Kurosawa’s Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Most Iconic Films

Anderer (Other Worlds: Arisima Takeo and the Bounds of Modern Japanese Fiction) explores the early life of Japan’s most famous film director, Akira Kurosawa, in this meandering and unsuccessful work. Active for more than 50 years, Kurosawa directed classics such as The Seven Samurai, Ran, and Rashomon. Anderer’s premise is that a more complete understanding of Kurosawa’s films can be obtained by examining the director’s relationship with his older brother, Heigo, a film actor and suicide; the dual destructions of Tokyo in 1923 and 1945; and the director’s early political leanings. This approach hinges on the message at the core of Rashomon: one must hear multiple sides of the story to know what has happened. Anderer takes this too far in his writing, which is elliptical to the point of confusion, and often repetitive. Heigo’s suicide and two lost Tokyos are seminal life events for Kurosawa, but there seem to be half a dozen other influences during this period. Anderer provides some sense of the connection between the brothers, mostly expressed through their shared love of literature, but little explanation of what Tokyo meant to them. This book would be much aided by more straightforward chronology and some judicious editing. [em]Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Oct.) [/em]