After spending many invaluable years in apprenticeship to several filmmakers, Akira Kurosawa was confident with what he had learned about the art and the craftsmanship of filmmaking. He learned screenwriting, design, cinematography and other aspects of filmmaking while employed by Japan's Toho Studios. In addition, Kurosawa's directing skills were refined under the tutelage of director Kajiro Yamamoto who described the young would-be director as being more than ready to shepherd his own production.

Kurosawa discovered the story for himself when he noticed an ad in a newspaper for the upcoming publication of a novel by Tsuneo Tomita called Sanshiro Sugata. Tomita was a thirty-eight-year-old judo master who based the title character on one of his father's colleagues, the celebrated judo expert Shiro Saigo (1866-1922). "I had this gut feeling that 'This is it,'" Kurosawa later recalled. "There was no logical explanation for my reaction, but I believed wholeheartedly in my instinct and did not doubt for an instant." Convinced that this would be prime material for his directorial debut, Kurosawa begged the executives at Toho to purchase the rights to the novel, sight unseen. Toho was reluctant to spend the money on a book that had not even been released yet, so Kurosawa was forced to wait until the novel was published. He spent days at bookstores, awaiting the book's arrival. When it finally was released, Kurosawa read the novel immediately and was happy to have his instincts confirmed; this would be a perfect story for him, in terms of theme and structure, and it would meet Imperial Japan's strict censorial guidelines.

Sanshiro Sugata (1943) is about a young, inexperienced man named Sanshiro Sugata who comes to the city to apprentice at a jujitsu school. His first night, he sees Yano, a master of judo, in action; he is impressed by this more spiritual form of martial arts and he begs to be Yano's student. As the youth learns technique, he realizes he also must learn to accept the spiritual dimension of strength and control. Sanshiro's true education isn't just the learning of judo; it's the growth and maturity of his mind and soul. But his journey is fraught with obstacles, embodied by jujitsu's finest master, the implacable Higaki, who vows to kill Sanshiro in a midnight fight on a windswept mountainside.

Made at the height of World War II, Sanshiro Sugata is noteworthy for not having an overt patriotic or propagandistic quality to it, even though many films out of Japan were required to have such themes in support of the war effort. This is an example of a Meiji piece, which is a film that tends to identify the Meiji period from a positive point of view; Kurosawa was interested in exploring contemporary issues through the prism of past history. The Office of Public Information liked the story idea enough because of its emphasis on the importance of martial arts, which at least leaned in the direction of what the military valued as important.

Kurosawa adapted the novel into a screenplay in one sitting, and the whole film practically storyboarded in his head. Filming on Sanshiro Sugata began on December 13, 1942, when Kurosawa was only thirty-two years old. Even though it was his first directed picture, Kurosawa was bold enough to make hard decisions. For the climactic battle atop a windswept mountaintop, a set with painted clouds and large fans was built. Still, Kurosawa was not satisfied, even before the scene was shot. He later said, "I felt that what we could shoot (on the set) would not only fail to be more impressive than the other fight scenes, it would look tawdry enough to ruin the whole picture." He was confident enough in his vision to ask for more money and time to shoot on location at the Senjokuhara plain in Hakkone.

Starting in his very first film, Kurosawa employs a stylistic touch that would become his trademark for years to come: the vertical wipe, a transition/editing technique in which a line moves across the screen as a transition from one shot to the next. In the hands of other filmmakers, the wipe is usually a method to denote the passage of time, but Kurosawa seems to use it to punctuate a scene. Kurosawa scholar Donald Richie wrote in his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa, "The device is relatively uncommon in modern cinema and yet is so consistently used by Kurosawa that it seems to have a definite meaning for him. Perhaps it is its finality that appeals, this single stroke canceling all that went before, questioning it, at the same time bringing in the new. It is often used after an important scene, as though he calls attention to the fact that it is over, that it was important."

Also beginning with his maiden effort is Kurosawa's use of a stock company of actors, players that show up again and again throughout the arc of his career output. Many of these actors were under contract with Toho, including Susumu Fujita, Takashi Shimura, Yoshio Kosugi, Kokuten Kodo and Denjiro Okochi. Sanshiro Sugata made a star of Fujita. He served as Kurosawa's regular lead actor until Fujita left Toho in the late 1940s, which coincided with Toshiro Mifune becoming Kurosawa's go-to actor until 1965. Fujita later appeared in much smaller roles in Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and Yojimbo (1961).

Once shooting was done, Kurosawa was satisfied with his own performance. He later said, "Somehow I didn't feel as though it were the first time. I thought I knew what it was all about. Still, those around me told me that when I first shouted 'Camera! Action!' my voice sounded quite strange." But the journey was not yet over; Sanshiro Sugata still had to pass the military censor board, which was primarily concerned about films that supported Japan and did not shed any favorable light on Western culture. Kurosawa was fairly certain that it would pass, but he still had to appear before the stringent board. According to Kurosawa, he was instructed to sit in a chair across from the board, which consisted of a few Japanese filmmakers - including revered director Yasujiro Ozu -, but mostly government and military officials who were more than ready to reject any film that didn't tow the military line. Kurosawa said, "It was really like being on trial...It seems I had committed the heinous crime called Sanshiro Sugata." Indeed, the film was red-flagged by the censors because a love scene involving the lead character was viewed as being too "British-American", a ridiculous accusation that Kurosawa was not going to take without a fight. Kurosawa related the story in his autobiography: "I reached the limits of my endurance with their spitefulness. I felt the color of my face changing, and there was nothing I could do about it. 'Bastard! Go to hell! Eat this chair!' Thinking such thoughts, I rose involuntarily to my feet, but as I did so, Ozu stood up simultaneously and began to speak: 'If a hundred points is a perfect score, Sanshiro Sugata gets one hundred twenty! Congratulations, Kurosawa!' Ignoring the unhappy censors, Ozu strode over to me, whispered the name of a Ginza restaurant in my ear and said, 'Let's go there and celebrate.'"

Not until 1974 would Sanshiro Sugata finally be released in America, retitled as Judo Saga in some markets. Kevin Thomas wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Obviously a must for Kurosawa admirers, it seems today something of a museum piece, often static and remote but possessed of much charm and some stunning sequences that make it worth the effort...Fragmentary, elusive yet steadfastly appealing, Sanshiro Sugata, so much more than mere entertainment, is clearly the work of a man who was to become a great director."

Producer: Keiji Matsuzaki
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa; Tsuneo Tomita (novel)
Cinematography: Akira Mimura
Art Direction: Masao Tozuka
Music: Seiichi Suzuki
Film Editing: Toshio Goto, Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Denjiro Okochi (Shogoro Yano), Susumu Fujita (Sanshiro Sugata), Yukiko Todoroki (Sayo Murai), Ryunosuke Tsukigata (Gennosuke Higaki), Takashi Shimura (Hansuke Murai - Sayo's father), Ranko Hanai (Osumi Kodana), Sugisaku Aoyama (Tsunetami Iimura), Ichiro Sugai (Police Chief Mishima), Yoshio Kosugi (Master Saburo Kodama), Kokuten Kodo (Buddhist Priest), Michisaburo Segawa (Wada), Akitake Kono (Yoshima Dan), Shoji Kiyokawa (Yujiro Toda), Kunio Mita (Kohei Tsuzaki), Akira Nakamura (Toranosuki Niiseki)
BW-79m.

by Scott McGee