Stray Dog
Stray Dog portrays the struggle to create a viable postwar
social ethic and shows explicitly what is the personal cost of implementing
such an ethic. . .[It] takes as its subject postwar Japan and becomes a kind
of epic of national reconstruction. . .
Both Stray Dog and Drunken Angel clearly demonstrate
the difficulties Kurosawa's aesthetic project in response to postwar Japan.
The structure of each film is defined by contradictions between the imperatives
of characters like Sanada and Murakami and the demands of the social context
in which they are located. Their struggles against this context are ambivalent,
for they are as much a part of Matsunaga and Yusa, their darker selves. Herein
lies the power of the films: the characters and narratives are charged with
ambivalent cultural values that are sustained without resolution.
--Stephen Prince, The Warrior's Camera, p. 89-99.
The name of the criminal is rather unusual. . .His full name
is Yusa Shinjirô.
"Shinjirô" [新二郎] literally means a "new, second son" or "new,
second man." Yusa's first name, therefore, resonates with the film's important
motifs: the first character draws our attention to the newness of postwar
Japan and, by implication, to the question of historical continuity and discontinuity;
the last two characters belong to a chain of signifiers that posit a relationship
of double (二) between two(二)
male(郎) characters, Yusa and Murakami. If
we focus on the pronunciation, "Shinjirô" can also mean "believe,"
so that the first name becomes part of another important narrative motif,
the question of ethical standards and individual choice. The last name, "Yusa"
consists of two chinese characters, 遊 and 佐.
The first character means "to play," "to wander," or "to
float around," and the second signifies "to help." Thus, the
name "Yusa" suggests two opposite possibilites of action: to float
around without commiting onself to any constructive purpose (Yusa), or to
help others realize a better future (Murakami). . .
In Stray Dog, Yusa appears as a return of the repressed,
something many Japanese simply wanted to forget, and what the official discourse
tried to erase. Yusa must be repressed for Japanese to be able to believe
in the radical newness of postwar democratic Japan or to continue the incomplete
project of imperial Japan as if nothing had happened in the last few decades.
At the very end of the film, Sato urges Murakami to forget Yusa, but Murakami
is still reluctant to follow Sato's advice wholeheartedly. It is by concluding
the film with Murakami's hesitation that Kurosawa urges us to remember the
past and use memory as a moment of intervening in the present social condition.
Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Kurosawa, pp. 147-78.
Review by Gary Morris from:
Much of Kurosawa's inspiration came from American and European artistic forms.
Stray Dog (1950) was influenced by the work of Georges Simenon, and in
a curious
process, Kurosawa first wrote it as a novel and then adapted it into a film.
As in the
work of Simenon, Stray Dog is based on a real-life incident, and a seemingly
insignificant one: a thief steals a rookie policeman's gun, and the policeman
spends the
entire film trying to recover it. Kurosawa loads this small story with telling
incident,
expanding it into a superb mix of noir and neo-realism.
Critics have often remarked on Kurosawa's films as quests, and much of Stray
Dog is
taken up with the desperate attempts by Detective Murakami (Kurosawa stalwart
Toshiro Mifune) to retrieve his gun, which is being used to commit murder. Murakami
spends much of his time in literal frantic pursuit, chasing his quarry and accomplices
through the ragged streets of heat-drenched Occupied Tokyo. Like many a noir
hero,
Murakami is a good man drawn into a criminal demimonde, here the squalid world
of
postwar profiteering, corruption, and murder. And like these heroes, he has
an
unsettling link to that world in the form of his gun, which makes it impossible
for him
to return to normal life. Kurosawa uses his quest to explore a series of seedy
tableaux,
from opium dens to western-style grindhouses, and the social casualties that
populate
them. He even provides a classic doppleganger for Murakami in the form of the
thief;
much is made of their similar backgrounds and very different, but inextricably
joined,
fates.
Stray Dog was Kurosawa's tenth film and it showcases his ability to orchestrate
a
complex story without losing the viewer. In one alarming sequence, the thief's
girlfriend,
unhinged by Murakami's relentless pursuit of him, puts on a beautiful stolen
dress and
begins to dance in a circle with increasing frenzy, obviously in the midst of
a
breakdown. The eloquent unspoken question, a common one in neo-realism, is why
shouldn't an impoverished girl have a beautiful dress, by whatever means? In
a just
world, the film seems to be saying, this would be possible. But the world of
Stray Dog
is anything but just, and the viewer's experience of it parallels Murakami's
awakening.
This Christlike figure stands in for Kurosawa when he says sadly, "There
are no bad
people in the world, only bad environments."
Other Reviews:
An important scene about reconstructing the past and the impact of environment on creating criminals. The scene takes place at Detective Sato's house and below is a pretty accurate capturing of the subtitles. Note that a class handout will take a different approach to translation of the Japanese original:
While nostalgically remembering his own past, he urges Murakami to forget Yusa. There is a transition shot of the child’s little toy horse, then the camera pulls back from the empty bottles of rationed beer. Sato says how his house may not be much, but Yusa’s hovel was pretty awful. Not fit for human habitation.
Sato: Like they say, maggots prefer filth.
Murakami: They say there are no such thing as bad people, just bad situations/conditions. Come to think of it, you have to feel sorry for Yusa.
Sato: Ikan, ikan.[No, that won't do!] We as cops can’t afford to think like that. Chasing people, it’s easy to think that way but we can’t forget the many sheep a lone wolf leaves wonded. Half those citations were for capital cases. There’s no help for a cop who doesn’t believe he is protecting the masses. I say, leave the psychoanalysis to the detective novels. I just hate them, that’s all. The bad guys are bad.
Murakami: I can’t bring myself to think that way yet. All those years in the war, so many men became beasts at the slightest provocation, over and over.
Sato: Right. Must be our age difference. Or maybe it’s the times. What do they call that? Apres..apures…
Murakami: You mean Après-guerre?
Sato: Yeah, that’s right. You’re part of that postwar generation. Maybe Yusa is, too. You identify with Yusa too much (wakari-sugiru).”
Murakami: Maybe you’re right. My knapsack was stolen on my train ride home, too. I was half out of my mind with rage. I could have pulled off a robbery back then. But I realized that I’d hit a dangerous crossroads. I deliberately chose another way and got myself this job.
Sato: Hmm…I see…so there are two…what do you call that? Après-guerre types: like you or like Yusa. You, you’re the real thing, the real deal. Yusa? He’s après-nothing! They laugh. “I’m all après-ed out!”
More laughter. Then, some silence as they sit there. Finally, Murakami announces that he should be going.
Here are some excerpts from Gary Morris review also linked on this Syllabus:
[Stray Dog] is not a whodunit in any real sense. It’s beholden neither to the strict realism of the Dassin nor to the mechanical policier approach of Simenon. Kurosawa’s canvas is ultimately larger than its influences, exploring not just the existential angst of a policeman whose stolen gun is being used in a series of terrible crimes, but also the epic hell of postwar Japanese society. This sequence ends in one of the director’s trademark magical moments when she relaxes and tells Murakami some of what she knows, stretching back to gaze wonderingly at the night sky. It also presages the film’s bravura 8-1/2 minute survey of the slums and black markets of Tokyo.
This sequence, shot by Inoshiro Honda of Godzilla fame, is like an anti-travelogue for a ruined city. Honda had to shoot in secret, as these were actual black markets full of criminals, whores, vagrants, and other social cast-offs. The camera unflinchingly shows the crush of humanity — lines of dirty urchins; flophouses crammed with the poor; ex-soldiers standing idly on the streets; furtive transactions; all set against a backdrop of clogged, grimy alleys in Tokyo’s killing summer heat.
Murakami’s tormented journey into these “lower depths” — his disguise as a “desperate soldier” becomes increasingly real — is crucial to understanding the world the film is trying to create and to Murakami’s psychology. His search for the missing gun, an emblem of his (and presumably Japan’s) lost power, becomes a mania, and he himself becomes linked both in his own mind and by the gun with the criminal who is using it to rob and kill. In a classic doppelganger trope, both the thief, Yusa (Isao Kimura), and Murakami were soldiers; both had their knapsacks stolen on the train that brought them from the war to their home. But Yusa, we eventually are told, “chose” a life of crime, while Murakami, faced with the same dismal society that could not assimilate its soldiers, chose to become a detective. Yet the film takes pains to show that Yusa’s path was inevitable, the result of social forces that could not be overcome. Murakami was one of the lucky few to get a job of any kind at a time when American control was iron.
The search brings him to his nemesis’ girlfriend, Harumi (Keiko Awaji). The film uses one of their scenes together to brilliantly play the class card. Harumi, like many Japanese women at the time, had one foot in the criminal world as a means of survival. In an occupied country this was crucial. One of the products of this alliance is a hopelessly expensive dress Yusa bought her, after seeing her admire it in a shop. In a scene at once magical and horrific, she puts on the dress and twirls through a shadow-drenched room reminiscent of a shadow-swathed Gothic castle chamber, screaming “I’m happy!” Murakami’s assumptions about free will (he “chose” his job while Yusa “chose” to be a criminal) are challenged by this vivid act. Is Harumi’s possession of the dress really a crime? Is Yusa a criminal for stealing the money to buy it for her? How many others don’t have what the want or need? The answers aren’t as easy now for Murakami, and the pressure shows in what looks like a state of barely controlled hysteria that increasingly marks him.
Yusa, though not seen entirely until the film’s last few minutes, is gradually revealed in a kind of off-screen portrait that humanizes him, in the process linking him closer to Murakami. Both are seen as nervous, emotional, almost hysterical men. Yusa’s mother tells the detective, “I found him sitting here in the dark, crying…” Harumi describes his anguish at her desire for the dress, and the viewer is left to fill in the emotions Yusa must have felt between seeing her and the dress, and his purchase of it a week later with stolen money. The fateful meeting between Yusa and Murakami is the literal high point of the film, but perhaps represents an overreaching by Kurosawa. Yusa’s breakdown is a marvel to behold, but the oppositional images in this sequence, flowers and butterflies contrasted with bullets and bruises, hammer the viewer and threaten to overwhelm the emotions.
See Michael Grost:
Stray Dog: A Japanese Film Noir
Stray Dog (1949) was inspired by the American film The Naked City (1948),
according to interviews with Kurosawa. The Naked City is a police drama that
used hidden camera photography to show real life images of crowds in New York City. It was part of a trend in
American film during the 1945 - 1951 period, to make crime dramas that were
based on true stories and were shot on location.
Stray Dog has similar vivid photography of Tokyo. The photography is packed
with crowds, who are seething through many of the shots. Kurosawa's interviews
state that the film is showing specific neighborhoods of Tokyo. Unfortunately, I know too little about that city to
know where Kurosawa is shooting in each scene; and the film's narration never
tries to make this clear, either. City has a detailed voice over narration that often identifies locations in New York City,
while Stray Dog's narration ends a few minutes after the start of the
film.
Stray Dog also shows elements similar to the other American police semi-documentaries
of the period. The police hero disguises himself as a low life, and makes a
mild attempt to go undercover on the streets of Tokyo, and make contact with criminal bands. This is similar to the
more elaborate undercover operations in films like Anthony Mann's T-Men (1947)
and William Keighley's The Street With No Name (1948). Kurosawa's film seems especially close to The Street
With No Name; in both films, the hero dresses like a rough, tough bum, and
enters a raffish but appealing world of arcades and eateries. Stray Dog also shows the operation of such technical
police bureaus as the ballistics lab and the crime index room; such scenes of
high tech police facilities are common in such American semi-documentaries as Street. We also see a pistol training range,
just as in Street. City contains both a young handsome policeman (Don Taylor), and an older experienced
cop who is mentoring him (Barry Fitzgerald). Stray Dog has a similar
structure. However, in Kurosawa's film, it is the young policeman played by Toshiro Mifune, who steals the show,
while in City, Fitzgerald's older cop is the focus of the action. Partly this
is because Mifune is such a dynamic performer, but it is also because Stray Dog is designed to make the younger
cop the central character.
Comparison with The Idiot
In Kurosawa's work, Stray Dog pairs with The Idiot (1951), as
two films with a similar approach. Both works serve as a documentary about a
particular region of Japan: Tokyo in Stray Dog, Hokkaido in The Idiot. In fact, it is hard to imagine a film more expressive
of what 1949 Tokyo was like than Stray Dog. Both films have numerous
train scenes. Both take place in a solstice, during extreme weather: The Idiot takes place in the dead of winter, during blizzards;
Stray Dog during a midsummer heat wave. In both films we see weather
through the windows of buildings: torrential rains in Stray Dog, snow in The Idiot. There are also scenes pointing
upward, allowing us to see the stars. Kurosawa emphasizes the "Westernization"
of both regions: people in Tokyo are beginning to adopt Western dress, with much American music on the soundtrack, not to mention
dancing and baseball, while The Idiot stresses the similarities of Hokkaido
to the West.
Both films are contemporary dramas, not historical films like so much of Kurosawa's
work. Both films have suffering central characters, and Stray Dog by
extension is also about the suffering of the Japanese people. Both have a humanistic, anti-war theme, as a subsidiary motif
in the drama, recalling the war that was just over. Stray Dog has much
casual but pointed commentary about the way the recently disbanded Japanese Army abused its recruits, with frequent references
to beatings. This sort of blunt social criticism is a notable feature.
Mifune's characters in the two films have many similarities. In both films he
is a dandy, dressed in glamorous modern clothes, and mainly clean shaven. He
seems young, and often naive about society. In both films he is intensely emotional, playing characters that are very different
from the macho, controlled Samurai figure he portrayed in The Hidden Fortress,
for instance. Both films are full of scenes where he pleads with often perverse women to give him something: love
in The Idiot, information in Stray Dog. Usually, he is not immediately
successful, if at all. In both films his emotionalism eventually leads to a nervous breakdown, which is displayed on
screen at full force.
Both films contain an intense close up of Mifune's eyes, which then dissolves
into city scenes. This scene in a high point of both pictures. Both launch brilliant
sequences of Mifune trailing another character through the streets.
Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa, 1949)
****
Rookie homicide detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has had his pistol lifted
out of
his pocket on the bus. He pursued a young man (future Godzilla director
Ishiro Honda),
but he lost him. The older and wiser Inspector Sato (Takashi Shimura) takes
him to
the room with the criminal files. "Get the box of male pickpockets on public
conveyances," Sato says. Murakami doesn't see the young man in the files.
"Who was
standing next to you?" "A middle-aged woman." "Sometimes
thieves will pass the
goods to someone else. Get the box of female pickpockets on public conveyances."
Murakami makes an ID.
I recounted that whole scene because it sums up the basic reason why I like
Stray Dog:
it is an excellent police procedural. The police procedural pits (seeming) chaos
against bureaucratic order, small-time pistol thieves against an organization
that has
all the female pickpockets on public conveyances on file in a box. I say seeming
chaos
because one of the fun things about the police procedural is that while urban
crime
seems to be just a collection of happenstance evils, it actually operates according
to
laws that can be understood by gleaning enough information. One pickpocket is
an
enigma; thousands are a law of nature.
Of course, there's much more to Stray Dog than the methodical investigation
of a
pistol theft. There is the classic story of education, the young, Detective
Murakami,
being taught by the old, Inspector Sato, a tale Kurosawa would return to in
Seven
Samurai and Sanjuro. There is the race against time. (The buyer of
the stolen pistol is
killing women in armed robberies and the cops have to find him before he kills
again.)
There is the old story of men coming back from war. (Both Murakami and the armed
robber are recently demobilized soldiers and, before Murakami enters Sato's
tutelage,
much of his actions are influenced by his wartime experience.) There is a
Dostoevskean descent into the lower depths of society. Finally, there is the
classic
crime story paradox, the similarity between the cop and the robber. In short,
a
masterful film from one of the greatest directors.