On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation by GHQ, Toyomatsu "attemped to kill a US prisoner," which was nothing but an order by his superior and failed after all with hurting the prisoner by weak Toyomatsu. Also, Toyomatsu was driven to corner at the trial by the fact that he fed the US prisoner some burdock roots to nourish him. Toyomatsu believes nothing but being not guilty, but he is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to the execution, Toyomatsu writes a long farewell letter to his family, the wife and the only son: "If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be...a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea."... because I saw the puzzling title in the NYT obituary, "Shinobu Hashimoto, Writer of Towering Kurosawa Films, Is Dead at 100." Hashimoto wrote the screenplay for the Kurosawa movies "Rashomon," "Ikiru," "Seven Samurai," "Throne of Blood," "The Hidden Fortress," and "Dodes’ka-den." I've seen all those films. Have you? "The Hidden Fortress" story was the basis for "Star Wars." "Rashomon" was the basis for a million invocations — something I wrote about at some length in 2000:
Rashomon - the classic film directed by Akira Kurosawa - has been receiving quite a few invocations lately. Somehow this cinematic depiction of a single event seen different ways as narrated by four witnesses suggests itself as just the right allusion for these times. Here is a sampling:That was published in a law review, back in the days when I believed unusual things could and should be published in law reviews, 4 years before I transferred my writing onto this blog. I should look at more recent invocations of "Rashomon," but you can see they were big during the Clinton administration. And let me say, because I don't expect you to read my little article: I don't accept that the movie's message is that there is no truth but just a bunch of stories.
To Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton was a powerful man who needed no urging to succumb to sexual temptation. To Linda Tripp, he was an irresponsible philanderer who needed to be stopped. To White House aides and security, he was a secretive - and at times duplicitous - boss who needed protection from himself. These Rashomon-like views of the commander-in-chief... [Kevin McCoy, Picture of Bill Depends on View, N.Y. Daily News, Oct. 4, 1998, at 5.]"Rashomon" has not reached the point where it works as a word with an understood meaning .... Look at all of the added explanation: "The main characters recall the same events differently," "the truth is never absolute," and "no such thing as the truth, just a bunch of irreconcilable interpretations." Those descriptive tags do not even completely gibe with each other. Are we talking about the imperfection of memory? The notion that there is no truth? "Rashomon" seems to pop up whenever a story is muddled, regardless of why the story is muddled. Are these writers handing us a high-tone cinematic justification for shrugging our shoulders, a sort of fancier way of saying, "Ah well, it's all he-said-she-said"? What does this fashion for invoking Rashomon really mean?
In their trial briefs, the President's defense team and the House prosecutors present their Senate jury with a legal version of "Rashomon," in which the main characters recall the same events differently. [Jill Abramson, The Trial of the President: The Arguments; War of Words: 2 Sides' Briefs Disagree Even in Their Styles, N.Y. Times, Jan. 14, 1999, at A1.]
[CBS Anchor Dan] Rather blithely summed up the proceedings as "less like "Perry Mason' and more like the movie "Rashomon.' The truth is never absolute." [Monica Collins, Monica, Even Now, Sounds Like She's in Love, Boston Herald, Feb. 7, 1999, at A4.]
Meanwhile, all this leaves the citizenry, not to mention the president, in a rather unpleasant pickle. From the point of view of justice, this is a tale of Rashomon ... [Molly Ivins, Yea! Jones Can Proceed; But What Kind of Lawyers Advised Her to File a Suit That Would Harm Both Her and Clinton?, Star Trib., June 5, 1997, at 27A].
With one hand jauntily in his pocket, one foot tucked behind the other, [President Clinton] turned every question around in a preposterous way, trying to treat "All the President's Men" as "Rashomon," acting as if there were no such thing as the truth, just a bunch of irreconcilable interpretations.[Maureen Dowd, Lonely at the Top, N.Y. Times, March 8, 1997, 1, at 23.]
Anyway, I haven't seen "I Want to Be a Shellfish" — though I have seen "The Lobster," which is a man who gets to choose what animal he's to be turned into and who choose the lobster. "I Want to Be a Shellfish" was written by Hashimoto and also directed by Hashimoto.
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61 comments:
ALFRED J. PRUFROCK, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD, I READ YOUR LOVE SONG!!!!
[CBS Anchor Dan] Rather blithely summed up the [Clinton - Lewinsky et al] proceedings as “less like “Perry Mason’ and more like the movie “Rashomon.’ The truth is never absolute.” - Linked Althouse Post
Because when a Clinton lies, the truth has to change to accommodate it.
Yeah, except for Maureen Dowd, who called bullshit, the Clinton apologists were eager to present the Monica Lewinsky episode as just a Rashomon-like contest of competing truths. Judge Susan Webber Wright, presiding over Jones v. Clinton, had no such illusions. She said Clinton had given intentionally false testimony, held him in contempt of court, fined him $90,000 and referred to case to the Arkansas Supreme Court's Committee on Professional Conduct. The Independent Counsel also found that Clinton had testified falsely.
I should make clearer that Dowd was in no way a Clinton apologist about the Lewinsky matter. She went after him hammer and tongs.
HENRY LIMPET YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!!!
"The Hidden Fortress" story was the basis for "Star Wars."
Lucas utilized techniques from The Hidden Fortress but the stories are quite different. Lucas has said similarities between the two stories are more of a coincidence.
May he rest in peace [as a shellfish or whatever]. I watched Throne of Blood, Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth, the other night and found it somewhat inferior to his other films from that era. I'm sure Hashimoto deserves his accolades but it's hard to appreciate a script when you're reading it in English subtitles. How I wish I'd learned Japanese!
What a shellfish SOB!
thank you exhelodrv1,i was trying to figure out how to pun that; and you got it
Wanting to come back a shellfish seems a little crazy to Western ears, but to the Japanese, there is an historic precedent. In the Gem-Pei War, the Tairas and Minimotos fought a sea battle at Dam-no-ura Bay. The Tiara clan lost and their samurai committed seppuku by drowning themselves. Legend has it that their souls reincarnated as crabs. Today there is a species of crab called Heikegani (Heikeopsis japonica) which have a carapace that looks like the armored mask worn by a samurai warrior.
If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more.... Oh yes, I would like to be... an Oscar Meyer wiener.
"The Incredible Mr. Limpet" did it better.
Quaestor at 7:49, thank you! Interesting! I looked it up and found this photo: Heikegani crab
I always thought the Rashoman effect was more along the lines of the blind men and the elephant. There *is* absolute truth but our perception and understanding of it is limited and discrete.
Samurai armor often included an iron mask intended to protect the face and show a fierce visage to the enemy. The shells of those crabs have evolved to resemble those masks by people catching and eating the less mask-like and throwing back those crabs that looked more like a samurai. Generation by generation the crabs evolved to look like reincarnated Taira warriors by the same mechanism that created Chihuahuas out of wolven stock.
Every Jury charge tells the jury to do a Roshoman thought process , attributing truth to each witness and reconciling apparent differences. Which reminds me of how idealistic we try to be to affirm our own image of goodness. The jury ignores the Judge.
There *is* absolute truth but our perception and understanding of it is limited and discrete.
Modern physics strongly suggests there isn't.
Henry Limpet and Ladyfish had remarkably similar recollectiona of their affair.
I take it that Harpo99's first language is not English.
A honeymoon is a week or two to let the glue set. - Armstrong and Getty
no preference for being sea animals
Re: Quaestor:
In the Gem-Pei War, the Tairas and Minimotos fought a sea battle at Dam-no-ura Bay. The Tiara clan lost and their samurai committed seppuku by drowning themselves. Legend has it that their souls reincarnated as crabs. Today there is a species of crab called Heikegani (Heikeopsis japonica) which have a carapace that looks like the armored mask worn by a samurai warrior.
Sorry to be pedantic, but just to tag along: Gen = Minamoto (源), and Hei/Pei = Taira (平). Heike = 平家 or "Taira Family." The Pei replaces Hei in genpei because of sandhi. The defeated party at Dannoura included the little Emperor Antoku, aged just six years old. Re: the Heikegani, in some photos they really do look like samurai masks.
Always been more of an Ozu kind of guy, though it was Yojimbo that first caught my attention, Japanese cinema-wise.
Jason (1st comment):
Not Alfred J. Prufrock, J. Alfred Prufrock - far more hoity-toity, beta, rolled-trousered, do-I-dare-to-eat-a-peach-ish.
In the room, women come and go, and talk of Hashimoto.
There *is* absolute truth but our perception and understanding of it is limited and discrete.
Modern physics strongly suggests there isn't.
No it does not. You're confusing concepts of truth with materiality.
In any case, this issue to which you're referring deals with the sub-atomic level.
Elephants do not exist on the sub-atomic level.
Just as a thought experiment would it be possible to make such a movie if it involved a German war criminal. In any event, such a movie would not be called a masterpiece......The Japanese doctor who ran the program where experimental operations, were performed without anesthesia on American POWs was given six years in prison. The doctor later went on to head the Japanese Red Cross. There's a Rashomon like quality to the way we treat Japanese vs German war crimes........I have never heard of any of Harvey Weinstein's encounters being described as Rashomon like, but, surely, some of them had that quality. It saddens me enormously to think that Harvey, after all his fine work for Hillary and contra the NRA, hat that poor man might endure more prison and shame than a Japanese war criminal Justice is an elusive thing, even more elusive than truth.
Re: William:
Just as a thought experiment would it be possible to make such a movie if it involved a German war criminal. In any event, such a movie would not be called a masterpiece......The Japanese doctor who ran the program where experimental operations, were performed without anesthesia on American POWs was given six years in prison. The doctor later went on to head the Japanese Red Cross. There's a Rashomon like quality to the way we treat Japanese vs German war crimes........
Although US POWs were frequently the victims of Japanese war crimes, there's just not that much interest in them. It passed almost without comment in the west when South Korea's "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" decided, back in 2006 that 83 Korean war criminals, mostly convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their mistreatment of POWs, were actually the real victims. I feel sorry for their families, but that was just repugnant. The same sort of revisionism that the families of many Japanese Class B and C war criminals engage in. And yet -- no protests in the US.
My bud's so mad, feels like reincarnatin'
I'm sitting here, not yet a crustacean.
Ya tell me truth ain't all such, it's got my head achin'
Crabs don't need no social media legislation
And mid century Japanese films won't bring integration,
When human respect is disintegratin'
This tweetin crazy world is just too frustratin'
And you tell me...
Shellfish are filterfeeders often living on the detritus of other animals or plankton. Most are attached to something and spend their lives in one place. The others burrow into mud. Hardly a glamorous life to aspire to. Was the man depressed?
The honey badger doesn't care.
Star Wars was based on Dune, except that the dark lord working for the emperor was the young hero’s uncle.
“Luke, I am your uncle...” doesn’t really work. The uncle in Dune was a combination of Darth Vader and Jabba the Hut.
Dune was based on The Sabres of Paradise, a great book I read because it was mentioned here by somebody. Dune even copies stylistic elements, not to mention the line about how "killing with the point of the saber lacked artistry.” I call Star Wars “The Light Sabres of Paradise.” It was the history of Muslim tribal resistance to the Russian and Persian empires.
Lucas added stuff, like characters who know the plot of the story, [The Force] so they don’t worry about little things, since the plot requires that they win in the end and that certain characters not die, etc. I guess Muslims believe that they know the plot, since they believe that they are doing the will of the author of our universe. As have so many before them.
Ran was the first Kurosawa movie I ever saw- this would have been back in the late 80s. I am guessing Hashimoto didn't write that one (Ran is an adaptation of King Lear). About 15 years ago, I went on a Kurosawa binge one Summer and watched every movie I could find at Blockbuster. I have seen all those films listed, and didn't know they had the screenwriter in common.
In any case, this issue to which you're referring deals with the sub-atomic level.
Not entirely. The paradox of simultaneity arises from relativity, not quantum mechanics.
I am impressed when a single comment can allude to both T.S.Eliot and the movie “Patton”.
20th centuries English poets, God help me I love it so.
There was always less interest in the Japanese with respect to WW2 than to Germany.
The war crimes trials were mainly jokes, other than a very few for high ranking officers. Yanashitas for instance, in which my great uncle was called as a witness.
They even let Tsuji off, that ubiquitous monster.
The idea I suppose was that justice was done through collective punishment, through starvation, fire bombings, nuclear attacks and those Japanese armies exterminated in green hells.
Modern physics strongly suggests there isn’t.
No, what modern physics suggests is that the discovery of absolute truth is impossible due to theoretical limitations in the accuracy of measurement, not that truth doesn’t exist. Still they pursue string theory, which is basically, per quantum theory, a big “why bother?”
What, me worry? What, me worry? I shall rub the collars of my dress shirts furry.
— Love Song of Alfred E. Neuman
Re: Buwaya:
They even let Tsuji off, that ubiquitous monster.
Did they? I thought Tsuji avoided prosecution entirely, and spent the immediate postwar years secretly serving the Chinese Nationalists in military intelligence.
Phone doesn't work, internet "chat" page fails, neighbor's phone reaches phone tree with high call volume extensive delays. Phone company today. Repair typically takes ten days if you can get an appointment. And it's their wires that are broken.
Century Link, if anybody asks.
Always assume any organization is run by a cabal of its enemies.
Surely Scott Adams’ "Two movies playing on one screen” is the best current deployment of the Rashomon insight of “a single event seen different ways.”
"I thought Tsuji avoided prosecution entirely"
Yes he did. As to who he was serving...this is still mysterious.
He is the villain - a villain - of my novel, that I have been whacking away on for three years.
“I would like to be . . . a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea” is the Japanese version of the sentiment expressed in the great American folk song “I Wish I Was a Mole In the Ground” “most famously recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928 for Brunswick Records in Ashland, Kentucky. Harry Smith included ‘Mole’ on his Anthology of American Folk Music released by Folkways Records in 1952.”
Greil Marcus via Wikipedia: “Now what the singer wants is obvious, and almost impossible to comprehend. He wants to be delivered from his life and to be changed into a creature insignificant and despised. He wants to see nothing and to be seen by no-one. He wants to destroy the world and to survive it. . . . You can imagine what it would be like to want what the singer wants. It is an almost impossible negation, at the edge of pure nihilism, a demand to prove that the world is nothing, a demand to be next to nothing, and yet it is comforting.”
Also listen for the line “I wish I was a lizard in the spring” and the line Bob Dylan borrowed for his most Dylanesque song "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”:
”’Cause a railroad man they'll kill you when he can/ And drink up your blood like wine"
No, what modern physics suggests is that the discovery of absolute truth is impossible due to theoretical limitations in the accuracy of measurement, not that truth doesn’t exist.
Sorry, that's not correct. Quantum indeterminacy isn't a matter of not having good enough calipers.
There are lots of online resources, but Dick Feynman's Physics for Poets lectures are a good start: https://youtu.be/kekayfI8Ii8
Looking at the wikipedia article for this movie, it looks like there was a 2008 remake with Nakai Masahiro (from SMAP), and Nakama Yukie in what I am guessing is the wife role. Probably part of the broad trend towards WWII movies in Japan, like Otoko-tachi no Yamato (2005, about the last mission of the Yamato battleship), or Eien no Zero (2013, about the grandchildren of a Zero pilot, uncovering their grandfather's heroic story), or even Kaizoku to Yobareta Otoko (2016, about a man who helped build up Japan's oil industry after the disaster of WW2). Without having seen it, I can sort of imagine how the story of an accused war criminal would straddle the line between the "woe is me" tone of a lot of those Japanese reflections on the war from the 50's and 60's, and the more celebratory tone of recent works, where it's more about soldierly camaraderie and national pride and all that.
It's probably a while yet before we get a story where, say, Masanobu Tsuji is the hero, though. Hard to make a movie celebrating rough soldierly camaraderie if your protagonist is a cold-blooded, bald, bespectacled tactician who is famous for not caring about casualties as long as the objective is achieved. He was supposedly called the "God of Operations" but it's somewhat amusing to see modern people, with the benefit of hindsight, wondering, "Wait why was this guy called the 'god of operations?' His battle plans just kept failing, didn't they?
The Hidden Fortress" story was the basis for "Star Wars
An inspiration, not "the basis", I think.
Because having seen both, just ... no.
buwaya,
"He is the villain - a villain - of my novel, that I have been whacking away on for three year"
Hmmm, need any test readers?
Also, incidentally, have you read No Wa In?
Arrggh!
That's No WAY In.
Japanese operations failed quite often, whether or not Tsuji had anything to do with them.
Japanese operational and tactical ideas tended to be rather reckless. They could succeed spectacularly or fail disastrously. They had little concern for casualties.
This worked when the opponents they were facing were incompetent or had shaky morale. If not, not, and entire formations would be sacrificed on such wild wagers.
If all Tsuji did was to be a staff officer that would be one thing. However he was also influential in the matter of military ethics, or rather the lack of it. He was a prophet and enforcer of a cult of savagery.
One curious thing, among others, is his ubiquity. He seems to have had carte blanche, from some high authority, to wander around every theater, to obtain air transport and staff at will (some of which he used for his sexual habits), and insert himself into any ongoing operation. He was in Malaya, the Philippines, Burma, the Solomons, South China, wherever and whenever something was going on.
"to obtain air transport and staff at will"
Too bad the US didn't Yamamoto him.
"Too bad the US didn't Yamamoto him."
I don't think the US knew much about him. He was just another colonel, on the face of it just another staff officer among dozens or hundreds. His peculiarities became apparent after the war.
Re: buwaya:
Japanese operational and tactical ideas tended to be rather reckless. They could succeed spectacularly or fail disastrously. They had little concern for casualties.
A big change from the Russo-Japanese war where . . . they had little concern for casualties operationally but the commanding officer felt so ashamed of the thousands of casualties that he asked the Emperor's permission to commit suicide.
Here's a pretty cool 1-minute short that shows just how much Lucas swiped from Kurosawa.
Kurosawa, by the way, was severely depressed when he could no longer make films anymore, and attempted suicide in 1971.
What makes George Lucas so amazing, among other things, is that he used his newfound wealth, power, and influence to bring Kurosawa back. He got 20th Century Fox to fund Kurosawa's comeback film, Kagemusha in 1980, and served as a producer.
Gosh this blog (or at least this post) has an erudite commentariat! If I were still at the stage of life where I attended high-tone cocktail parties, I'd memorize what you folks say and impress the proles. I mean it. This isn't snark. Keep it up.
He got 20th Century Fox to fund Kurosawa's comeback film, Kagemusha in 1980, and served as a producer.
Kagemusha is one of my favorites, too.
Sorry, that's not correct. Quantum indeterminacy isn’t a matter of not having good enough calipers.
I will go with Ernst Mach. Basically there is nothing in it for science to speculate about metaphysics, on account of we can never know, but if a physicist throws up his hands, well, he won’t be a physicist for long and the next guy who refuses to throw up his hands will take his job and perhaps even make some incremental progress toward a deeper understanding. It doesn’t mean that the first guy wasn’t right. You can quote all of the persiflage you like with the imprimatur of this institution or that and I know that it’s a subtle point, but I will go with Mach.
According to Alexander Riegler, Ernst Mach's work was a precursor to the influential perspective known as constructivism.[25] Constructivism holds that all knowledge is constructed rather than received by the learner.
I figure that the Universe will continue to chug along long after the last human being has died or all knowledge of its physical laws is lost, and that if you did build a universe that operated corresponding absolutely perfectly to our knowledge of it and its laws, it wouldn’t look anything like the universe we inhabit.
However, I do take Feynman’s position as it applies to free will. We can’t tell the difference between what we have and free will, so I choose to believe in it.
Isn’t “if I ever incarnate” wrong? Isn’t he already incarnate?
Isn’t “if I ever incarnate” wrong? Isn’t he already incarnate?
One always loses much in the translation.
@Mockturtle: Or perhaps the translator erred? I wonder how the same translator would deal with "quantum indeterminacy".
Re: The Godfather:
The line from the movie (modified from an original (?)) is apparently:
けれど、こんど生まれかわるならば、私は日本人になりたくはありません。いや、私は人間になりたくありません。牛や馬にも生まれません。人間にいじめられますから。どうしても生まれかわらねばならないのなら、私は貝になりたいと思います。貝ならば海の深い岩にヘバリついて何の心配もありませんから。何も知らないから、悲しくも嬉しくもないし、痛くも痒くもありません。頭が痛くなることもないし、兵隊にとられることもない。戦争もない。妻や子供を心配することもないし、どうしても生れかわらねばならないのなら、私は貝に生まれるつもりです。
Or in translation:
However, if I were to be reborn, I do not want to be a Japanese. No, I do not want to be a human. Nor a cow or a horse. Because I would be abused by humans. If I absolutely must be reborn, I think I would like to be reborn as a clam (shellfish). As a clam, I could cling to a rock deep in the ocean, and have no worries. I would know nothing, so I would be neither sad nor happy, and neither pain nor tingling. My head would not hurt, and I wouldn't be taken by soldiers. There would be no war. I would not worry about my wife or my child; if I absolutely must be reborn, I intend to be reborn as a clam.
The term I am translating as "reborn" is "umare-kawaru." (生まれ変わる) Umareru is to be born, and kawaru is to change, so in combination, it is re-incarnation, but I think "reborn" works slightly better. "Reincarnate", being Latinate, sounds fancier than the original here.
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