and exhibition was achieved … [T]he Hollywood-style system was transplanted to Japan almost completely.” Before long, observers would note that Toho had also “[overwhelmed] other companies in terms of film technology … [it] imported new filmmaking equipment from America four or five years [earlier].”12
For Honda and Kurosawa, the excitement of working at the upstart new studio was tempered by long hours and a meager salary of ¥28 per month.13 Assistant directors were paid less than office workers because, with location pay and other incentives, it was possible to earn much more, though it rarely worked out that way. Their social life revolved around drinking, and if Yama-san wasn’t buying, they drank on credit. Often there was no cash in their pay envelopes, only receipts for vouchers redeemed at the studio commissary and IOUs collected by local bars and clothing stores. On payday, they were already broke.
The dormitory where Honda roomed with Kurosawa had a pool table, an organ, and other diversions. When Honda, Kurosawa, and their friends weren’t hitting the bars, they would congregate there, often in Kurosawa’s little room, drinking and discussing art and cinema. This group included Sojiro Motoki, a future producer who would play an important part in the careers of both Honda and Kurosawa, and a pretty editor’s assistant named Kimi Yamazaki.
Kimi was six years younger than Honda, born January 6, 1917, in Mizukaido, Ibaraki Prefecture, the youngest of eight children. She was different from other women her age; she could hold her own in serious film discussions with the boys and hold her liquor when the beer and sake were poured. Kimi was self-confident and assertive, a modern Japanese woman intent on being more than an office lady or salesclerk, the typical woman’s jobs then.
It was Morocco, the film that Honda had spent so much time studying, that compelled Kimi to join the industry. She worked briefly for a small newsreel outfit, then passed Toho’s entrance exam and became assistant to Koichi Iwashita, one of Japanese cinema’s most respected editors. One day, Honda stopped by the editing room to say hello, and Iwashita introduced the young assistant director to his new employee. Sparks didn’t fly right away, though. “I still remember how he was wearing this weird looking suit,” Kimi recalled. “He was unfashionable, so unpolished, just back from the war. Compared to guys like Kuro-san then, he was hardly dashing.”
After she was promoted to the position of “script girl,” Kimi worked late hours on movie sets. Commuting from her parents’ home was impractical, so she moved into the dorm and became Kurosawa and Honda’s neighbor. The boys grew so accustomed to her presence that if she didn’t show up for their nightly klatch, one of them would rap on her door. One night, Kimi begged off with a severe headache, and Honda went to fetch some medicine. “This was the first time I thought, ‘Wow, he is such a nice guy.’ But it wasn’t like I was head over heels … As time passed, I got to know everyone [in the dormitory]…. But I think I was most attracted to his warmth, his heart.”
Honda immersed himself in his job, working on more than a dozen films between 1937 and 1939 and slowly ascending the ladder. Though Yamamoto was his primary teacher, he also apprenticed under other prominent studio directors, studying their work styles and habits. Honda was an assistant director on Humanity and Paper Balloons (Ninjo kami fusen, 1937), an acclaimed early jidai-geki and the last film by director Sadao Yamanaka, a fellow army recruit who would die as a soldier in China the following year. Honda also worked for the jidai-geki specialist Eisuke Takizawa. Sometimes, Honda would visit the set of a Mikio Naruse production to observe the celebrated director at work, which led Naruse to tap Honda as third assistant on two acclaimed early pictures, Avalanche (Nadare, 1937) and Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro (Tsuruhachi Tsurujiro, 1938).
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Summer 1937: Honda and Senkichi Taniguchi, having been there from the founding days of PCL, were now the two longest tenured assistant directors on the lot. Taniguchi had been Yamamoto’s chief assistant for about a year, but he now was transferred to a front office job, using his knowledge of production to help curb expenditures. Needing a new chief assistant, Yamamoto boldly promoted Kurosawa, a third assistant director with only about a year on the job, catapulting him over Honda and others with more experience. Beginning with the drama The Beautiful Hawk (Utsukushiki taka, 1937), Kurosawa was Yamamoto’s right-hand man, a role he would thrive in.14
Honda, meanwhile, continued his Sisyphean progress and was finally promoted to first assistant director, a bit ironically, on Takeshi Sato’s Chocolate and Soldiers (Chocolate to heitai, 1938). An early example of the war propaganda films supported by the government, it told the story of a small-town man drafted and sent to China, leaving behind his wife and child.15
“[When] I came back from the front, everyone’s position had changed,” Honda said. “I was the second or third assistant director for the longest time. But after all, I think it worked out better for me.” He was now among the most experienced first assistants on the lot. “I just wanted to be by the camera. That is what I liked.”16
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As illustrated by his friendships, Honda gravitated toward people much different from himself, and this seems to explain his unusual bond with Kimi. “She was very energetic, and her personality could be completely different from me,” he once remarked. “Maybe that is why we got along so well.”17 Friends thought they were mismatched; Kurosawa called them “total opposites.”
The two were spending more and more time together. Kimi earned more than Honda did, so when they went out, she would often buy the drinks. Though they didn’t work on the same film often and seldom saw one another during the day, they walked to the studio together each morning and joined their regular crowd in the evening. This routine had continued for more than a year when, one morning, Honda and Kimi were standing on the Fujimi Bridge, a small pedestrian overpass in Seijo that, on cloudless days, offered breathtaking views of Mount Fuji and the Tanzawa Mountains to the west. Honda asked, matter-of-factly, “Want to get married with me?”
“Everybody was just friends back then,” Kimi said. “I had no idea he viewed me as more than just that. I was so surprised when he asked me. But I recall feeling really warm when I was with him, and I never got sick of being around him. I wondered what he saw in me. I was pretty naïve, simple, and innocent. So I said, ‘Sure, OK.’ Just like that.”
In proposing, Honda was breaking with tradition once again. The great majority of marriages were customarily arranged by a go-between, acting on the parents’ behalf, who screened prospective partners for compatibility based on family reputation, income, profession, education, and other factors.18 Those who deigned to choose a spouse against their parents’ wishes might be shunned. Kimi’s mother, Kin Yamazaki, supported the couple’s engagement but, perhaps unsurprisingly, her father was strongly opposed. Heishichi Yamazaki was a wealthy and conservative landowner in Ibaraki, north of Tokyo; it would be unacceptable for his daughter to marry a country boy with unclear prospects for gainful employment in a new, unproven industry. Kimi stood firm on her wishes, and her father stood equally firm, responding simply, “Suit yourself.” With those words, Heishichi denied the couple the financial support they so desperately needed. Once Kimi quit her job, as was customary for new wives, the pair would have to survive on Honda’s meager salary. Honda’s more unconventional family, by contrast, congratulated the couple. Takamoto wrote to Kimi, “No matter what others say, believe in each other and live with confidence.”
Honda was twenty-seven years old, Kimi twenty-two. On their wedding day in March 1939, they filed papers at city hall, paid their respects at Meiji Shrine, and went home. It was so uneventful that, years later, neither one could recall the precise date. There was no ceremony, celebration, or honeymoon. With little money, the pair moved into a tiny, one-room apartment with a shared bathroom.
Before
