Akira Kurosawas Dreams, as seen through the principles of classical Japanese literature and performing art

N O R I K O T. R E I D E R

Abstract: This article offers an interpretation of Akira Kurosawas lm Dreams, which is composed of eight independent short episodes, as an integrated artifact into which are woven various principles of classical Japanese literature and performing art. Identifying in the lm such techniques as principles of association and progression used in anthologies of classical Japanese poetry, the concept of design and background poems, the jo-ha-ky u progression of the medieval performing arts, as well as nohs role play, not only enhances appreciation of the lms aesthetics and Akira Kurosawas indebtedness to traditional Japanese art but also demonstrates the remarkable continuation of such traditional principles in modern Japanese media. Keywords: Akira Kurosawa, Japanese lm, Dreams, principles of progression and association, jo-ha-ky u, noh

Introduction
Dreams (1990) is a visually stunning lm, consisting of eight short episodes. Aside from the format of the lm, purportedly based on Kurosawas own dreams, and excepting that the main character is played by the same actor in all the episodes except for the rst two (Yoshimoto 2000: 359), in narrative terms the eight episodes appear to be independent from each other. Stephen Prince calls the work a smallscale lm . . . an anthology of essays rather than a unied and integrated work (Prince 1999: 304). On close examination, however, the lm is replete with elements of Japanese folklore and other Japanese traditions.1 Indeed, this lm appears to be aesthetically highly Japanese from a native Japanese director who is labeled as the least Japanese.2 Anderson and Richie explain that Kurosawa is the least Japanese director in the sense that Kurosawa has always deliberately refused to
Japan Forum 17(2) 2005: 257272 Copyright C 2005 BAJS ISSN: 09555803 print/1469932X online DOI: 10.1080/09555800500118271

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make the expected kind of picture. Rather, he has sought and found originality. He is Western in that he is perhaps the only Japanese director who can be called a creator in the pioneer sense of the word (Anderson and Richie 1982: 376). It is a known fact that Kurosawas lms were heavily inuenced by Western literature and cinematography, while inuencing Western lm-makers. Further, there is the issue of Kurosawas search for nancial backing for his lms from investors in the West.3 Indeed, starting in the 1960s, Kurosawa received nancial support from Western lm companies.4 Consequently, this makes the denition of Kurosawas Western identity as a lm-maker complex.5 Yet, Kurosawa is undoubtedly an internationally recognized master of lm who is Japanese and, importantly, Dreams discloses his innate Japaneseness. Consciously or unconsciously, Kurosawa follows various traditional aesthetic principles of Japanese literary and performing arts in creating the structure of his lm. For example, the linkage between each episode in Dreams reveals a remarkable resemblance to the medieval literary techniques known as the principles of progression and association. As will be discussed in the ensuing section, these principles were employed in anthologies of classical Japanese poetry, notably in Shinkokinsh u (c . 1204), in order to integrate various poems written by poets of different time periods into harmonious sequences using common conceptual elements and temporal and spatial transitions. Likewise, the eight episodes of Dreams are woven into a sequence through association, as well as temporal and spatial progression, from one episode to the next. Furthermore, jo-ha-ky u, a three-phased progression of relative tempos which relates on every level to the traditional art of noh drama,6 is suggested in the lms structure. This article will examine the applications of these principles in the lm to gain a greater understanding not only of the lms aesthetics but also of the diverse meanings of medieval literary principles, which are remarkably alive in Japanese contemporary media.

Principles of progression and association in Japanese poetry

The principles of progression and association in classical Japanese poetry, as put forward by the eminent Japanese scholar Konishi Jinichi, posit that there is a narrative-like structure in some royal anthologies of classical Japanese poetry. The poems in such anthologies were written by people from all walks of life over several centuries, and the anthologies are organized by topics, such as the four seasons, travel or love. Within each topic, the poems are carefully sequenced according to temporal or spatial progression and association. In the season of autumn, for instance, each poem in the sequence effects change through various temporal and spatial transitions, as the sequence itself progresses from early autumn to mid-autumn, and on to late autumn. In terms of association, linkage in later times was usually achieved less by common subjects than by disparate subjects having conceptual elements in common (Konishi 1986: 229). For example, on

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the topic of love in Book 12 of Shinkokinsh u, the rst poem, numbered 1081, is linked to the next poem, 1082, through subjective association: (12:1081) Shitamoe ni Omoikienan Keburi dani Ato naki kumo no Hate no kanashiki. (12:1082) Nabikaji na Ama no moshiobi Takisomete Keburi wa sora ni Kuyuriwabu to mo. Burning secretly Love will consume me in its ames; Smoke from my pyre Will vanish among the clouds Making my unhappy end! You do not yield, Though I begin to burn with love (A shers seagrass re) And my smoke rises skyward Curling about in misery (Konishi 1991: 2478)7 Konishi Jinichi explains that: [t]he rst poem in the sequence, number 1081 . . . shares one word with poem 1082: keburi (smoke). In addition, Clouds (kumo) in 1081 evoke skyward (sora) in 1082. The fairly abstract Burning secretly (shitamoe) of poem 1081 may be seen to correspond to the concrete burn (taki-) of 1082. Similarly, in poem 1081 the base ending -hi . . . of the inected verb omohi- (modern omoi; love) is a homophone for re; this draws our attention to the seagrass re (moshiobi) of poem 1082. (Konishi 1991: 250) In Kurosawas Dreams, too, the episodes are arranged in temporal or spatial progression in terms of events or through the main character, whom Stephen Prince calls a surrogate of Kurosawa. Regarding association, this technique is not limited to subjective or conceptual principles; the lm also employs visual and auditory association, as explained below. Further, poems in the anthologies are arranged qualitatively in patterns that are called background (ji ) and design (mon). Background poems are plain, inconspicuous works, whereas design poems have vivid, striking expression. If only superior works are selected and sequenced, Konishi Jinichi writes, good individual works will be cancelled out. When properly set off by background poems, design poems appear to even greater advantage than in their original settings (Konishi 1991: 2512). In Dreams, some episodes are presented in monochromatic colors, which may be likened to background poems in the anthologies. These undertoned episodes are placed between more colorful, multi-hued episodes, which may be compared to design poems. Of course, the monochromatic episodes do not correspond exactly to background poems, because these episodes would not

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be viewed as inconspicuous or works with little merit. But the pattern effect is the same in that the side-by-side arrangement of the monochromatic and multicolored screen episodes is complementary, bringing out the best of the imagery in each episode. Each dream of the lm is short and eeting, just like classical Japanese waka poetry, where the total number of syllables is limited to thirtyone. In this sense, too, Dreams seems to t particularly well with the principles of association and progression.

Sunshine through the Rain

The rst episode in Dreams is subtitled Sunshine through the Rain. Folk belief dictates that foxes wed when the sun shines through the rain. During such weather, a 5-year-old boy (Kurosawas surrogate) is told by his mother not to go out, for the foxes do not like to be watched in their wedding procession. Despite her warning, he goes out into the woods. As many critics point out, the pattering of the rain created by the use of Dolby sound is crystal clear. The surreal sound of rain leads the boy to trespass in a unreal world, where he encounters the foxes wedding procession. The procession is highly stylized and deliberate. The mise-en-sc` ene accompanied by traditional Japanese music presents unreal beauty. When the boy returns home, his mother gives him a dagger, saying that the foxes are angry and he must apologize to them. The boy walks into a eld lled with beautifully hued owers, and there he sees an arching rainbow, where the foxes are said to live. The episode ends with a visually stunning scene in which the illuminating rainbow arches, and rain or mist surrounds the distant mountains. The mist or haze, which adorns the rainbow like an aurora, is visually associated with magnicent uttering plum petals in the next episode, The Peach Orchard. In the world of classical Japanese poetry, too, an association between haze and owers is well established, as the following poem reveals: Ozora wa The gigantic skies Ume no nioi ni Are being enshrouded in Kasumitsutsu The odor of plums; Kumori mo hatenu There is no end to these clouds Haru no yo tsuki For the moon of the spring night.8 The association is thus not only visual but also poetic. Obviously, the multi-hued lm of this episode, together with the next one, suggests that they represent design poems in the sequence.

The Peach Orchard

The episode of The Peach Orchard features the Dolls Festival, also called the Festival of Peach Blossoms (momo no sekku). The main character is played by another child actor, a little older than the boy in the previous episode, indicating progress in time. The boy (another Kurosawa surrogate) sees a mysterious girl

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in his house. She is the spirit of a peach tree. He follows her to a terraced hill, where he encounters adult spirits of peach trees in costumes associated with the Dolls Festival. The spirits accuse him of cutting down the peach orchard, but the boy protests and they resolve the misunderstanding. The spirits dance for him in appreciation and, at the climactic moment of their dance, they reveal their true forms as peach trees. The hill (and screen) are covered with majestic owering peaches and uttering petals, a visual association carried over from the previous episode. This superb image of showery petals becomes, in turn, a connection to the drifting snow akes in the next episode. Again in Japanese poetics, the petals of peach blossoms (and cherry blossoms) are frequently compared to snow. Indeed, as the following poem in Kokinsh u shows, it is a common poetic device to liken (mitateru) owers to snow: haru tateba hana to ya miramu shirayuki no kakareru eda ni uguisu no naku now that spring has come, does he mistake them for owers the warbler singing among branches deep-laden with mounds of snowy white akes?9

Thus, through poetic association as well as visual association, the drifting petals, which looked like snow akes in The Peach Orchard, are transformed into showering snow in the ensuing episode, The Blizzard.

The Blizzard
As the lm progresses from the second sequence to the third, time also progresses for the main character. He is now a grown-up man. This Kurosawa surrogate, played by Akira Terao, is leading a team of four mountain climbers trapped in a snowstorm an association carried over from the imagery of drifting petals. Supplanting the majestic hue of the previous two episodes, the screen in this episode is overwhelmingly monochromatic blue-black and white. This monochromatic screen stands out because of the previous two magnicently colored episodes, just as background poems and design poems in the classical Japanese sequence complement each other. With dark color in the background, the climbers faces tanned black and covered with snow are hardly recognizable; their clothes, which resemble Japanese soldiers tattered uniforms, look heavy on their bodies. The fantastic Dolby, a cutting-edge technology at that time, created the sound of the climbers heavy breathing and sluggish footsteps, emphasizing their mental and physical exhaustion. On the verge of collapse, the leaders fellow climbers soon succumb to the raging snowstorm. He, too, almost gives in when he sees a snow woman. According to Japanese folk belief, there is a snow woman who kills men trespassing in winter forests and mountains by breathing on them.10 The snow woman in the lm attempts to lure the Kurosawa surrogate to her nether land. But then, as does a snow woman in one Japanese folktale, she spares his life. As

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with her folk-tale counterpart, maybe she takes pity on him because he is so young and attractive.11 If this assumption is correct, the Kurosawa surrogate is a young adult at this time, quite possibly before the age when he goes to war; this will be his age in the ensuing fourth episode. With the departure of the snow maiden, the overwhelming snowstorm is gone and the whole team survives to go on. The visual and auditory image of the exhausted team their appearance and mental state is carried over to the next sequence through the depiction of the ghost soldiers with faces as pale as snow.

The Tunnel
The episode begins with a scene of a countryside where snow is visible on the distant mountain top, a reminder of the main characters experience in the previous sequence. Here the Kurosawa surrogate appears as an ofcer who has led the Third Platoon in World War II. Just as he survived the blizzard previously, he survives the war but, unlike the fellow climbers of the previous episode, his Third Platoon did not. The soldiers who died overseas come back to Japan through a tunnel to salute him; they are unaware that they are dead. The ghosts with their pale, deadly faces in dark soldiers uniforms, typied by Private Noguchi, are visually associated with the mountain climbers in the previous episode, exhausted in their dark blue clothes covered with snow. As lm critic Terrence Rafferty points out, the dominant color of this sequence is black (Rafferty 1994: 220). Dark color furthers the visual association with the preceding episode wherein the dominant color is blue, continuing the background pattern of the Blizzard. The visual association is strengthened by the auditory effect of the ominous sound of the soldiers footsteps it echoes the mountain climbers heavy footsteps in the snow; gasping air for survival, struggling through hellish experiences in jungle or blizzard. Conceptually, too, the fourth episode is a continuation of the Blizzard. The Kurosawa surrogate tells the ghost soldiers that they were all killed in action and persuades them to go back to the other world. At his command, a leader of the platoon ominously unsheathes his sword, holds it high in the air, and orders the ghosts to march back to the tunnel, to the other world.

Crows
In The Tunnel, the Third Platoon served Emperor Hirohito and died somewhere in Southeast Asia or in the South Pacic during World War II. Then they departed to the other world. In this episode, the Kurosawa surrogate who has come back from overseas departs to his other world an imaginary south of France in a van Gogh painting. The association here is spatial, yet imagery association is also noticeable. In the painting, van Gogh appears with his face covered with a bandage; he has cut his ear. The act of wounding the body is suggestive of the image of the sword held by the soldier in the previous episode.

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In Crows, the Kurosawa surrogate is in a museum, standing in front of van Goghs painting Wheat Field with Crows. He enters the picture, looking for van Gogh. They meet but, saying that he has so little time left to paint, van Gogh leaves. The Kurosawa surrogate tries to catch up with him but loses his way, and eventually returns to where he was at the beginning of the episode, in front of the painting in the museum. In contrast to the darkness of the preceding episodes, bright colors are dominant in this sequence. Complemented by the previous two monochromatic episodes, the multi-colored screen stands out, as do the design poems in the anthologies. A locomotive in this sequence may suggest the intrusion of modern technology into a seemingly peaceful village. The theme of modern technology invading nature continues until the end of the lm. But one of the most obvious connections that links this episode to the next is art specically, the inuence of Japanese woodblock prints on van Gogh. It is known that Japanese woodblock prints inuenced the Impressionists and the movements immediate successors, including Vincent van Gogh. In fact, during his days in Paris, he was enamored by the prints, particularly Hokusais work (Nordenfalk 1953: 122).12 One of the best-known works by Hokusai (1797 1858), or for that matter Japanese woodblock prints in general, is the Hokusai series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Among them A Mild Breeze on a Fine Day (known as The Red Fuji ), Thunderstorm below the Mountain and The Great Wave off Kanagawa are particularly famous and are considered the three greatest (Nagata 1999: 42). The views of Mount Fuji, the holy mountain, must have been appealing to van Gogh. He writes to his brother Theo that he should be sure to take the 300 Hokusai views of the holy mountain (Van Gogh 1959: 611). In fact, van Gogh painted a picture of Papa Tanguy, a color dealer the mild old man [Tanguy] has a picture of the re-belching Mount Fuji above his head, symbolizing his married life (Nordenfalk 1953: 121). Van Goghs Mount Fuji probably came from the image of the Red Fuji.

Mount Fuji in Red

This episode begins with the image of Red Fuji. Mount Fuji erupts along with or possibly because of the explosion of six nearby nuclear power plants. Contrary to the assurance of the authorities, nuclear technology has failed.13 In front of the explosions of Mount Fuji and the nuclear plants, the Japanese people are running to and fro in panic.14 But there is no escape. Chronologically, this episode is a natural progression from The Tunnel because nuclear technology in Japan developed after the war. Nuclear destruction of Japan is wrought by failing nuclear power plants that emit copious multicolored radioactive clouds. In the episode, a scientist explains that the red cloud is plutonium-239, which causes cancer, the yellow one is strontium-90, which causes leukemia and the purple one is cesium-137, which causes mutations and monstrosities. The Kurosawa surrogate

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frantically waves his jacket, trying to chase away the clouds. The episode ends with a screen covered by the colored radioactive clouds. Through visual association, the deadly clouds appear as gloomy clouds in hell in the next sequence.

The Weeping Demon

This episode, which begins with ominous white clouds drifting on the bleak ground, presents the results of the nuclear disaster in the previous sequence. Thus it further emphasizes the themes of human folly and/or modern technology. Now the earth is devastated: a hellish place where the purple clouds in the previous sequence caused mutations and monstrosities giant dandelions and human survivors with demon-like horns on their heads.15 These demons wail over the pain coming from their horns which, as in Dantes Inferno, makes their existence all the more hellish. Prince (1999: 314) considers The Weeping Demon the weakest segment in the lm. From the perspective of the lms Japanese elements, however, this segment is very interesting, for it is replete with Japanese societal phenomena and folk tradition. Demons with horns on their scalps are called oni.16 Oni are monstrous, cannibalistic, supernatural creatures who reside in hells abyss to terrify wicked mortals. Likewise, the oni in the Weeping Demon gather at a bleak hellish place with blood-colored ponds the landscape resembles a Japanese hell painting scroll of the medieval period. The great difference between these two portrayals is that in the hell scroll painting demons punish humans they are the inictors. In the lm, however, the demons are both the inictors and the recipients of suffering. The demon horns symbolize the hierarchical order of Japan in the lm. According to Nakane Chie, Japan is a vertical society, where vertical relationships such as seniorjunior rankings are strong and strictly prescribed (Nakane 1970). People in lower social ranks work for (and obey the orders of) those in the higher echelons. In return, the senior members advise and take care of the junior members. Even after becoming a demon, Kurosawas one-horned demon laments (as a voice of Kurosawas persona) that there is still a hierarchy: the more horns a demon has, the more powerful it is. In a realm where demons eat each other, the weak, one-horned demon serves as a food source for stronger demons. The dark-colored scenes stand out in contrast to the previous episodes of bright colors. As the oni chases the Kurosawa surrogate away from this bleak place, the sequence is rushed forward to the nal episode a place the opposite of hell.

Village of the Watermills

Conceptually, the notion of hell is associated with heaven, or paradise. In stark contrast to the previous episode, the last episode, Village of the Watermills,

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portrays a paradisiacal place: a village where modern technology has not invaded peoples lives and they live in harmony with nature. The sound of a brook and scenes of beautiful hues of grass and owers and pastoral watermills visually and aurally present an idyllic place. The episode ends with a celebratory funeral procession celebratory because, as a 103-year-old man (played by Chishu Ryu) in the lm says, a funeral is essentially happy: its good to work hard, and live long and be thanked. The old man, the voice of Kurosawa himself, speaks of an ideal life for humans. Villagers make the merry sounds of a Japanese funeral procession and everyone looks happy, dancing and wearing owers. The music is upbeat, betting a nale. The lm ends with the end of a well-lived life.

Progression
How Dreams follows the principles of association and progression may become clearer when the work is compared to other seemingly similar short lms such as The New York Stories. The New York Stories consists of three stories Life Lessons directed by Martin Scorsese, Life without Zoe by Francis Ford Coppola and Oedipus Wrecks by Woody Allen. In Life Lessons, a middle-aged artist creates paintings helped by loud music and the attractive young assistant with whom he is obsessed. Life without Zoe depicts a rich 12-year-old girl helping her separated parents to reconcile. Oedipus Wrecks depicts a 50-year-old lawyers life made complex by his mothers existence. As the title explicates, they all happen in New York and were directed by New York directors. This obvious commonality puts these three dramas together, just as each story of Dreams is linked through the format of a dream. Similar to Dreams, some associations other than the location are perceived between the short movies. For example, Life Lessons portrays the painter, and the ensuing Life without Zoe starts with Zoes act of painting. The ending of Life without Zoe presents a large image of the Pantheon in Greece, which is directly connected to the title of the following lm, Oedipus Wrecks (a Greek connection through Freudian psychology). Moreover, the mother looming from a New York sky reminds one of a cinematic presentation of the Greek god Zeus. The twist of Oedipus Wrecks is that it is not Zeus but the mother who dominates the sky and the pantheon of characters, foremost among them her son. Thus, associations in New York Stories are similar to those in Dreams. Yet, unlike Dreams, New York Stories does not present progression. The three stories, each representative of a different aspect of life in New York, are like a kaleidoscope, portraying different lives, images and imaginings of New York. Unlike a short eeting dream in Dreams, each narrative of New York Stories is self-contained; the work ends nicely, almost as it starts. For example, in Life Lessons one can predict that the painter will be going through the same obsession with a young attractive assistant he has found at the end. In terms of cinematography, too, the lm starts with iris-in (a round, moving screen that can open to begin a scene), through which

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the audience peeks at the painters life, and ends with the same (a round, moving screen that can close down to end a scene) and iris-out. The second lm starts with a silver ute happily played by Zoes father and ends with the same happy ute play. Oedipus Wrecks starts with the lawyers anxiety about his mother and ends with the same perpetual troubles. As such, there is a connection but no progression from one lm to the other. Even if there were some sense of progression, the small number of the stories in New York Stories inhibits the signicance of the principle of progression. Terrence Rafferty comments that [i]f Dreams had ended there [the fourth episode] . . . it might have seemed a masterpiece; it would have seemed more dreamlike, too. But the world isnt perfect, and neither is Kurosawa. Forget about the feeble sermonizing of the second half [the fth through the eighth episodes] (Rafferty 1994: 221). Yet, the last four episodes are necessary to make a sequential tapestry of the lm. Further, it should be noted that the end is graphically and editorially connected to the beginning through the processions the upbeat funeral procession and the deliberate, slow foxes wedding procession in the rst episode. Thus, while the episodes of the lm progress in time, at the end the sequence comes back to the beginning, making the lm cyclical. Indeed, the second half of the lm is indispensable to make an artistically integrated whole. This cyclical wholeness is an application of yet another principle of Japanese art called jo-ha-ky u.17

, progression of relative tempo Jo-ha-kyu

Jo-ha-ky u is a three-phased progression of relative tempos which has bearing on every level of the traditional art of noh drama. Jo literally means preface, characterized by a dignied, stately rhythm and mood, and denotes the introduction. Ha means break, indicating the transition from the jo phase to the development of the play. As the play progresses, the tempos become correspondingly more elaborate. Ky u means fast, signifying a fast nish in a brisk rhythm, but it is not the true nale, for the jo-ha-ky u progression is cyclical: the brisk rhythm of the last scene slows at the very end, connecting by tempo with jo. Because this progression controls every level of a noh performance, jo-ha-ky u is often referred to as a grammar of the art form (Nogami 1930: 144) and is credited with building the intensity characteristic of a noh performance. Zeami (13631443), the eminent noh performer, playwright and theorist, originally applied the jo-ha-ky u progression to a single days program. There are ve types of plays categorized according to the role of the lead actor (shite). Sequentially, these categories are plays which focus respectively on gods, warriors, women, mad persons and demons. The ve categories of plays are presented in a single days program, i.e. plays about gods, then warriors, women, mad persons and, nally, demons. Zeami assigned the rst play to the jo phase, the next three to ha and the nal play to ky u (Quinn 1993: 59).18 As with the noh program, Dreams begins with a deliberate jo rhythm, revealed by its central focus, the foxes wedding procession. Likewise, the highly stylized dance

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of the spirits of peach trees is performed in a stately rhythm. Foxes and spirits of peach trees are not gods, but the foxes wedding is an auspicious occasion. The Dolls Festival, in which people wish good health and fortune for girls, is a celebration. Corresponding to the beginning of the ha phase, The Blizzard depicts warrior-like characters who struggle for survival. Within the episode, the mountain climbers are replaced by the surreal beauty of the snow woman. Her gestures and tone, and the atmosphere she brings into the episode, are replete with lyricism, which exemplies the noh woman plays. With the progressive sequences in the ha phase, the tempo becomes more elaborate, characterized by the footsteps of the soldiers and the sounds of locomotives in the fourth and fth sequences. Like a locomotive, van Goghs mental state also accelerates, as he feels pressured to create art in his limited remaining life. In the noh program, the ha phase ends with mad persons plays. Van Gogh, who lost his sanity, ts well into this category. The ensuing episode, Mount Fuji in Red, may also t in this category of mad persons play, in that people are literally running in crazed panic, a response to nuclear disaster that accelerates the rhythm of the lm. The fth and last category, which corresponds to ky u, is a demons play. As the title, The Weeping Demon, suggests, the seventh episode features demons. The last scene, where the demon chases the Kurosawa surrogate, is intense and forces the Kurosawa surrogate into the nal episode, where he encounters the upbeat funeral procession. As the joha-ky u cycle dictates, that procession recalls the beginning of the lm, making a complete cycle. Andrew Gerstle calls the pattern of auspicious beginning, journey through the agonies of hell, and return to the auspicious ending a cyclical journey, and states that the concept of a cyclical movement, a central tenet in Buddhism, is fundamental in the literature and drama of Japan (Gerstle 1986: 5). Indeed, Kurosawas Dreams seems to t this description perfectly.

Shite (lead actor) vs. waki (secondary actor)

The jo-ha-ky u principle works not only within a single days program (of several plays), but also within a single play. Zeami considered the jo-ha-ky u essential in the creation of mugen noh (dream noh) plays,19 which are widely regarded by both scholars and audiences as the zenith of noh drama. In Sand o (The three ways, 1423), Zeami applied jo-ha-ky u to the composition of the play. He divided the structure of one play into ve dan or units: To start with, there are ve dan in the jo-ha-ky u progression. Jo forms one dan; ha, three dan; ky o, one dan. The waki [supporting actor] enters, and the portion from his recitative, and introductory chant, through the long segment of chant, constitutes one dan. Ha begins here. Now the shite [lead actor] enters, and the portion from his entry chant, through the long segment of chant forms one dan. After that, the prose exchange, with the waki and the long segment of choral

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music, form one dan. After that, one section of vocal music, whether the kuse section, or plain chant, forms one dan. Ky u begins here. A formal dance, or vigorous movements, and the hayaby oshi match or the kiriby oshi match, form one dan. (Hisamatsu and Nishio 1961: 471)20 As described above, in a mugen noh, the waki (supporting actor) always appears rst in the jo unit. The waki is usually a traveler, often a priest. Then at the beginning of the ha unit, the shite (lead actor) appears, usually in the guise of a common villager. Typically, the traveling priest meets the villager and requests to hear his life story, asking some questions. Then the shite reveals his true identity a god, warrior, heroine, mad person or demon who expresses his innermost feelings. In the nal ky u unit, the shite performs a dance or other similar vigorous movement. The application of jo-ha-ky u to each episode of Dreams is clearly conceivable, especially in regard to the roles of shite and waki, the two essential characters of noh. For the purpose of this article, the role of waki is particularly important. The waki stands, literally, between the audience and the shite and performs a priestly function by asking questions for the audience and serving as a conduit for the words and emotions of the shite (Yasuda 1989: 3). In Kurosawas Dreams, which interestingly has the same dream format as mugen noh, the Kurosawa surrogate plays a role similar to that of waki. He always appears rst in the scene, then he meets someone, often a supernatural being. He asks questions, and the character responds by expressing his/her unfullled desires, emotions or explaining an event in the episode. For example, in The Peach Orchard, a boy the Kurosawa surrogate appears rst on the screen. This is the jo phase. He then meets a mysterious girl, the beginning of the ha unit. The boys curiosity is aroused, and he follows her, then meets a group of dolls, the spirits of the peach orchard. There is an exchange of dialogue between the boy and spirits. The spirits express their emotions, followed by a stately dance in the ky u phase. Similarly, the Weeping Demon begins ominously, at a slow pace in a devastated landscape, where the waki Kurosawa surrogate appears. He meets a demon the beginning of the ha phase. He inquires about the gigantic dandelions and a horn on the demons head. In response, the demon explains what happened and expresses his disgusted feelings about his fellow demons and human folly. The nal scene ends with the dramatic ight of the surrogate in ky u mode. Another example might be The Village of the Watermills, in which the Kurosawa surrogate is again a traveler. In the introductory phase of jo, he strolls into an idyllic village where he meets an old man the beginning of the ha unit. This old man is not literally a supernatural being, but he is unnaturally old and surreal-looking (his face resembles an okina mask of noh). The traveler (Kurosawa) is curious about the village and their customs. Urged on by the traveler, the old

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man explains the customs of the village and reveals his opinion about the natural way of life. The ending is an upbeat celebratory procession the ky u phase. In the lm, the waki Kurosawa surrogate functions to elicit the voice of the director, Kurosawa, in the guise of the shite. If the waki is a Kurosawa surrogate, then the shite is the voice of Kurosawas persona.

Conclusion
In the course of this article, I have attempted to show that a series of principles of classical Japanese literature and art is woven into Dreams. These are the principles of progression and association in classical poetry; the jo-ha-ky u principle, both within individual episodes and the whole lm, is another. The roles of shite and waki reect the directors indebtedness to Japanese performing art. Kurosawa made full use of noh techniques in some of his previous lms, notably The Throne of Blood and Ran.21 Techniques and principles of traditional Japanese art were vigorously and explicitly utilized to experiment with and maximize the art of modern cinematography. By comparison, in Dreams the principles of traditional Japanese literature and performing art are more subtle and restrained. Their inclusion is so subtle that they may easily be unrecognized. Yet they are at the heart of the lm. The quiet waves of Japanese aesthetic principles provide a counterpoint to the power of Kurosawas voice in his shite persona. Importantly, Dreams reveals how the principles of classical literature and traditional performing arts of Japan are remarkably alive in modern-day media. Miami University, Ohio

Acknowledgements
This is an expanded version of a paper delivered at the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs at Illinois State University, 10 October 2003. I am grateful to Professor Louis G. Perez and Professor Roger K. Thomas for their kind attention, and I thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

Notes
1. For an informative discussion of the folkloric elements in Dreams, see Otis (1997: 427). 2. It is interesting to contrast Kurosawa with Ozu, who is considered the most Japanese of Japanese lm-makers (Galbraith 1996: 56). Ozu knew Western lms well, and, as David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (1997) state, Ozu did not conform to the Hollywood approach continuity editing instead using such techniques as donden (360-degree layout of space). His famous camera angle, the low-angle shot (or technically, low camera shot), was for the sake of artistic

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3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

composition rather than realism (Thompson 1988: 333). Ozu also received foreign prizes, but his art would not be fully recognized in the West until some ten years after his death (Burch 1979: 154). David Bordwell writes on Ozus Japaneseness as follows: Critics who see Ozu as preserving Japanese tradition in the face of modernization might seem to have strong evidence in Late Spring. No other Ozu lm is so saturated with the iconography of a certain Japaneseness the tea ceremony, Zen gardens, temples, noh drama, the landscape around Kyoto, the seasonal cycle referred to in the title. Yet this iconography is used for a specic ideological purpose: to show that Japanese tradition can be reconciled with the new liberalism of the Occupation era (Bordwell 1988: 307). What makes Ozu distinctively Japanese is perhaps, as critics including Richie, Burch and Galbraith comment, that he strove for a detailed, sensitive portrayal of the daily lives of average or poor people shomin geki (dramas about common people), the only genre genuinely descriptive of contemporary Japanese life, and [he] sought a higher realism, which led to the elimination of plot for its own sake and to the development of the discursive, chronicle style, the simple recording of events (Anderson and Richie 1982: 181). Through the good ofces of George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg, Dreams was funded by Warner Brothers. Yoshimoto writes that the decline of the lm industry in the 1960s and 1970s hit Kurosawa particularly hard. He explains that the nancially troubled lm companies were no longer willing to take the risk of producing Kurosawas ever more expensive projects after Red Beard . . . [H]is special status as the most acclaimed Japanese director abroad (sekai no Kurosawa) further isolated him within the Japanese lm industry (Yoshimoto 2000: 3345). Kurosawa was tired of being called Western by critics both at home and abroad claiming: I havent read one review from abroad that hasnt read false meanings into my pictures (Anderson and Richie 1982: 3767). In the Muromachi period (13361573), jo-ha-ky u was adopted into various performing arts as a principle of sequential progression. Noh was no exception. For the original poem, see Minemura (1995: 318). Translated by Donald M. Richardson (2000: 12). For the original poem, see Minemura (1995: 33). Authored by Monk Sosei; translation by Helen Craig McCullough (1985: 15). For the original poem, see Ozawa and Matsuda (1994: 32). For Snow Woman, see Lafcadio Hearns Yuki-onna, in Kwaidan: Stories & Studies of Strange Things; also Masaki Kobayashis Yukionna, in Kwaidan (VHS). A possible origin of the Snow Woman may have been to explain death by hypothermia, or we might perhaps attribute her to the awe that heavy snowfalls inspired in people. Lafcadio Hearns Snow Woman says to Minokichi, I cannot help feeling some pity for you, because you are so young . . . You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now (Hearn 1904: 113). Van Gogh writes to his Brother Theo: that doesnt mean that if I had a single day to see Paris again, I should not call at Bings to see those very Hokusais and other drawings of the great period (van Gogh 1959: 613). Kurosawa rst directly treated the implications of atomic bombs with the lm, Record of a Living Being (Ikimono no Kiroku, 1955). It should be noted that Ishiro Honda, the director of Gojira (1954), which features a nuclear monster, did the special effects for this panic scene. Goodwin notes that dandelions have grown taller than a human being and they appear as a grotesque distortion of the passionate intensity of the sunowers in the famous van Gogh canvas, seen in episode ve (Goodwin 1994b: 136). For the features and transformation of oni, see Reider (2003: 13357). For analysis of jo-ha-ky u in Kurosawas Throne of Blood, see Goodwin (1994a: 1856).

Noriko T. Reider
18. The table below provides an outline of the inter-play progression of jo-ha-ky u: No. 1 2 3 4 5 jo-ha-kyu jo ha 1 ha 2 ha 3 ky u sequence Component god plays warrior plays women plays mad persons plays demon plays

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19. In structural terms, there are basically two types of noh. One is called genzai noh (living noh) in which the shite, the lead actor, is a living person and the drama progresses chronologically. The other type is mugen noh (dream noh), where the shite is a ghost or the embodiment of a spirit. In mugen noh the drama progresses to bear the soul of the shite without much regard for chronological order. There are hybrid dramas of genzai noh and mugen noh, but for all types of noh, the jo-ha-ky u principle applies. 20. Translation by Quinn (1993: 612). 21. See Richie (1996: 11718, 217), McDonald (1991: 2432), Goodwin (1994a: 18491, 2079) and Prince (1999: 1447).

References
Allen, Woody, Coppola, Francis Ford and Martin Scorsese (1989) New York Stories, DVD, California: Buena Vista Home Entertainment. Anderson, Joseph L. and Richie, Donald (1982) The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bordwell, David (1988) Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. and Thompson, Kristin (1997) Film Art, 6th edn, New York: McGraw-Hill. Burch, No el (1979) To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Galbraith, Stuart (1996) The Japanese Filmography: A Complete Reference to 209 Filmmakers and the over 1250 Films Released in the United States, 1900 through 1994. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Gerstle, Andrew C. (1986) Circles of Fantasy: Convention in the Plays of Chikamatsu, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goodwin, James (1994a) Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. (1994b) Perspectives on Akira Kurosawa, New York: G. K. Hall. Hearn, Lafcadio (1904) Yuki-onna, in Kwaidan: Stories & Studies of Strange Things, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifin, pp. 11118. Hisamatsu Senichi and Nishio Minoru (eds) (1961) Karon-sh u, N gakuron-sh u, Vol. 65 of Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Kobayashi, Masaki (1965) Kwaidan, Part 1, VHS, Tokyo: Toho. Konishi Jinichi (1958) Association and progression: principles of integration in anthologies and sequences of Japanese court poetry, A.D. 901350, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 21(December): 67127. (1986) History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 2, The Early Middle Ages, trans. Aileen Gatten, ed. Earl Miner, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (1991) History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 3, The High Middle Ages, trans. Aileen Gatten, ed. Earl Miner, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Kurosawa, Akira (1990) Dreams, DVD, California: Warner Brothers. McCullough, Helen C. (1985) Kokin Wakash u: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. McDonald, Keiko (1991) The Noh conventions in The Throne of Blood and Ran, in Kevin K. W. Chang (ed.) Kurosawa: Perceptions on Life: An Anthology of Essays, Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, pp. 2432. Minemura, Fumito (ed.) (1995) Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zensh u, Vol. 43, Shin kokin Wakash u, Tokyo: Shogakukan. Nagata, Seiji (1999) Hokusai: Genius of the Japanese Ukiyo-e, Tokyo: Kodansha International. Nakane, Chie (1970) Japanese Society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Nogami, Toyoichiro (1930) N o: kenky u to hakken, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Nordenfalk, Carl (1953) The Life and Work of Van Gogh, trans. Lawrence Wolf, London: Elek. Otis, Paul (1997) Japanese folklore and Kurosawas Dreams, Education about Asia 2(spring): 427. Ozawa Masao and Matsuda Shigeho (eds) (1994) Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zensh u, Vol. 11, Kokin wakash u, Tokyo: Shogakukan. Prince, Stephen (1999) The Warriors Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reider, N. T. (2003) Transformation of Oni : from the frightening and diabolic to the sexy and cute, Asian Folklore Studies 62(1): 13357. Richardson, Donald M. (trans.) (2000) A New Collection of Japanese Poems Past and Present: Shin kokin wakash u, Virginia: Donald M. Richardson: Richie, Donald (1996) The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Quinn, Shelly F. (1993) How to write a noh play: Zeamis Sand o, Monumenta Nipponica 48(1): 5388. Rafferty, Terrence (1994) Review of Dreams, in James Goodwin (ed.) Perspectives on Akira Kurosawa, New York: G. K. Hall, pp. 21821. Thompson, Kristin (1988) Late Spring and Ozus unreasonable style, in Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Van Gogh, Vincent (1959) Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Vol. 2, Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society. Yasuda, Kenneth (1989) Masterworks of the N o Theater, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro (2000) Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Noriko T. Reider is Associate Professor at Miami University, Ohio. Her specialty is Japanese literature of the supernatural, and her publications include Tales of the Supernatural in Early Modern Japan: Kaidan, Akinari, Ugetsu monogatari (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002) and several peer-reviewed articles. Currently she is working on a monograph on Japanese oni (demons/ogres). Her e-mail address is reidernt@muohio.edu.