- Document type
- Feature
- Published
- 24 October 2005
Remembering Kenji Misumi
To this day, many jidai-geki directors of the heydays of Japanese cinema have already authored autobiographies or authorized the publication of biographies which mix theory about their work with long in-depth interviews. However, browsing the bookshelves of major Tokyo bookstores, you will soon notice the conspicuous absence of any book about Kenji Misumi.
The reason might seem to be fairly simple: the only existing book about Misumi has been out of print since the collapse of its publishing company. But other reasons might be brought to the fore: first, death caught Misumi unexpectedly at the age of 53, preventing him from writing anything about his life and work. (This is also the case of other major Japanese directors, such as Mizoguchi, who died at the age of 58. An exception is Raizo Ichikawa, Misumi's favorite actor, who managed to write his autobiography shortly before cancer defeated him). Second, in Japan, Misumi, as surprising at is may seem, is generally not considered a director worthy of film study, whereas such Daiei colleagues as Kazuo Mori, Tokuzo Tanaka and Yasuzo Masumura have already attracted the attention of film critics.
Conversely, Kenji Misumi has become in the West one of the most written about jidai-geki directors. His Baby Cart movies continue to fascinate and enthral - more often than not for reasons of gore - while some of his lesser-known films - such as Sword Devil (Kenki, 1965) or Destiny's Son (Kiru, 1962) - have begun to get major critical acclaim. Therefore, the time seems to be ripe to reveal how Misumi is considered in Japan, and how accurate or misguided the vision that Westerners have of his films might be.
In Japan, Misumi's films have not been without their fair share of critical attention. Whereas most studio-bound quickies (films usually shot in 2 to 3 weeks) were generally discarded as mere entertainment fodder by critics, the films of Misumi began to garner favorable if not positive reviews in the 60s. One of Misumi's assistants, Mitsuaki Tsuji, who, ironically, never held Misumi in very high esteem due to personality incompatibility, once commented: "unbelievably, a journalist had written at the time of Destiny's Son that Misumi's aesthetic sense in showing carnage pointed to an unconscious author".
The words "unconscious author" are interesting in so far as they point to the old critical debate regarding "auteur" directors and "program picture directors". It seems fairly reasonable to say that Misumi has never been considered an "author" by Japanese film historians in the West; at best, French critic Max Tessier described him as a "superior craftsman", which indeed corresponds to what Misumi was in the realm of Daiei craftsmanship. But if "auteur directors" are to be found in artistic resistance to commercial dominion, then Misumi deserves the right to be labeled an "auteur". His best jidai-geki display an elaborate visual language whose semi-abstraction often defied the commercial law of the time, which was to shoot entertainment pictures as fast as possible.
Like Teinosuke Kinugasa, his mentor, Misumi revelled in impressionism, whose aim is to redefine reality through the art of montage and visual abstractions. Some of his collaborators reveal that Misumi really devoted himself to refining and surpassing his visual artistry - though not always with success. One of the very first scripts to excite Misumi visually was that of Destiny's Son. It was written by Kaneto Shindo, a director whose visual ability allowed him to film tales almost devoid of dialogue (such as Naked Island, 1961). "The script of Destiny's Son was quite abstract, very poetical, and we tried as much as we could to find images to fit the words," commented set decorator Akira Naito, whose own visual ambition contributed to augment that of Misumi. Destiny's Son, the film, features some of Misumi's best trademarks, both narrative and visual: ellipsis, eery tapestries of desolate greenery, the sense of tempo peculiar to his sword duels and fights, and the manga-like violence that would later make Misumi the director most attuned to adapting Lone Wolf and Cub to the big screen. Watching Destiny's Son defines the meaning of 'visual enthralment'. It is also - though this remains to be verified - one of the very first jidai-geki to touch upon quasi-Freudian areas of the samurai psyche, very much like what Hitchcock had done one year earlier with the thriller genre in Psycho - although Misumi sees no need to explain anything at the end of the day.
Shooting Destiny's Son was a real artistic pleasure for director Kenji Misumi and his set decorator Akira Naito, who, together, designed the very best cinematic artistry Daiei had to offer through the sixties, verging on expressionism with artificial sets sometimes grafted on outdoor sceneries. But Misumi - and this is a recurring factor throughout his career - did not often succeed in bringing forth visually what he had in mind. "He was not satisfied with the shot where the blade of the sword crosses the sun sphere," reveals Akira Naito. "He aimed at a more complex imagery but simply could not come up with it and had to give up".
Misumi's visual endeavours contributed to make him one of the slowest-working directors at Daiei, very much like his mentor Teinosuke Kinugasa. And when a director was slow-working, producers would, more often than not, dispatch another director to work with him and help finish the shoot as soon as possible. Before he made Buddha (1961) and The Tale of Zatoichi (1962), two of the biggest commercial hits for Daiei, producer Masaichi Nagata had Misumi cope with rival-to-be Tokuzo Tanaka on the set of the first two Satan's Sword movies (1960). Tanaka, who knew he could work much faster than Misumi, did his best to impress Nagata, but Misumi's command of the visual language and film techniques made him the best possible choice for helming the 70 mm "blockbuster" Buddha - although it is said that Nagata's true wish was to offer the project to a director possessing the stature of a Mizoguchi.
"Little Mizoguchi" was a nickname Misumi gained in the later 60s, as his reputation as a brilliant craftsman was at its highest. Although Misumi was a Daiei pioneer in the making of more or less bloody jidai-geki, his core sensitivity was towards poetry and abstraction - this is why his most dialogue-driven films are often his worst. After Kenji Mizoguchi died, Misumi was the one director seen as capable of helming "female-oriented" films at Daiei. This is why he made Namidagawa in 1967, with regular actress Shiho Fujimura. Some even say that the natural "feminine side" of Misumi - who as a child was raised by women only - was something actor Tomisaburo Wakayama initially despised, before taking to Misumi's talent as a rigorous director of samurai epics.
The Baby Cart saga was produced between 1972 and 1973 after the downfall of the Daiei studio. For Misumi, the project meant coming back to feature films after a forced stint as a TV director. Everything he had learnt, all the skills he had honed at Daiei, he must have applied to Baby Cart. The original material - Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's gekiga - was quite stimulating and appealed to his visual senses. Thus, watching Misumi's Baby Cart movies is like watching a manga come to life, with Misumi doing in 1972 on film what Japanese animation was only beginning to fulfil on TV and in feature films. But once again, Misumi, an auteur with moments of weakness, did not always manage to materialize on the screen what images he might have formed in his head. This is why some of the most amazing - or spectacular - shots of Misumi's Baby Cart movies are to be credited to editor Toshio Taniguchi or cameraman Chishi Makiura rather than to Misumi alone.
The death of Misumi put an abrupt end to the maturation of his talent as a visual storyteller - recognized by all his peers. But his mastery would trigger many a vocation; assistant Mitsuaki Tsuji revealed that in the late 60s, some aspiring assistant directors came knocking at the doors of Daiei only because they had seen Destiny's Son, which they held as a visual masterpiece. In an interview about Baby Cart, fellow director Yoshiyuki Kuroda revealed that Misumi was a role model for him as a director, as for any director who wished to improve their cinematic skills. Furthermore, Eiichi Kudo, one of Toei's most gifted directors, thought Misumi to be a "terrific rival".
As Misumi's posthumous reputation started to grow, one man, who had fallen in love with the director's artistry, dared write the very first biographical book about him. The bulky, 350-page volume was published in 1997 by the now defunct Yotsuya Round publishers. In order to write this seminal book, its author, journalist Kazuma Nozawa, met several key collaborators of Misumi and tried to learn as much as he could about his private personality - which proved difficult. The private nature of Misumi is still, to this day, a well-guarded secret. Some describe him as a misanthrope, others as a very kind man who somehow hid his kindness behind a cold cynicism. It is not too daring to say that the sense of solitude and gloom that surrounds much of Misumi's private life also pervades his work as a filmmaker.
There is at least one thing author Kazuma Nozawa wishes to stress about Misumi: that he is not a director of bloody chanbara as he is often seen in the West (mainly because of the Baby Cart cut-up Shogun Assassin in the 80s). Misumi's true nature is to be found in a clear contrast between poetry and nihilism. Moreover, the Zatoichi films Misumi directed were often the series' most human entries; Misumi always refrained from showing Zatoichi as a superman, having defined the existential melancholy and ambiguity of the character in the very first film.
Another collaborator of Misumi stressed in his own autobiographical book that Misumi's true dream might have been to become a full-fledged scriptwriter as well as a director. The only time Misumi was allowed to fulfil this particular wish was on Last Samurai, his final feature film made in 1974. Unfortunately, the film was both an artistic and commercial failure due to various incompatibilities between a former Daiei director and Shochiku crews. But the fact that Misumi was allowed to write his own script further accredits the "auteuristic" ambitions of the director.
I wish to end this short overview of Misumi's work with a very revealing account from a person whose identity I will keep secret. This person - a close collaborator of Akira Kurosawa - once said to me that "as a young boy, watching Toei sword-movies was exciting; you left the theatre wanting to seize a piece of wood and stage fake fights with your friends. But watching Misumi's sword movies was like plunging into a well of sadness and melancholy which never left you untouched."
Probably, these are the most beautiful words ever pronounced about Kenji Misumi, a director whose work still deserves to be more fully explored.