Sugata Sanshiro (1943)

Director:

Akira Kurosawa

Writers:

Akira Kurosawa (writer)
Tsuneo Tomita (novel)

Release Date:

28 April 1974 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Drama

Plot:

Sugata, a young man, struggles to learn the nuance and meaning of judo, and in doing so comes to learn something of the meaning of life.

Plot Keywords:

Judo | Jujitsu | Fight | Training | Police

Cast

Denjirô Ôkôchi	...	Shogoro Yano
Susumu Fujita	...	Sanshiro Sugata
Yukiko Todoroki	...	Sayo Murai
Ryunosuke Tsukigata	...	Gennosuke Higaki
Takashi Shimura	...	Hansuke Murai, Sayo's father
Ranko Hanai	...	Osumi Kodana
Sugisaku Aoyama	...	Tsunetami Iimura
Ichirô Sugai	...	Police Chief Mishima
Yoshio Kosugi	...	Master Saburo Kodama
Kokuten Kodo	...	Buddhist Priest
Michisaburo Segawa	...	Wada
Akitake Kôno	...	Yoshima Dan
Shôji Kiyokawa	...	Yujiro Toda
Kunio Mita	...	Kohei Tsuzaki
Akira Nakamura	...	Toranosuki Niiseki

Also Known As:

Judo Saga
Judo Story
Kurosawa's Judo Saga
Sanshiro Sugata (USA) (informal English title)

Runtime:

80 min | Japan:97 min (original version)

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG | Switzerland:16

Filming Locations:

Kyoto, Japan

Company:

Toho Company

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Yau doh lung fu bong (2004)

Depth

Before you seek this out, know that it is an incomplete restoration. Bits are missing. Some edits are inexplicable and some scenes are muddy.

Having said that, you will find this to be one of Kurasawa's most interesting projects. Two things...

One is that this was made by the bad guys during the war. Incredible atrocities were being committed in the name of racial superiority and the supposition of a refined nobility. Japanese, German and American films (even Italian ones) turned to reinforcing the national character. In the Japanese case, that was linked to matters of honor refracted through Shinto spirituality, honor of a past ideal that never really existed, which in US terms means what "conservatives" tout.

It was a terrible exercise, more obvious in looking at it from the outside and knowing the context. Kurosawa's story was every bit as engineered for this purpose as any Reifenstahl project. Oddly, this film is fragmented because the sensors thought it not ennobling enough. One presumes that Kurosawa's moments of reflection, and possibly a whole love story, were among the half of the movie that was removed. So just on the level of the story itself (a modernized samurai tale), its of interest.

But it IS Kurasawa, so we have to pay attention to the way the camera engages with the space. This is his very first film as director, though he had written before. In all his films he registers the camera first in a space and then allows action to happen in that space. He has three periods of different types of spatial identity, each illuminating, each inventing new language. But this is before all that and what we have is clear, overt experimentation with space. Some of it is quite thrilling, quite independent of the fascist movement of the story proper.

Even here, he is breaking the rules of flat Japanese composition from eons of painting. He was considered unJapanese in his native country and never very popular. So at the same time that those censors were chopping story and posture they must have been shaking their heads at this three dimensional art, and wondering if they had already lost the war — and if they won, what for?

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.