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8

ALLEGIANCES AND ALLIANCES

Toho wasn’t the same place that Honda had left behind. The studio was entering a period of transition, and over the next six years it would rapidly fall from first place to last in the industry, nearly self-destructing more than once before finally righting itself. Within this chaotic environment, Honda would attempt to restart his career.

SCAP authorities, as part of their efforts to rehabilitate Japan into a representative democracy, encouraged new labor laws giving trade unions unprecedented power. An unintended result was that communists dominated the unions in many industries, including the film studios. Inside Toho’s gates, Honda met not only artists and craftsmen making movies, but also union organizers leading a revolt. In a cruel twist of fate, Toho—after reaping the rewards of making right-wing war films—was now home to ardent leftists. Fights between anticommunists in management and left-wing unionists left directors, actors, and other talent caught in the crossfire, their work increasingly difficult.

Occupation policy shifted from liberalism and economic aid immediately after the war to anticommunism after 1947, and employers began taking back control of the means of production, leading to confrontations with unions. Three film studios remained standing after the war: Toho, Daiei, and Shochiku. All experienced labor unrest, but the three strikes that hit Toho were the most devastating. The first two, in March and October 1946, ended with pay increases for workers and the transfer of production oversight to union bosses, who dictated hiring, firing, wages, and other matters. This, in turn, fomented friction between union leadership and the employees. Splinter factions formed; and in April 1947 most of Toho’s top stars and many rank-and-file directors and actors left to form Shin Toho (New Toho), a separate production unit that was semi-independent of the parent company, although continued conflict with Toho management would eventually lead Shin Toho to become a truly independent studio. Toho, meanwhile, would slowly replenish its hemorrhaging talent pool through periodic New Face contests, auditioning would-be actors and actresses from the general public; the great Toshiro Mifune was discovered this way, but it would take years to rebuild the depleted star system.

Under union control, mismanagement reigned and costs soared. Toho made only thirteen films in 1947; the company had originally projected twenty-four. The board of directors appointed a new president, dedicated anticommunist Tetsuzo Watanabe, who summarily purged twelve hundred employees for resisting his cost-cutting measures. In retaliation, in April 1948 the union staged the third Toho strike, one of the biggest work stoppages of Japan’s turbulent postwar labor movement. Union members barricaded themselves inside the studio, and management responded by withholding pay. A months-long stalemate culminated in August, when two thousand Tokyo police assembled outside the studio walls, augmented by American soldiers, tanks, and planes circling above; an actress and union activist would famously quip, “The only thing they didn’t send were the battleships.” The strikers surrendered, but Toho would not fully restart production and repair its shattered reputation until the early 1950s.

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After reentering Toho’s assistant director corps, Honda worked on two pictures in 1946. Honda’s longtime friend and fellow Yamamoto protégé Motoyoshi Oda’s Eleven Girl Students (Juichinin no jogakusei), starring Takashi Shimura, had eleven fifth-grade girls confronting a corrupt school principal. Kunio Watanabe’s Declaration of Love (Ai no sengen), starring Ken Uehara, was a postwar soap opera set in devastated Tokyo, involving three girls laid off from a wartime munitions factory, who pair up with repatriated soldiers.

But as Toho split apart, filmmakers, actors, and other employees were forming alliances and taking sides. Experienced directors leaving the fold encouraged young talent to follow. Kunio Watanabe, who had made his directorial debut during the war years and would go on to become a prolific maker of program pictures in the 1950s and 1960s, was among those departing for Shin Toho; and he strongly urged Honda to do the same, saying he would become a full-fledged director more quickly in the new company. But Honda demurred. He preferred to remain neutral; his commitment was not to a political ideology but to the cause of filmmaking, not to Toho’s union or management but to what he felt the company itself represented.

“[Watanabe] told me, ‘Honda-san, we can’t get along with these people who are always trying to push their own agendas and going on strike,’” Honda remembered. “‘Why don’t you move over to Shin Toho?’ I answered, ‘Watanabe-san, I can’t do that. To begin with, I don’t think it’s right for Toho to separate, and I hope there is a better way to solve this problem without splitting up … I just want to stay.’” Others tried and failed to lure Honda away, including the acclaimed director Kon Ichikawa. Despite Honda’s resistance, he and his colleagues remained friends. “It wasn’t personal or anything. We were still fine with each other.”¹

With production slowing, in 1947 Honda worked on just three Toho films, all of which reflected Japan’s postwar malaise, the dominant theme. Though still an assistant director, Honda was now working with producers, actors, and others who would figure prominently in his own directorial career a few years later. The first project was 24 Hours in an Underground Market (Chikagai 24-jikan), jointly directed by Tadashi Imai, Hideo Sekigawa, and Kiyoshi Kusuda, produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka, and starring Takashi Shimura and So Yamamura. The other films were a pair of comedies directed by Kajiro Yamamoto that were big box-office hits: The New Age of Fools (Shin baka jidai), parts 1 and 2. Set in a Tokyo black market, a hotbed of illegal goods and postwar crime, these films followed a peddler (comedian Kenichi “Enoken” Enomoto) who is comically chased through the streets by a chubby cop (Roppa Furukawa).² Still, work was becoming less frequent. If Honda wanted to remain employed and continue pursuing a directing career, he would have to join the exodus from Toho. Fortunately, trusted friends provided a path.

Akira Kurosawa never had a comfortable relationship with the union. When labor had first overtaken the studio, it had pushed him, along with Kajiro Yamamoto and Hideo Sekigawa, to codirect the left-wing propaganda film Those Who Make Tomorrow (Asu o tsukuru hitobito, 1946), a story of movie studio employees who become labor activists. The union dictated the content, which infuriated everyone; Kurosawa so disliked the picture he later disowned it. The same year, the union forced Kurosawa to rewrite his screenplay for No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kuinashi, 1946). Kurosawa remained at Toho as long as he could; but after battling the union again over his Drunken Angel script, enough was enough.

Prior to the third Toho strike, Kurosawa defected to the Film Art Association, an independent production company formed by producer Sojiro Motoki and Kajiro Yamamoto. This collective boasted fourteen directors as founding members—including four of Toho’s biggest: Kurosawa, Yamamoto, Senkichi Taniguchi, and Mikio Naruse—and six producers, including Tomoyuki Tanaka, later a major figure in the careers of both Honda and Kurosawa. The company’s films would be coproduced with the major studios; it aspired to create high-quality work while retaining artistic autonomy.

Honda was first assistant director on a handful of Film Art Association productions over the next few years, while also keeping one foot in the struggling Toho camp. From September to October 1948, Honda was on location in Noto Peninsula on the Sea of Japan, working on Kajiro Yamamoto’s Child of the Wind (Kaze no ko, 1949). The first Film Art Association release, it followed the struggles of a poverty-stricken family, who plant potatoes to survive after the father is drafted into the war. Next, from January to March 1949, Honda worked on Yamamoto’s Flirtation in Spring (Haru no tawamure, 1949), an adaptation of French playwright Marcel Pagnol’s Marius, about a boy torn between his desire to sail around the world or to stay and marry his sweetheart.

Now one of the most experienced assistant directors in Japan, and with his stature having risen considerably, at last Honda would receive an opportunity to make a film of his own.