Original subtitles

(Shindo Kaneto) This is the susuki grass.

This place was difficult to find.

First we went to Adachigahara,

where there is a legend of a she-demon,

but the area had been developed.

One of the assistant directors

travelled right around Mt. Fuji looking for a place,

but the grass fields were either being used by the military

or had been split up.

He finally decided to look near the marshes,

and went to Inbanuma in Chiba where he found this place.

He wanted me to take a look,

so I went to see.

It was just what we were looking for,

so we decided to film there.

We had problems later with the stones and the bogs,

but I didn't see any of that then.

I just saw the grass rustling in the wind and thought, "This is perfect."

Ever since we made Ningen,

we'd always lodged together when filming,

but there was no suitable place to stay nearby,

so we decided to build

a prefabricated house at the site.

The susuki grass is like having a black background.

There is nothing to get in the way.

It also provides a symbolic setting

for the Civil War period,

and I wanted the grass swaying in the wind

to express the psychological nature of the film.

We were also working to a small budget,

so we needed to use the minimum number of people

and this place was perfect for that.

(Sato Kei) I hear the production budget was 15 million yen. Is that right?

(Shindo) About that.

In today's terms, that's about 300 million yen.

That's Kaji Kentaro.

(Yoshimura Jitsuko) They're father and son, aren't they?

(Shindo) Yes. That's his son-in-law.

(Yoshimura) The susuki grass is beautiful

and it's very effective,

psychologically.

(Shindo) Okamoto Taro also said

that the grass made a fine background.

I'm glad that we decided to use the grass fields,

but it made filming very difficult.

(Sato) I read the production notes again the other day.

They say how you had a flash of inspiration

about the hole which helped you to write the script.

(Shindo) I felt that the hole signifies

the process by which people survived.

History tells us that

during the Civil War period

the civilian population clung on precariously

at the edge of existence,

which means that we are here today

because they managed to survive.

It shows the strength of the people

at the bottom of the social heap.

I thought of depicting the harsh everyday life

of people who put

food on their plates

by murdering others.

I don't mean that the hole is connected directly to this in any way,

but I wanted to use it as a metaphor

for this way of survival.

(Sato) The hole was like a disused well, wasn't it?

(Shindo) Yes.

How old were you when you made this, Jitsuko?

(Yoshimura) I think I was about 19.

(Shindo) You were brimming with vitality then.

(Yoshimura) It was only my third film. I didn't know anything.

(Sato) You look as fresh as a daisy.

(Yoshimura) I watched the film the other day after many years,

I really enjoyed it.

The clothes we wore in the film were supposed

to have been stolen, too.

You gave us two sets of clothes

and asked us to make sure they looked old,

so I slept in mine.

I expect Nobuko did the same.

(Shindo) The clothes were linen,

I designed them myself.

(Yoshimura) Really?

(Shindo) And I had them dyed.

Nobuko's outfit had a crab design.

(Yoshimura) Mine was a fan motif.

That was almost 40 years ago.

I've forgotten so much.

(Shindo) The reason the film is still so clear

is because it was shot in black and white.

If it had been colour, the colour would have faded by now.

(Yoshimura) In black and white,

it's more impressive.

(Shindo) I'm still nostalgic about black and white now.

When they invented film,

they couldn't do colour at first,

so they started with black and white.

But there are actually seven shades of grey in black and white.

It represents colour in the same way

as an Indian ink drawing.

It has that depth.

(Sato) It is much better than badly used colour.

The susuki grass, too.

(Yoshimura) Absolutely.

(Sato) It stirs the imagination. (Yoshimura) That's right.

(Shindo) In that sense, black and white is superior.

It should have been

invented after colour.

All you have to do with colour is film it as it is.

We built this set ourselves.

(Sato) It was tough for the assistant directors.

(Shindo) They had it tough.

They were covered in cuts and bruises.

We had eight assistant directors.

There are usually four.

We wanted them to gain

a wide range of experience.

We were an independent production company,

so we didn't rely on any outside people.

We wanted to do everything ourselves.

That's how we did things.

(Yoshimura) Eight ADs?

(Shindo) That's right.

(Sato) Some were straight out of university, weren't they?

(Shindo) Some out of university, some were amateurs, some were veterans.

They were all mixed together.

It was an interesting blend.

We did everything there on location.

It all took time and effort.

(Sato) If I remember right,

you used about 30 kilowatts of lighting.

(Shindo) That's right. We used about 30 kilowatts.

We didn't use lights in the day.

Just when we filmed

in the evening or in the morning.

(Sato) Living on location gave you plenty of time.

You could be very flexible.

You could snatch a single cut

when the wind or the light was just right.

(Shindo) That's right.

It was like living and sleeping on the set.

We could be very versatile.

It's an interesting way of doing things,

but it's stressful because you're shut in.

But when you have a job to do, I think it's best

to keep people captive at the place they're working.

(Yoshimura) Oh, really?

(Shindo) If you don't do that, people can't commit themselves.

I think everyone wants to be kept captive,

so that they can get on with their work.

(Yoshimura) I think it's only you who thinks that.

We got to go to Tokyo once every three weeks.

(Yoshimura) Or was it every two weeks? (Shindo) Every three weeks.

(Yoshimura) One thing I remember clearly

is that you didn't go back to Tokyo at all.

Why was that?

(Shindo) I wanted to stay at the location continuously.

I felt that I needed to stay there

to maintain my feel for the place.

(Yoshimura) Really? I didn't know what you were thinking.

I just thought, "Yahoo, a holiday!"

I think it was two days and one night.

I was so happy.

I suppose there were taxis, but …

You wouldn't have got taxis out there.

We all piled into two trucks.

It was about 10 minutes to the station, wasn't it?

(Shindo) It was four kilometres. So it was about 10 minutes.

(Yoshimura) We went to the station to catch the train to Tokyo.

We were all so excited.

We stayed one night and then came back the next evening.

We arrived at the station and the trucks were waiting for us.

Then it was back to work.

(Shindo) This is a canal, but it looks like

a continental river because there's no flow.

(Yoshimura) It was beautiful. (Sato) It's man-made.

It was built to take

the overflow from the marshes down to the river.

(Shindo) There's a dam a little further along.

This is where Kei appears.

The reason I made him a monk

was that he wouldn't have to wear a wig.

It would just appear that his hair had grown.

(Yoshimura) You were lucky, Kei.

(Sato) And the clothes would have kept me safe.

(Shindo) That's right.

With monk's clothes,

he would have been safe on the road.

(Yoshimura) Nobuko and I both wore wigs.

(Shindo) But it was mostly your own hair.

We just added a little.

It was hard work rigging the lighting here because the roof was so low.

(Sato) It caught fire once. That's right.

You were the first one to escape when the fire started, Jitsuko.

(Yoshimura) Was I really?

(Sato) You were the first out of the door. (Yoshimura) Because I was young!

(Shindo) It was hard going for everyone.

But because you were all held captive in one place,

there was nowhere to escape to and we had plenty of time.

(Yoshimura) Yes, we had lots of time.

(Shindo) Because we had so much time,

it felt as if we could be relaxed about things. Mind you, it was hot.

(Sato) God, it was hot!

(Shindo) Not only that …

The reeds and the scenery may look cool,

but the hot, stifling smell of the grass was terrible.

I remember Kei saying that

we ran the risk of catching a nasty disease from the mites

if we filmed there.

We were lucky though,

because no one got sick.

(Sato) When Masaki Kobayashi was filming The Human Condition,

up in Sarobetsu in Hokkaido,

the locals warned him about the danger of disease from mites.

When they had to go into the swamp,

they wrapped themselves in plastic underneath their clothes.

They were worried, but they didn't catch anything.

(Shindo) It would have been quite natural to get sick in a place like that.

(Sato) That's right.

I didn't know about it until later,

but the area where the marsh meets the reed beds

is a very primitive environment.

It was like that tens of thousands of years ago.

It looks as if you could walk along quite easily,

but it's so boggy you would sink in up to your waist.

(Sato) Does it belong to the Water Agency?

(Shindo) Yes, it's managed by the Water Agency.

We got permission to use it,

and we built the set there.

Because we did it here, we didn't have to worry about onlookers.

We basically had a cast of three.

It was good because we could focus that way.

You wouldn't have been able to appear in anything else,

with a beard like that anyway.

It was lucky for us.

Mind you, it was rough for the actors, wasn't it?

(Sato) I wasn't much in demand anyway.

(Shindo) That's not true.

(Sato) I arrived at the set about one week

after shooting had started.

There was a bath and a toilet by then.

(Yoshimura) There were separate toilets for men and women.

(Sato) I remember these small, yellow

poisonous moths appeared once.

One of the crew was sitting in the bath

with a rash all over his body.

(Shindo) Talk about moths to the flame.

The insects would emerge in swarms in the evening.

(Sato) It was amazing.

(Shindo) I thought there were only

one or two types of insect that come out at night,

but there were scores of different types.

(Yoshimura) Were there that many?

(Shindo) One type would arrive en masse,

stay for a week and then disappear.

Then a different type would turn up.

The insects were terrible. They would drop to the floor,

and the crawfish would come to eat them.

(Sato) We used a light trap and caught hundreds of them.

(Shindo) They came pouring in and dropped down dead.

(Sato) We burnt them all with gasoline. It was crazy.

When we filmed at night, the insects would come

flying into your mouth when you tried to say your lines.

(Shindo) That's right.

But the daytime was a hard grind, too.

(Sato) The ADs had it tough.

(Shindo) There wasn't much to do at night,

so we passed the time cremating insects.

(Sato) You would go to bed early because you don't drink.

But a few of us would sit out on the embankment,

drinking till midnight.

(Yoshimura) You drank on the embankment? I didn't know that.

(Sato) If we had sat outside, it would have been too noisy.

(Shindo) It's slightly cooler out there by the river, too.

Sitting and drinking on the riverbank.

It's not something you get to do every day.

(Yoshimura) It was a priceless experience.

(Shindo) If we'd had the money,

we could have provided all sorts of facilities,

but I think it was better this way.

This sort of primitive style is better, isn't it?

(Sato) I think so.

(Shindo) Our primitive lifestyle matched the film itself.

Simple food and cheap dried fish.

You'd think we'd have all kinds of fresh fish,

staying next to a swamp.

But we didn't.

(Sato) There were grass carp.

(Yoshimura) Were they big? (Sato) About one metre long.

(Shindo) Grass carp were introduced from China.

There were snakehead mullet, too.

They can actually come onto the land for a while.

They look a bit like snakes.

(Sato) The grass carp ate up all the small fish in the area.

They built a fish pen for them on the bank,

but they were still wiped out.

(Shindo) They caught the small fish and put them in a fish pen.

Didn't you have moxibustion treatment on your stomach

to increase your weight when we were doing Ningen, Kei?

You have plenty of meat on you here.

(Sato) Ningen was two years before this.

I only weighed 48kg at the time.

After six months of treatment, I was up to 73kg.

Onibaba was only two years after that.

(Shindo) You were a bit chubby then. (Sato) I'd lost a bit of weight then.

I was about 70kg here.

(Shindo) Yes, I thought you were quite big then.

(Yoshimura) Is that a snakehead mullet you're holding?

(Shindo) No, it's a crucian carp. (Sato) A big one.

There wouldn't have been any grass carp or snakehead mullet

in those days.

They were only introduced after the war.

(Shindo) 19 years old? You're just brimming with youth.

(Sato) Your skin is glowing.

(Yoshimura) I watched the film again a few days ago,

I could hardly believe I was so young once. It made me happy to see.

(Shindo) Of course. That's natural.

The mud beneath the reeds was like a quagmire.

It was very unpleasant, but we were lucky

that no one got sick.

(Yoshimura) We were very lucky.

(Sato) We didn't take any precautions either.

(Shindo) We didn't have any medical facilities.

(Shindo) Our budget didn't stretch to that.

(Yoshimura) We didn't have any inoculations.

(Sato) We didn't do anything like that.

(Shindo) None of the ADs got sick either.

(Yoshimura) That's right.

(Shindo) When the ADs got stressed out,

they'd run marathons to the railway station in the evening.

(Sato) Did they do that?

(Shindo) They wanted to burn up their energy.

(Yoshimura) I didn't know that.

(Shindo) The day after a holiday,

I would sometimes go up and wait on the embankment

and would watch as people came trickling back in ones and twos.

I was relieved to see them.

They returned but they'd been thinking.

(Sato) Did you think they'd escape?

(Shindo) Yes. I thought some people would run away.

(Yoshimura) But no one did? (Shindo) No one did.

Maybe they just didn't have the time to think of escaping.

(Sato) That was the year of the Tokyo Olympics.

Even when you got away to Tokyo, it was noisy and crowded.

(Shindo) You don't get many opportunities

for a group of people to focus

on a single task like this.

(Sato) The samurai over there is Tanaka Hiroshi.

He became famous doing that ham commercial.

He was a stand-in for Mifune, wasn't he?

It was the boneless ham.

(Shindo) He's actually quite small, but he's wearing armour.

It's not funny,

but he almost drowned.

I could have filmed the scene in separate cuts,

but I wanted to film the whole scene to give it power.

That's why we did it this way.

That's how we did it, but it was serious.

(Sato) I was really worried.

(Shindo) You were impatient. (Sato) No, I was worried!

(Shindo) In the film, I mean.

You were impatient, waiting for him to arrive.

You spear him here.

(Yoshimura) After all that effort to swim across …

(Sato) The water was dirty.

(Shindo) It looks clean, but it was dirty.

(Sato) That's Yamaguchi.

Tanaka was Terajima Mitsugu's son, wasn't he?

(Shindo) I think he was related to the wife of the cameraman.

That's how he came to be with us.

I used him because he also did some stunt work.

There was no point in rehearsing this.

They just had to react as they went along.

They turned this into a ballet in America.

An American production company

is interested in buying the story.

It's a simple story.

It's a very traditional folktale,

and this folktale has

the man and woman relationship.

It's simple.

(Sato) It was about this time that Tonoyama stopped drinking.

(Shindo) That's right. He shouted out, "I'm giving up drinking from today!"

(Sato) But nobody paid a blind bit of notice.

(Shindo) Why did you used to call Tonoyama-san

by the nickname oyabin?

(Sato) It comes from the words oyabun meaning "boss"

and hagechabin meaning "baldy".

(Yoshimura) I worked with Tonoyama

on films after this.

He was very shy.

I remember if I teased him,

he would just look down and grin sheepishly.

(Shindo) He was a cultured man.

(Sato) He was intelligent.

(Shindo) Yes, and he was a humble man.

He was a cultured man and intelligent,

and a funny person.

He was an interesting fellow.

(Yoshimura) I think everybody had times

when they were stressed out

and wanted to go home.

I had that feeling at times,

but Nobuko looked after me.

I can only remember the happy times now.

(Shindo) You were young,

and everyone was eager.

I just let people do their thing.

You were all enthusiastic.

(Yoshimura) Did we rehearse?

(Shindo) No. (Sato) We just did a camera test.

(Yoshimura) The set was only about five minutes from where we stayed.

I thought we did a bit of rehearsal,

but it's over thirty years ago and I can't remember.

(Sato) Maybe you did some practice by yourself.

(Yoshimura) I wasn't that serious.

(Shindo) There was no point in rehearsal.

There's no way to rehearse how to bite into a chunk of meat.

It wasn't a specific type of acting.

We were portraying humans reduced

almost to the level of beasts.

There's no way to rehearse that.

Simply staying in that place together

was a sufficient rehearsal.

(Yoshimura) That feeling that we were all in it together

was very different from the two films I'd done before that.

(Shindo) I went to Montreal last year, 1999,

and screened Onibaba and The Naked Island.

The people I met in the cafés knew Onibaba.

When we met, they would all say, "Ah, Onibaba, Onibaba!"

You could hear them, "Onibaba, Onibaba."

It's very simple and straightforward,

and people overseas appreciated it as well.

(Sato) It was very popular.

(Shindo) "Onibaba, Onibaba, " they said!

I took four prints and they screened them two at a time

at the main venue.

Film made its appearance in the 20th century,

and now you can see Nobuko like this,

even though she's no longer with us.

In some respect, the viewpoint of life and death has changed.

The voice remains.

(Yoshimura) When I saw the titles at the beginning,

I was shocked to think that so many of those people

have passed away.

We might be the only three left.

(Shindo) Kuroda, the cameraman,

the lighting man,

Shige who did the make-up.

(Yoshimura) Uno, Tonoyama, Tanaka

and Sonesho are all dead.

It's just the three of us.

And you're the fittest of us all.

(Shindo) I think not. I'm 89 years old.

(Sato) How old were you when you made Onibaba?

(Shindo) Fifty-five.

I was fit then.

Breath is important …

… for acting and for directing.

If you have no breath

left in your lungs after you have breathed out,

you lose your power.

When your breath is used up and doesn't come out anymore,

it is useless.

(Yoshimura) You've gone crazy here, Kei.

(Shindo) The film doesn't look at all dated.

(Yoshimura) That's right.

(Shindo) I added the cooing of pigeons

to the scene when you are running.

I heard that pigeons are known for their fecundity,

so I added the sound to the scene where Jitsuko

is running through the grass in the grip of desire.

I added it for effect.

(Yoshimura) I didn't know that.

(Shindo) Hayashi Hikaru also came to the set.

(Yoshimura) I ran like the wind then.

I was covered in scratches.

If I tried that now,

I'd have a heart attack.

(Shindo) We could make it appear

to be night,

because we filmed in black and white.

If you adjust the contrast,

use a red filter

and emphasise the black,

then you are able to turn day into night.

This technique was developed for black and white film.

I'm not sure who invented it.

(Sato) Can't you do it with colour? (Shindo) No, not with colour.

The picture would be dark.

It just becomes darker.

There's an effect that occurs …

If you increase the contrast in black and white film,

it has the effect of accentuating the white,

so the image becomes clearer.

The effect can be quite strange.

It's very effective.

We filmed the susuki grass

with and without lights.

If the lights are switched on,

the sky becomes dark

and the grass appears white.

Without light, the grass becomes black and the sky white.

The two can be used as a montage to create an interesting effect.

I took this shot at about 3.5 times speed.

They usually shoot running giraffes

and other animals at between

3.5 and 5 times normal speed.

From the start, I wanted the swaying of the susuki grass

to express the psychological nature of the film.

(Yoshimura) Neither Nobuko nor I had names,

but Hachi and my dead husband did.

(Shindo) I used you as symbols.

(Yoshimura) Why was that?

(Shindo)… to represent people.

As a person who would be able

to represent the populace.

You can only get this kind of effect with black and white film.

We couldn't film on cloudy days.

You don't get the effect of black and white film

unless you have clear blue skies.

In the old days, we would wait for clear weather to film.

Nowadays you can get vivid colours regardless

of whether it's cloudy or not.

There's no need to fear the clouds,

you can shoot to your heart's content.

On the other side of the coin,

people now take less care in composing their shots.

How long did you stay on location?

(Sato) Was it June we started?

(Yoshimura) I think I was there for three months.

(Shindo) It took a long time,

because we had to wait for the weather.

(Sato) According to these records,

filming started 30th June 1964 and I joined in July.

We finished up on 9th September.

Shindo, Kuroda and Shirota

left on the two o'clock train

on 9 October.

It says that they departed under leaden skies with heavy hearts.

(Shindo) Whenever I start a new project,

it feels as if I'm beginning a new life.

And when the time comes

when the work ends,

it feels as if one life

has come to an end.

(Sato) When an actor has played his part, he goes home.

When the soundman and other crew have done their jobs, they go home.

The director stays till the end.

(Shindo) That's right.

I suppose it's mentally

and physically tiring.

But it's the actors

who do the running

and all the director has to do

is watch them perform.

I admire actors.

(Yoshimura) Thank you!

(Shindo) Mind you, I suppose they do it

because it's interesting,

so I shouldn't worry too much about them.

But actors are a breed apart.

(Sato) I always have a bit

of a guilty conscience as an actor.

Whether it's film or stage,

the actor works to a script

and has someone to direct him,

and yet he plays it as if it is all his own work.

It's like he's cheating the audience and the director.

(Yoshimura) Because I'm impudent, I don't feel like that.

(Sato) It's shyness.

(Shindo) I can understand that.

A director also has a feeling of impotence.

Because he doesn't actually do it.

He orders people about, but doesn't actually do it himself.

He leaves everything to other people.

It's like there's a glass wall

in front of you.

It's frustrating.

(Sato) Yes, it must be frustrating for a director.

Especially when the actors can't get it right!

(Shindo) No, it's not that.

If the film turns out well, the director gets the credit,

but he didn't really do it himself.

It's funny, when I speak to actors

who do stage work,

they still find it interesting

even when they are performing the same role,

day after day.

(Sato) Not me.

I like a one-off performance.

I don't mind rehearsing for two weeks

or a month.

That's necessary to understand the script.

But I just want to do one performance.

(Shindo) It's a different audience every day.

(Sato) That's true.

But I like to do it just once.

(Shindo) I'm the same.

As a director, I only want to shoot a scene once.

I don't want to go back and do it again.

It doesn't work well if I do.

Even if you see something that's not right

in the rushes and you decide to retake it,

it's not good enough.

If you retake it, it never looks right.

It's as if you have painted over the top of it.

You need to start with a blank sheet.

It's all or nothing.

(Sato) First time is best for acting as well.

(Yoshimura) There is a tension in it.

(Sato) From the second try onward,

you are aiming for safety.

(Shindo) Actors are artists.

They are creative.

They create something from unknown spaces within,

using their bodies

and their actions.

They work from morning to night,

but that doesn't mean they do it best

at the end of the day.

Mizoguchi Kenji said the same thing.

He would sometimes do test runs for a whole day,

and he said that people often got worse the more they tried.

(Yoshimura) Maybe because they were tired!

(Shindo) We burned tyres to get the smoke here.

It was really hard work just getting over there to do it.

Not for me, but for the ADs!

We just watched it.

It was the little things like that which took time.

That's why we were there three months.

For example, if a clump of reeds fell down,

we would have to bring some more in and prop them up.

They look beautiful,

but there are plenty of shots where we had to prop them up.

It was all hard work.

(Yoshimura) The reeds were so high.

(Shindo) They are about twice the height of a person.

These are reeds.

There were two types of reed,

as well as the susuki grass.

(Yoshimura) Someone said that it's scary to run through

the susuki grass, but it wasn't just grass.

There were reeds, too.

(Shindo) We built a well in order to film,

but it was destroyed

in the typhoon.

All kinds of things like that happened.

He's imitating the barking of a dog.

(Yoshimura) It's so many years since I saw the film.

There were so many love scenes!

(Sato) It's surprising. (Yoshimura) I was surprised how many!

(Sato) They were necessary to show Nobuko's jealousy.

(Yoshimura) I was so young,

and Kei had had his moxibustion treatment …

… we both had magnificent bodies then.

(Shindo) Are you still doing it?

(Sato) Not anymore. But the clinic's still there.

I mentioned it on the TV,

and I still get letters,

asking me where it is.

(Shindo) Does it really work?

(Sato) If you do it seriously.

You can't do it half-heartedly,

it will have the opposite effect.

You have to follow the instructions exactly.

It takes one year.

It won't work if you give up halfway.

You must be determined to change your condition.

I gained weight, and it felt as if …

(Shindo) That's true for everything.

Not just improving your health.

(Sato) It felt as if my cells themselves had changed.

(Shindo) Your cells? Was your brain the same?

(Sato) No, that got worse!

I ate five meals a day.

Mostly rice.

I don't know why, but rice was easy to digest.

It took four hours to digest completely,

and so I had to eat every 4 hours.

(Yoshimura) Even during shooting? (Sato) Yes.

(Yoshimura) I didn't notice. (Shindo) Not on Onibaba, right?

(Sato) That was when we shot Ningen.

If you don't eat at the right time,

the treatment will have the opposite effect.

Because of the effect on the intestine

unless food is eaten properly,

you will get an upset stomach.

It can cause an abnormal gas,

which can fill the stomach

and cause diarrhoea.

(Yoshimura) So you ate …?

(Sato) So I had to eat every four hours.

(Shindo) It was good for us, Kei-san,

because you lost that civilised look.

(Sato) If I hadn't put on weight, I wouldn't have been hired!

I have moxibustion to thank for that!

(Shindo) And slowing your brain down was just right for the part!

(Sato) I was always slow-witted!

(Shindo) So you became more savage.

(Sato) I couldn't get much slower!

(Shindo) Fundamentally, you are the scientific type.

You had the treatment just in time then.

The swaying grass is very effective.

(Sato) It's very effective.

(Yoshimura) I think I must have run away.

I must have run all the way back to Tokyo.

(Shindo) We could see the night sky in the distance illuminated by Tokyo.

There was lightning, too.

We all watched it,

and it made us want to go home back to Tokyo.

But we kept on going.

Hayashi's music is dynamic.

The mask was made

by a famous mask maker in Kyoto.

We had two made,

because one needs to be broken later.

The mask maker is dead now, too.

He made us a magnificent mask.

The story is based on The Mask of Flesh story.

The monk, Rennyo, was the 8th Patriarch

of Shin Buddhism.

Until then, the teachings of the sect were not well known,

so Rennyo set about to change that.

He was a great communicator

and had enormous vitality,

and, since there was no printing at that time,

he wrote hundreds of pages

of stories every day to distribute to the people.

One of the stories he wrote was the simple tale, The Mask of Flesh.

A daughter-in-law regularly attended the temple.

Her mother-in-law didn't like it and tried to stop her,

by donning a mask to frighten her away from the temple.

The Buddha punished her by making it impossible to remove the mask.

When the daughter-in-law heard what had happened,

she prayed to the Buddha and the grip of the mask was released.

In those days, daughter-in-laws were often

treated badly by their in-laws.

But they were important to produce the next generation.

Rennyo thought that he could recruit followers by targeting these women.

He wrote the story to warn in-laws

against maltreating their daughters-in-law.

(Sato) I heard that story when I was young.

I'm from Aizu in Fukushima.

My parents were in the Nichiren sect, I think.

(Shindo) It's a famous Buddhist story.

(Sato) I heard it from my grandmother.

(Shindo) The story was actually written

in Yoshizaki in Fukui Prefecture.

The Shin Buddhists were being persecuted by another sect,

and Rennyo escaped there.

He would return to challenge his persecutors later,

but while there, he wrote powerful tales,

such as this one as a means of attracting followers.

It's easy to understand for farming folk. It's a simple story.

(Sato) It was no longer a religious story.

It became a folktale.

(Shindo) It's been handed down over many years,

because of its simplicity

and its universal human theme of the difficult relationship

between a bride and her mother-in-law.

It resonates to this day.

As for the mask being used

to hide the ugly face of a general,

that was my idea.

I interpreted the story in a contemporary way.

But that was the original story.

A mother goes to the temple in the evening,

she listens to the sermon

and falls asleep,

because the sermon is boring.

The priest knows that,

and there is a tacit agreement between them.

The priest makes his sermon boring,

so that the woman can sleep.

She's tired from her day's work,

and comes to the temple

in the evening for a rest.

She can't leave the children at home,

so she brings them to the temple, too.

At the temple,

they are given a sweet bun,

so the children want to go to the temple to get the bun.

As this is happening, their mother sleeps.

Rennyo's stories are like this.

He appeals to the people's instincts.

They are clever stories.

These old folktales remain,

because they're so powerful.

The stories that had no power have long gone.

It was a lot of trouble to make this hole.

The ADs made it.

(Sato) Yes, I saw them.

(Shindo) That's why they weren't around the set when we were shooting.

But I let them know that they were still

contributing creatively to the film.

Ah, this was the problem cut.

(Yoshimura) I was shocked when I saw the rushes.

I asked you to cut it.

(Shindo) It was you who decided to strip off.

(Yoshimura) No, I was wearing skin-coloured tights,

and you said they were visible.

You were using a telephoto lens.

I didn't know anything about the technical side of things,

I assumed you wouldn't see from such a distance,

so I did it in the nude.

When I saw the rushes,

you could see everything,

and I asked you to cut it.

I can't remember how you responded.

I said they wouldn't be able to show that in the cinemas.

Then I was suddenly nominated

for a Blue Ribbon Award for best supporting actress,

and I couldn't say anything more.

(Shindo) I did cut it a little.

We started shooting

in the morning,

but it was too muddy to run properly.

We laid boards down to cover the mud

for you to run on.

People were working in mud up to their waists

and chests to solve the problem.

You were inspired by their selfless efforts.

(Yoshimura) Really? (Shindo) So you stripped off.

(Yoshimura) Really? I don't remember that.

(Shindo) Really. That was why!

(Yoshimura) I thought it was because of the tights,

and because the camera was so far away

and you wouldn't see.

I thought it was the tights and the camera.

(Sato) No. I was right behind you.

The camera was over to the left.

You were responding to the way people had worked

up to their chests in the mud.

- You were impressed by that. - (Yoshimura) I'd forgotten.

(Sato) I remember Shindo-san,

he was calling out to you

and you stripped off boldly.

We were all impressed.

(Shindo) It was hard getting that shot.

I thought that shot was going to be easy,

but it wasn't.

We put three layers of board down.

The actors waited all morning while we prepared it.

There's a sequel to this tale.

When we screened the film for Toho,

Fujimoto cornered me and asked me

what I was going to do about the censors.

I said not to worry,

but I did end up

cutting it a little bit.

There was never any call for cuts,

and the few we made settled the matter anyway.

We actually got on well and he helped out

with the film's distribution.

Incidentally, I received the Fujimoto Award yesterday.

(Yoshimura) Congratulations!

(Shindo) I mentioned it because we talked about this story,

the story of the pubic hair …

(Yoshimura) Two friends of mine

saw the film at the theatre and told me

that the scene didn't look at all obscene.

I was so relieved.

They thought it was good.

(Sato) Some people who saw the film in the theatre

said they could see my private parts

when I was running.

They must have had good eyesight,

I was wearing flesh-coloured pants!

It's not so easy for a man running naked, is it?

They wouldn't believe me though.

When it works well, the audience believes it's real.

(Shindo) That scene was essential

for the overall atmosphere of the film.

(Yoshimura) When I saw it, it wasn't obscene.

It was invigorating.

(Shindo) That's down to your refreshing personality,

your graciousness. Yes. That's the right expression.

(Sato) It was about what had been done.

(Shindo) Yes. We'd worked hard from the morning.

We'd been laying the boards,

and that's why you did it.

(Yoshimura) I'd forgotten.

So it was that everyone had worked so hard,

and the fact that you could see the tights as well.

(Sato) He didn't say anything about tights.

He just called out, "Hey, Jitsuko!"

And you got the message and stripped off.

I was only 30cm behind you and I remember it.

(Yoshimura) I thought that it was because …

you said the tights were visible.

(Shindo) Anyway, it was good that you were so brave.

It doesn't look at all lewd.

(Yoshimura) It's good that I didn't think too much about it.

It was only my third film,

and I didn't know anything.

In the end, you made it into an invigorating scene.

(Shindo) You had youth and vitality.

It worked well.

(Yoshimura) I would have been embarrassed if it was in the studio,

but there was no one around and the camera was far away.

(Sato) It was a telephoto lens. (Yoshimura) I didn't know that.

I didn't know about the camera.

(Shindo) The telephoto was hard to move around.

But in the end, it was very effective.

Everyone did their bit.

There's a scene

where Nobuko embraces the tree.

When I took a train from Abiko on the Narita Line,

I saw this dead pine tree

at the side of the track near one of the stations.

I thought it made an impressive sight,

and I decided to bring it to the set.

The townspeople were happy to let us take it,

as it was already dead.

The ADs couldn't handle it on their own,

so the lighting and sound crew helped them

to chop it down

and to load it onto a lorry and bring it to the set.

No one complained

about doing that sort of thing.

Everyone mucked in

and no one complained.

Felling and transporting trees is a job for a professional.

People would have been within their rights to refuse,

but no one did.

There are good and bad sides to it,

but this kind of group mentality once existed in the Japanese film world.

We had to wait for the sun

to set up here.

You can't do that sort of thing

unless you have the time.

(Yoshimura) Nobuko was young then, too.

(Shindo) She was full of life, too.

It's seven years now since she died.

(Sato) Yes, it was 1994, wasn't it?

I met her at the Tennozu Art Sphere theatre just before she died.

They were doing an English play and the director had come over.

Nobuko came to see it.

Togo Haruko was also in the play.

Afterwards I thought

it was as if she had come to say goodbye,

because she died right after that.

(Shindo) She was relatively fit up until her death.

She went to the theatre

and to discussion meetings.

(Sato) It was after The Last Note, wasn't it?

(Shindo) Yes.

(Yoshimura) She was already sick then, wasn't she?

(Shindo) That's right.

She was told she had 18 months to live,

and she did what work she could during that time.

In the end, she ran out of strength.

She didn't suffer for too long.

The doctors are usually right about cancer.

It was the same for Mizoguchi and Ozu.

They died when the doctors said they would.

You saw where the demon appeared there.

The choreography for that scene was arranged by Kanze Hideo.

It has the feel of a scene from a Noh play.

I wasn't confident about choreographing that scene,

so I asked Kanze to help.

You can hear the intense percussion

and the voice yelling.

That's Kanze's voice.

(Sato) Hideo's voice? (Shindo) Yes.

And what a voice!

It's astounding!

(Sato) It would make the window panes vibrate.

(Shindo) It's as if a banshee had appeared.

The cry is drawn out,

leaving a long trail behind it.

(Sato) It's a terrifying sound.

(Shindo) The rapid beat of the drum,

and then the voice.

Hayashi composed it like that.

Shige did the make-up.

He was famous.

(Yoshimura) I remember when he went back to Tokyo.

His assistant did Nobuko's eyebrows,

but she didn't like it.

She waited till he came back

to make her up,

before she would do a scene.

(Shindo) That's because he …

… because he was a veteran.

He made people up based on how they would look on screen,

not how they looked there and then.

You need experience to do that.

Mind you, he was a difficult person.

He wouldn't do anything if he didn't feel like it.

But we worked together well

for a long time.

He would stay on location and make the hair

and the beards and everything.

He would do things like adding that patch of white

to Nobuko's hair.

(Sato) It's fashionable these days.

(Shindo) It wouldn't have been any good

if the hair had been completely white.

(Yoshimura) This is before the typhoon, isn't it?

(Shindo) Yes, we were able to shoot the wind as soon as it arrived,

because we were there.

It was the same with the birds.

(Yoshimura) They were ducks and herons, weren't they?

(Shindo) If you're not living there, you can't film this kind of thing.

If you have to travel to the location to catch the typhoon,

you'll miss it.

If you're there, you just film it when it happens.

When the wind blew from the south,

the water level on the north side of the marsh rose by one metre.

That's because the sea was to the south.

When that happened,

the prefab we were staying in would often flood.

There were lots of crayfish there and they would come

into the house when the waters rose.

(Yoshimura) I remember we dug a hole at night

and we would find crayfish in there in the morning.

We'd take them out and fry them.

(Shindo) You have to get the mud out of them first.

(Yoshimura) We caught lots.

(Shindo) They used to eat crayfish tempura after the war.

(Sato) There was an elderly couple

who used to go out in a boat on the water.

They would come back

with a bucket full of crayfish.

I assumed that they sold them to the local noodle shop.

(Shindo) They use them to make soup.

When you've rinsed the mud off, they're beautiful.

About the time we finished filming,

lots of tiny little crayfish hatched out.

This was hard work.

(Sato) We couldn't shoot this in the swamp,

so the ADs had to plant all these reeds.

That was quite a job!

(Shindo) They were driven to despair at the end.

The wind wouldn't blow so we used a large fan.

We had to make the wind and create the lightning.

That was tough work.

And it was pouring with rain.

The field was extremely deep,

and there were plenty of reeds.

What was this fellow's name? I can't remember it …

(Yoshimura) That was the end of Hachi.

(Shindo) They still used this method to make fire

in the countryside when I was a boy.

When they got cold in the fields,

they would collect pine needles

and use a flint to light the fire.

- Do you smoke, Kei-san? - (Sato) Yes.

(Shindo) How much? (Sato) A day?

I'd say about thirty a day.

Although I cough at the same time!

(Shindo) Do you need to smoke now? (Sato) No, I'm fine.

(Shindo) We had two of these masks made.

I went to Kyoto to order them myself.

I explained the situation

and had them made

at a good price,

because of the film's low budget.

(Yoshimura) It's an excellent mask. It has such an expression.

It has real expression when Nobuko wears it.

(Shindo) Kanze Hideo praised it as well.

He tried it on one time

and performed for us.

(Sato) Do you still have it? (Shindo) Yes, I have it at home.

(Yoshimura) The perfect one? (Shindo) And the broken one, too.

I took it back and had it joined together again.

The maker was very attached to it, so he fixed it for me.

(Sato) This was all post-recorded, wasn't it?

(Shindo) That's right. (Sato) The love scenes, too.

And the kisses.

My arms were black and blue

by the time I'd finished recording.

(Shindo) You have to get the timing just right.

(Sato) You said that dubbing the sound would be easier,

as we could repeat if required.

That's not what the actors thought.

(Shindo) Well, I had to persuade you somehow!

I had to get you to do it.

It's impossible to synchronise things,

with the grass swaying and the ground below all muddy.

(Sato) Yes, that's impossible.

- It was the same with Ningen. - (Shindo) Ningen, too, with the sea!

Impossible to synchronise.

(Yoshimura) You remember so much, Kei-san.

You never fail to impress me.

(Shindo) The make-up is good here,

when the mask is stripped off.

The skin looks worn.

(Yoshimura) Ah, is that Kanze's voice? (Shindo) That's right. That's his yell.

The point here is that, when the film ends,

we know that Jitsuko leapt across, but we don't know if Nobuko made it.

Nobody knows.

(Yoshimura) So I was the only one left? (Shindo) That's right.