Akira Kurosawa’s complex treatment of the two lead characters in Drunken Angel (1948), Doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura) and gangster Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune), is detailed, thoughtful and effective portrayal of the post-war Tokyo devastated by the perils of the ‘useless’ war. At first, I didn’t know this was Toshiro’s debut film. Even didn’t know this was first film of the lead duo together. But Takashi’s fatherlike character of Kambei in The Seven Samurai (1954) was in my mind even while watching this film. (Seven Samurai was my first Kurosawa film.) Toshiro foreshadows Kikuchiyo in this film. “Matsunaga is a violent hoodlum humanized by his fear of death, which lies just underneath the swaggering surface.” However, I’m familiar with the complicated archetype (both Matsunaga and the doctor were based on real-life people). It is but Dr Sanada, whose character is too complex to comprehend without a detailed analysis and study of the socio-political background of his ‘time’.

‘Yakuza honour’ was something greek to me, something Masaki Kobayashi effectively dissected, albeit in case of the daimyos (feudal lords) who kept Samurai those days, in Seppuko (1962). But its origin and the social/political connections continuing to modern day Japan was something I’d not anticipated to exist even today! Matsunaga, imperious at first, is reduced to a marionette after his old boss Okada (Reizaburo Yamamoto) shows up from the prison. Having already lost his ‘face’ in his ‘own’ turf after Okada reclaims his area and position, Matsunaga even loses his physical strength to deadly tuberculosis. But only after he is exposed to the bitter reality of being cheated, the realisation of being ‘exploited’ by the Yakuza godfathers (prototype of feudal lords?), that he feels ‘defeated’. And the very realisation proves fatal.

Dr Sanada, the scalpel-tongued old man, is a ‘drunken angel’. He is the rarity who tried to heal Matsunaga. No wonder Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uegusa were at odds before they came up with the character (which took five days to ‘begin’). Kurosawa writes in Something Like an Autobiography, “In order to bring his (Matsunaga’s) personality into high relief, I decided to pit another character against him. At first I thought I would make this antagonist a young humanist doctor who was just setting up his practice in the area. But no matter how hard Uekusa and I worked at it, we couldn’t bring this idealized doctor to life — he was so perfect that he had no vitality. The gangster figure, on the other hand, had become almost real enough to breathe; his every move reeked of flesh and blood. This immediacy arose from the fact that he was based on a real-life model, whom Uekusa was meeting with regularly. Uekusa was, in fact, becoming so immersed in the gangsters’ way of life, so absorbed in and sympathetic toward the underworld, that he and I later quarreled over it.

As background to the characterizations, we decided to create an unsightly drainage pond where people threw their garbage. It became the symbol of the disease that was eating away at the whole neighborhood, and it grew clearer day by day in our minds. We despaired all the more that our second protagonist, the young physician setting up his practice, remained a lifeless marionette and refused to move of his own accord. Every day Uekusa and I sat glaring at each other, surrounded by piles of crumpled and torn paper with scribbles on it. I was beginning to think we would never find a way out; I was even thinking of scrapping the whole project.”

But the certain arrogant alcoholic doctor whom they met in a slum in the port city of Yokohama is for sure a good man. He wins a few battles, although he has lost many. His cynicism (“Once a beast, always a beast. You can never change anyone.”) is markedly the product of his own failures. Perhaps, the post-war Japan, the ‘pointless sacrifices of his people’, loss of humanity, absence of rationality- all of these factors should be taken into account to explain his attitude to life and people around him. It isn’t clear if he chose to live surrounded by ‘a bunch scum, rotten, maggot-infested bacteria’, perhaps, to help other people get out of the filthy sump of crime. But his ‘rational approach’ to life ‘failed’ to save Matsunaga. (Is it this sacrifice that he regards ‘pointless’ now? “Human sacrifice has gone out of style.”) A man like him can only be more frustrated by failures like this. Perhaps, this can explain his inebriation, his ‘raw humanity’ and ‘bitterly sarcastic’ approach to reality. The old dog can’t learn new tricks. But his ‘failure’ is more desirable than any victory.

When Okada threatens to use violence to get back his former mistress, Miyo, now under Dr Sanada’s refuge, Matsunaga, despite his miserable failing human condition, tries to defend his ‘angels’. Drunken AngelBut Sanada is sick of the feudal tradition- of serving like slaves- in false notions of ‘Yakuza honour’ (he calls it a thing of myth). After all his faith in the Yakuza code of honour is ‘blown to bits’, a disillusioned Matsunaga unsuccessfully tries to kill Okada despite high chances of his failure. But his tragic end is pitiful, and in a way, ‘dignified’. He doesn’t make another ‘pointless sacrifice’ in order to protect Miyo, and perhaps the doctor too, from the hoodlums (he’s also trying to save his own ‘face’). He shows the human sacrifice hasn’t completely gone out of style. At last, he frees himself from the stinking sump where he was caught in like the human-miniature on the surface of the sump but in a self-destructive way. But what else does a man have besides his ‘face’?

Kurosawa has treated a wide range of female characters. One is deceitful femme fatale (Nanae- Michiyo Kogure), other loyal (Miyo- Chieko Nakakita) while the young schoolgirl is full of optimism towards life. Then there is an admirable lover. Although Kurosawa talks about gender equality, it has always remained an elusive idea. Perhaps, it will always remain the same. The very notion of equality is absurd, an unattainable ideal that I’m also foolishly trying to achieve. The ‘Drunken Angel’ (Takashi) shines throughout the film. But I need more time before I can ‘dissect’ Toshiro. Maybe, some other day.

— March 10, 08