi, having been there from the founding days of PCL, were now the two longest tenured assistant directors on the lot. Taniguchi had been Yamamoto’s chief assistant for about a year, but he now was transferred to a front office job, using his knowledge of production to help curb expenditures. Needing a new chief assistant, Yamamoto boldly promoted Kurosawa, a third assistant director with only about a year on the job, catapulting him over Honda and others with more experience. Beginning with the drama The Beautiful Hawk (Utsukushiki taka, 1937), Kurosawa was Yamamoto’s right-hand man, a role he would thrive in.14
Honda, meanwhile, continued his Sisyphean progress and was finally promoted to first assistant director, a bit ironically, on Takeshi Sato’s Chocolate and Soldiers (Chocolate to heitai, 1938). An early example of the war propaganda films supported by the government, it told the story of a small-town man drafted and sent to China, leaving behind his wife and child.15
“[When] I came back from the front, everyone’s position had changed,” Honda said. “I was the second or third assistant director for the longest time. But after all, I think it worked out better for me.” He was now among the most experienced first assistants on the lot. “I just wanted to be by the camera. That is what I liked.”16
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As illustrated by his friendships, Honda gravitated toward people much different from himself, and this seems to explain his unusual bond with Kimi. “She was very energetic, and her personality could be completely different from me,” he once remarked. “Maybe that is why we got along so well.”17 Friends thought they were mismatched; Kurosawa called them “total opposites.”
The