#dodeskaden

Dodes'ka-den (1970)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Dodes’ka-den (1970). Various tales in the lives of Tokyo slum dwellers, including a mentally deficient young man obsessed with driving his own commuter trolley.

How tragic that man can never realize how beautiful life is until he is face to face with death.

Screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto (April 18, 1918 -- July 19, 2018) was one of Akira Kurosawa’s least-known collaborators, if only because he was not part of the director’s photogenic actors. But Hashimoto was more than just a Kurosawa collaborator. The screenwriter was raised in the Japanese countryside and was discharged from military service in World War II because of tuberculosis -- forcing him to spend four years in a veterans’ hospital. A fellow patient one day handed Hashimoto a magazine on cinema and, poring through the contents, it was then Hashimoto decided to pursue a career in filmmaking. He sent a screenplay to Mansaku Itami (a major figure of 1930s Japanese cinema, but whose films have largely not been distributed to the West), who was so impressed that he became the young Hashimoto’s mentor until his death in 1946.

Rashômon was Hashimoto’s screenwriting debut (and what a hell of a debut). Over the next several decades, Hashimoto’s films -- regardless of the director or actors involved -- would explore humanity from its most altruistic to its most unconscionable moments of cruelty. Hashimoto retired in 1982, having been with Toho Company for almost the entirety of his career. He passed away at a hundred years old in July -- the last of Kurosawa’s regular screenwriters living, and arguably the dean of that entire group.

Nine of his films are pictured above (left-right, descending):

Rashômon (1950) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki

Ikiru (1952) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Takashi Shimura, Shin’ichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki, Miki Odagiri, and Bokuzen Hidari

Seven Samurai (1954) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Inaba, Daisuke Katô, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Isao Kimura, Yoshio Tsuchiya, and Bokuzen Hidari

I Live in Fear (1955) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki

Throne of Blood (1957) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Toshirô Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo, Hiroshi Tachikawa, and Minoru Chiaki

Harakiri (1963) -- directed by Masaki Kobayashi; also starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentarô Mikuni, Shima Iwashita, Akira Ishihama, and Yoshio Inaba

The Sword of Doom (1966) -- directed by Kihachi Okamoto; also starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Yûzô Kayama, Michiyo Aratama, and Toshirô Mifune

Dodes’ka-den (1970) -- directed by Akira Kurosawa; also starring Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Toshiyuki Tonomura, Shinsuke Minami, and Yûkô Kusunoki