spirit.
Among them there is one incident that remains the most memorable. It was when I was ambushed by students from another primary school. As I was on my way home from the Ochiai fencing school, I came to a fish shop near Edogawabashi bridge. In front of it was a gathering of seven or eight slightly older children whose faces Idid not recognize. They carried bamboo swords, bamboo poles and sticks.
Children have their territories staked out, too. Since this was not Kuroda Primary School territory and these children were looking at me in a strange way, I stopped. But since I had taken on the airs of a boy swordsman, I could not allow myself to show any fear in a situation like this. I put on a blasé expression and walked on past the fish shop, and since nothing happened even when I had my back to them, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Immediately afterward I felt something whizzing dangerously near my head. Just as I moved my hand to touch my head, I was hit. Swinging around, I saw a hail of rocks coming at me. The group of children remained silent, but all of them were heaving stones in my direction. It was their silence that terrified me.
My first impulse was to run, but I felt that if I did, my poor bamboo sword would shed tears of humiliation. With this in mind, I took the bamboo sword I was carrying and brought it round to aim at their eyes. But since my kendō outfit was dangling from the end of my sword, the move didn’t achieve quite the effect it was supposed to.
The children, however, interpreted my move as a threat, and, shouting something to one another, they all came at me flailing their weapons. I, too, flailed my sword with all my might. My kendō outfit went flying off the end of it, and my sword became light. And once they raised their voices, my adversaries ceased to be so frightening as they had been when silent.
Grasping my lightened sword and yelling “O-men!” “(To the face!”) or “Kote!” (“Gauntlets!”) or “Do” (“To the torso!”) and such things as I had learned in my kendō lessons, I went at them with the bamboo blade. For some reason, they didn’t surround me, but all seven or eight bunched up together and faced me. They came forward wildly brandishing their weapons, so there was no backing down. These myriad flying arms were imposing, but by merely jumping to one side or the other it was easy for me to gain the advantage. I remembered that in such a situation it was dangerous to close in too soon, so I avoided that, and the result was that I had plenty of leeway.
Finally they fled into the fish shop. The proprietor, wielding one of the long shoulder poles used to support loads at each end, came running out from the interior. At that point I picked up the high wooden clogs I had kicked off when it had become a great swordfight, and fled.
I clearly remember escaping into a narrow alleyway that hadsewage running down the middle of it. I ran zigzag, jumping from side to side to avoid the foul-smelling water. It wasn’t until I came out of the other end of this alley that I stopped to put on my clogs. I have no idea what happened to my kendō outfit. It probably became the war spoils of my adversaries.
My mother was the only person I told about this incident. I really didn’t want to tell anyone at all, but since I had lost my kendō outfit, I had to talk to her. When my mother heard my story, she said nothing, but went to the closet and brought out the kendō outfit my brother was no longer using. Then she washed the gash on my head where the rock had hit me and put soft ointment on the wound. I had no other injuries. But to this day a scar remains from the stone.
(As I have been writing about my bundled up kendō outfit and my high wooden clogs, I have had a sudden realization. Without knowing it at the time, it was these objects from my past that I employed in my first film,
Sugata Sanshirō
[1943] as visual devices showing Sanshirō’s new dedication to a life of judo.
Among them there is one incident that remains the most memorable. It was when I was ambushed by students from another primary school. As I was on my way home from the Ochiai fencing school, I came to a fish shop near Edogawabashi bridge. In front of it was a gathering of seven or eight slightly older children whose faces Idid not recognize. They carried bamboo swords, bamboo poles and sticks.
Children have their territories staked out, too. Since this was not Kuroda Primary School territory and these children were looking at me in a strange way, I stopped. But since I had taken on the airs of a boy swordsman, I could not allow myself to show any fear in a situation like this. I put on a blasé expression and walked on past the fish shop, and since nothing happened even when I had my back to them, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Immediately afterward I felt something whizzing dangerously near my head. Just as I moved my hand to touch my head, I was hit. Swinging around, I saw a hail of rocks coming at me. The group of children remained silent, but all of them were heaving stones in my direction. It was their silence that terrified me.
My first impulse was to run, but I felt that if I did, my poor bamboo sword would shed tears of humiliation. With this in mind, I took the bamboo sword I was carrying and brought it round to aim at their eyes. But since my kendō outfit was dangling from the end of my sword, the move didn’t achieve quite the effect it was supposed to.
The children, however, interpreted my move as a threat, and, shouting something to one another, they all came at me flailing their weapons. I, too, flailed my sword with all my might. My kendō outfit went flying off the end of it, and my sword became light. And once they raised their voices, my adversaries ceased to be so frightening as they had been when silent.
Grasping my lightened sword and yelling “O-men!” “(To the face!”) or “Kote!” (“Gauntlets!”) or “Do” (“To the torso!”) and such things as I had learned in my kendō lessons, I went at them with the bamboo blade. For some reason, they didn’t surround me, but all seven or eight bunched up together and faced me. They came forward wildly brandishing their weapons, so there was no backing down. These myriad flying arms were imposing, but by merely jumping to one side or the other it was easy for me to gain the advantage. I remembered that in such a situation it was dangerous to close in too soon, so I avoided that, and the result was that I had plenty of leeway.
Finally they fled into the fish shop. The proprietor, wielding one of the long shoulder poles used to support loads at each end, came running out from the interior. At that point I picked up the high wooden clogs I had kicked off when it had become a great swordfight, and fled.
I clearly remember escaping into a narrow alleyway that hadsewage running down the middle of it. I ran zigzag, jumping from side to side to avoid the foul-smelling water. It wasn’t until I came out of the other end of this alley that I stopped to put on my clogs. I have no idea what happened to my kendō outfit. It probably became the war spoils of my adversaries.
My mother was the only person I told about this incident. I really didn’t want to tell anyone at all, but since I had lost my kendō outfit, I had to talk to her. When my mother heard my story, she said nothing, but went to the closet and brought out the kendō outfit my brother was no longer using. Then she washed the gash on my head where the rock had hit me and put soft ointment on the wound. I had no other injuries. But to this day a scar remains from the stone.
(As I have been writing about my bundled up kendō outfit and my high wooden clogs, I have had a sudden realization. Without knowing it at the time, it was these objects from my past that I employed in my first film,
Sugata Sanshirō
[1943] as visual devices showing Sanshirō’s new dedication to a life of judo.
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