Nora Inu (1949)

Stray Dogs
Directed by: Akiro Kurosawa
Music: Fumio Hayasaka
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura,
Keiko Awaji, Isao Kimura, Eiko Miyoshi,
Masao Shimizu, Noriko Sengoku,
Noriko Honma, Hajime Izu, Ichiro Sugai,
Minoru Chiaki, Eijirō Tōno, Yasushi Nagata,
Teruko Kishi, Iida Chōko, Kan Yanagiya,
Reizaburô Yamamoto, Reikichi Kawamura

I have been away from my blog for far too long. My sincere apologies to my readers, several of whom have sent me private messages asking me why. Since circumstances are still not conducive to my writing or posting, my husband has generously stepped into the breach to keep the blog running. This is his review of one of his favourite Kurosawa films.

 

At the climax of Kurosawa’s “Stray Dog” as the detective and the thief fight among the flowers and mud the viewer will find it difficult to distinguish the two protagonists. Who is the hero and who is the villain? Was Kurosawa trying the show their common humanity or their imperfections,  or that the line dividing the two was so thin that one could be the other but for decisions, choices,  made at inopportune moments?  Finally, when the exhausting and clumsy brawl is over, as the thief lies among the flowers he hears children singing as they wend their way across the fields; he looks up from the mud and, realizing his situation, begins to wail his anguish. His body arches against the earth and his hands thrust up towards the sky. He realizes that this world of flowers, of children, of music, is lost to him forever. Yusa, the thief and murderer, walks a path that Japan, defeated and demoralized, could have taken after the war.

"It was an unbearably hot day.”  These are the first words you hear in the film, From the beginning Kurosawa wants to impress on the audience how oppressive the heat was that summer in Tokyo. 

Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), a young rookie detective, is  robbed on a very hot summer’s day as he is returning home after a morning on the firing range where he has missed the target with every shot but has successfully hit a tree stump beside it. He had spent the previous night on a stakeout and is extremely tired and  the crowded bus, the heat,  the wailing of a toddler and the cheap perfume of the woman next to him make him dizzy. As he steps out of the bus he realizes that his pistol is no longer in his pocket. He sees a man run away and chases him in vain. He goes back to his boss to report the loss of his pistol.

With some help from people in other departments Murakami discovers that the pickpocket was the lady next to him who handed off the pistol to her accomplice. Now Murakami has to find this lady and  get his Colt back.

But in the meantime, Yusa, having fenced the stolen pistol to a gun dealer, has borrowed it for a petty crime. He leaves his ration card as collateral. But when Yusa comes to return the gun, he finds that Murakami, rash headed and impulsive, arresting the gun dealer’s associate. Unable to return the gun, Yusa leaves. And, as the film progresses, the Colt is used in a series of robberies, finally culminating in the murder of a young woman. For Murakami, each ensuing crime is a personal affront.

But as the hunt for the Colt goes on Murakami begins to develop feelings of sympathy for Yusa.  And, in the company of his mentor, Sato (Takashi Shimura), Murakami learns to value other people and society. Sato and Murakami see the hovel that Yusa has built for himself after he returns from the war. His sister tells them Yusa’s backstory; and Murakami confesses to Sato that his knapsack too was stolen exactly as Yusa’s was.  In the background is the thought that Murakami could have chosen to go Yusa’s way. Instead, he chose to be a policeman.

 

Set in postwar Japan and framed as a ‘cops and robbers’ story, this is also Kurosawa’s subliminal depiction of the choice left to post-war Japan.  For the allies, Japan, a nation ‘not civilized enough’, not European, could be subjected to indiscriminate bombing of residential areas. It was a move meant to to terrorize them into surrender. It culminated in the dropping of the atom bombs. 

This nation now has to make the choice of becoming rogue or lifting itself up by its bootstraps to build something useful and beautiful. Japan is personified by both Yusa and Murakami, both soldiers coming back from the war to a nation without money, without many natural resources, and as soldiers despised by civilians for the army atrocities that were committed during the war. They now have to build their future in a society which has been impoverished and changed.

During this period, most Japanese women had just two options: work in the black market as sellers, carriers and pickpockets for the Yakuza and/or as prostitutes for the occupying allied forces. There is a scene in the film where Murakami and Sato go to question Yusa’s girlfriend. She is a dancer in a club and at the end of the act all the women run to rest for a few minutes at the top storey of the club. 

They lie there half-dressed, bodies heaving, trying to catch their breath, sweat dripping, as they fan themselves trying to stay cool.  Kurosawa never filmed women like this again.

All through the movie, the heat is another character, constantly grabbing attention, forcing people to react to it, remark upon it, people perpetually trying to keep cool. But as the film approaches its climax. the clouds gather and the sky grows dark even as Murakami’s apprehensions deepen. Finally, the rains come, and the night that Murakami dreads takes place in a downpour, his mentor’s body sprawled outside the hotel where he has tracked Yusa to.

Kurosawa also uses music effectively in the film, and there are three sequences where it stands out. In one scene, Murakami wanders an area in Tokyo where ne’er-do-wells gather, looking for somebody who deals with guns. Towards the end of the-almost-9-minute sequence he approaches a girl thinking she’s a dealer. She mistakes him for somebody looking for a prostitute. As their encounter begins, we hear Offenbach’s Barcarolle from Les Contes de Hoffman, building up the excitement leading to the scene’s climax.

At yet another point in the film, music offsets the tension in the scene which precedes Sato’s shooting. Sato is trying to call Murakami to tell him that Yusa is in the hotel he has stepped into.  But Yusa has heard the hotel owner tell his wife that a police detective is in the hotel and is using the phone. We only see Yusa’s feet as he comes down the steps. Sato is in the phone booth as the receptionist switches on the radio; Iradier’s La Paloma fills the air. 

Murakami and Yusa’s girlfriend Namiki hear the music over the phone, and then, the sound of two shots; the music continues as Murakami desperately tries to speak to Sato over the phone.

Finally, at the climax, Murakami chases and confronts Yusa, who still has the Colt. He points the gun at Murakami. 

And then, the tension is broken by the sound of a piano. It’s the Sonata in C Major by Kuhlau. When Yusa fires the first shot hitting Murakami, the music stops. The camera pans to the window of a house nearby. The young woman, seated at a piano, comes to the window. As she looks beyond the fence, she sees two men dressed almost identically seemingly staring at each other. She wipes the boredom from her eyes, stifles a yawn and goes back to her piano. Kuhlau’s composition continues as Murakami’s blood drips onto the flowers at his feet. Yusa backs away and trips and as he falls, he fires a shot and then another.  The gun is empty. There are no more bullets. The music stops.  

– Sadanand Warrier