Declawed Tiger

All the Emperor's Men: Kurosawa's Pearl Harbor (Applause Books)
by Hiroshi Tasogawa

How many knew that the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!’s Japanese segment was planned to be directed by Akira Kurosawa? Or, more importantly, that the original screenplay was written by him? The idea originated in 1967 with Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, who, with the success of WWII epic The Longest Day five years earlier, wanted to employ the same format –– with filmmakers from both sides of the conflict combining their efforts –– to make a film about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Of course the attack on Pearl Harbor was the crucial event that, followed by FDR’s “day of infamy” speech, finally moved the American public to approve of joining the conflict in Europe then two years old, and to spread the war around the globe. Yet wartime hysteria was beginning to fade, and new facts, such as the delayed translation of the Japanese declaration of war, were surfacing. Zanuck wanted the new film to be equally representative of American and Japanese viewpoints.

Zanuck entrusted Elmo Williams, associate producer of The Longest Day, with the task of recruiting a Japanese director. Kurosawa, world-renowned auteur and “Emperor of Film” in Japan, was an admirer of John Ford and had longed to work in America; he had just left Toho Studios to establish his own company, Kurosawa Productions, and this seemed, to all concerned, a perfect opportunity. What Zanuck and Williams did not know was that Kurosawa had been preparing for another picture, The Runaway Train, to be shot in the U.S., and that, after years of preparation and frustrated with cultural differences and the lack of a satisfactory screenplay, had just asked for a one-year postponement of the production.

In his new book All the Emperor’s Men: Kurosawa’s Pearl Harbor, author Hiroshi Tagosawa notes the crucial difference in vision that was evident from the outset: Fox wanted Tora! (meaning tiger) to be a spectacle, while Kurosawa envisioned a human tragedy of Greek proportions, centered around Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the attack. Identifying himself with the commander of the Imperial Navy –– who had opposed the Tripartite Pact, had studied at Harvard and knew all too well that going to war was folly –– Kurosawa quickly poured his heart and soul into the new project. Sequestering himself with two collaborators, he came up with a 400-page script just for the Japanese segment (the finished film would run at 144 minutes). These early drafts and 200-plus storyboard drawings by Kurosawa would be recovered by Tasogawa in Southern California.

Williams, an admirer of Kurosawa –– he was the one who had screened Rashomon and The Seven Samurai for Zanuck to persuade him to do Tora! –– moved a mountain and more to realize this project, supervising countless rewrites in two languages and getting co-operation from the Defense Department. The film finally began shooting in December 1967 and all breathed a sigh of relief. Alas, the obstacles for Kurosawa weren’t over; they were just beginning. He was by then exhausted physically and mentally, and working with a freelance Kyoto crew (in contrast, his regular Tokyo crew were full-time employees and were paid overtime) and an amateur cast (it was Kurosawa’s idea to cast former navy men) proved trying, and the shooting ran behind schedule. With the costs mounting daily, Williams was forced to cancel his contract with Kurosawa and hire new directors to finish the film.

When it opened in 1970, Tora! Tora! Tora! got mostly negative reviews in the U.S. The consensus was that it was “too much of a documentary.” The meticulous care taken to insure authenticity became a curse. It also did not deliver an easy answer (demonizing Japan) that would have pleased the public. Fox continued to lose money, leading to Zanuck’s eventual resignation. Kurosawa would attempt suicide. His vindication with the help of the new breed of Hollywood directors such Francis Coppola and George Lucas would be years away.

Author Tasogawa, who had worked as an interpreter for Kurosawa, liberally quotes from the original screenplay and, using the original storyboard drawings, gives us a sense of the momentous drama Kurosawa had envisioned and the colossal roadblocks Williams smashed to give Kurosawa’s vision a chance to succeed. One is left with an impression that, had Kurosawa been successful, he would have lent human dimensions to the film and elevated it above a mere historical spectacle. And it would have, when the Vietnam War was on everyone’s mind, become a true cultural event for a generation.
–– Rika Ohara