Literary Newspaper · Read at night at the moment
"Love in the North", "Sincerely, Father", "Tender Moments", ...... Satoshi Kuramoto, a Japanese national treasure, writes about life, sings about the land, and cherishes the love between people.
And his own life is also legendary, when he was young, he failed the college entrance examination twice, and one day, he read Michio Kato's book "The World of Jean Tilodoo" in the bookstore, and because of a sentence in it, he suddenly fell in love with drama;
At the age of 28, he left his stable job and became a freelance screenwriter, and when his career was soaring, he decided to leave the big city and move to the Hokkaido town of Furano, where he spent 21 years writing "Love in the North";
He ran a school deep in the mountains, attracting countless young people who love theater, and he is determined to plant 50,000 trees for the earth......
Tonight's night reading is an excerpt from "Jump First: Satoshi Kuramoto's Philosophy of Work and Life".
01
The first year of moving to Furano
On my first night in Furano, at night, I was struck by the depth of darkness. I always felt like something was buzzing, and I didn't fall asleep until early in the morning. It must have been the spirits of the earth writhing in the dark night. Days like this went on for a few days, and the feeling finally disappeared. I guess the spirits of the earth gave me permission to live here.
I don't have any acquaintances in Furano. I first met Mr. Takeshi Morimoto, who was running a mushroom factory and soon opened a local restaurant called "kumagera" (black woodpecker). I became a regular visitor there, and because of him, I became acquainted with the people at the Furano Youth Council.
There are many interesting people there, and one of the representatives is "Chachi", that is, Mr. Kazuaki Chahata. He ran an electrical appliance shop in the village of Furano. He was a bragging weirdo, but I found him interesting and played with him a lot.
Near the "tea" house lives Mr. Yoshio Nakaseko, who is engaged in the timber industry. When we met, his father was still in good health, and I heard a lot of stories about the origin of Luxiang, and I walked through the vast exercise forest under the guidance of Mr. Nakashiko, who managed the key to the Todai exercise forest. He was my friend, relative, and benefactor in Furano.
After coming into contact with these people who live in the beautiful and harsh nature, I understand that they live not by knowledge, but by wisdom. I've had several moments of enlightenment.
On the cliff road leading to the house, a huge rock pops up, and the wheel of the jeep often gets stuck in the middle. When I consulted with a young man from a nearby Pingshan farming village, he said this: Dig along the perimeter of the rock from all sides. Once the rock is exposed, use the log as a lever and pry it slowly. "Isn't it possible to move three centimeters a day? "Even if you can only move a little bit at first, with patience and perseverance, the rock will be able to move away. After 10 days, the stone can move a meter. I couldn't help but shout "master" with emotion. I heard that this kind of operation is called "inch by inch pull" in Furano. Tireless, unrelenting, and tenacious efforts are the wisdom of life.
Furano in Satoshi Kuramoto's work
Winter came, and I fell into a severe depression. I think the change in the environment is the reason for this. After coming to Furano, in order to live, all kinds of things like this and that were chasing after him, and fatigue continued to accumulate. My wife went to Tokyo for work, and I was left alone. I couldn't lift it up at all, and I just thought about dying, and this kind of life lasted for about two weeks.
In order to encourage me, Mr. Shigeaki Hasama, a senior of the NHK era and the president of Pori Kanon, sent me a cassette tape of a pilot version of the rookie singer Miyuki Nakajima. Each song is good, but very dark. At night, sitting in front of the stove on the second floor and listening, I wanted to die again.
Going downstairs to the entrance, I was going to go outside the jeep and sleep without the heater. Outside minus 30 degrees Celsius, you will definitely die. It's just that the iron doorknob in the entrance is frozen, and when you reach out and touch it, you can't take it off. Yamaguchi, the dog who had been staring, bit the hem of my clothes and pulled desperately. That's when I came to my senses.
Yamaguchi's name is taken from Ms. Momoe Yamaguchi. It is a Hokkaido dog that was used for bear hunting in the early years, and it is a powerful and docile dog.
Days like this are repeated every day. There is no appetite, no spirit, and suddenly I want to die. When I went to the psychiatrist in Sapporo, the doctor said something uncomfortable: "Every year when the weather gets cold, I get depressed." "However, I relied on sedatives and alcohol to suppress it and did not develop into severe depression.
"Sincerely, Father"
Occasionally, I would write a single episode of a TV series and hardly work, so I had some free time to drive around the country station in a jeep and take pictures. Cloth part, mountain part, passage, hair ...... The small station in the mountains and the lonely station by the sea attracted me.
I also went to the local abandoned houses to take a look around. Walk into a house with a collapsed roof, sit on a soft tatami mat, and fall into deep thought.
02
Ms. Tanaka Kinyo
In the second part of the "Former Mother" series, Ms. Kaoru Yachigusa, who played the role of the proprietor's wife, also joined in, and the lineup is getting better and better. But that's when the unbelievable happened. Ms. Tanaka's condition deteriorated.
Ms. Kinyo mainly appears in the narration part, but by the second half of the series, she has physical and mental problems. On recording day, I drove to pick her up and take her to the studio. In the car, she was sometimes silent with a straight face, and sometimes she talked incessantly as if she was possessed by something. I heard that she couldn't eat, so I sometimes asked my wife to help me make soup and send it over.
True to Tanaka Kinyo, all the narration parts were recorded perfectly, but I heard that her condition deteriorated further. One day, Mr. Masaki Kobayashi, a distant relative of Ms. Kinyo and a film director, called me. He told me that Ms. Kinshiro was admitted to Juntendo University Hospital in Tokyo. Lung cancer has metastasized.
She has a lot of contracts, but she is even suspicious of the people around her, not only hiding her personal signature, but also unable to discuss related matters such as property management and debt repayment. I also joined the discussion between Kawakita Nagamasa and Kawakita Fake Death Couple, who live in Kamakura, with their lawyers.
Satoshi Kuramoto with friends in Furano
In "The Former Mother", Ms. Kinyo plays the mother of Yamagata Prefecture's Asan, who died in episode 22 on March 18, 1977, and the funeral was broadcast in episode 23 of the second week according to the plan, and the script has already been handed over.
I hesitated in Furano: "Why don't you rewrite the script?" But the recording is over. I prayed to my mother in that world, "Mom, please don't call Ms. Kinyo over." ”
My mother passed away on March 19, 1974. At that time, her depression was aggravated by her illness. With a longing for my mother, I wrote a script in one go, and it was broadcast at the Tokyo Broadcasting Corporation's Sunday Theater in September of that year, and it was "Bell Bell". Ms. Kinyo plays an elderly woman who dies of a mental disorder in it, and that is a creepy acting.
In the TV series, Ms. Kinyo's character died on March 18, and her mother's death day was on the 19th. The mother of that world overlapped with Ms. Kinyo, and there was an ominous uneasiness in my chest. The 18th passed, and the 19th passed uneventful, and on the 21st, I received news from my wife, who was in Tokyo, that Ms. Kinshiro had passed away.
I flew to Tokyo and walked into Ms. Kinshiro's home in Kamakura for the first time. On the edge of the cliff is a small wooden two-story building, with a hallway on the second floor and a small living room downstairs. About forty watts of electric light, dimly lit. There was a small old black and white TV set. It is said that the actor "Hayabusa Konobu" (Mr. Nobuyoshi Hayabusa), who played the role of Ms. Kinyo's bodyguard during the Shochiku period, came to visit from time to time.
The Garden of the Wind
That night, Mr. Kobayashi, Koshin and I stayed by Ms. Kinyo's side. On the second day, a funeral was held at home, and filmmakers who were out of reach for me, such as Heinosuke Gosho, came to pay their respects.
Early the next morning, an elderly man suddenly came and said, "I want to meet Ms. Kinyo." After the man bowed respectfully to the body, he "stepped on the flowers and crossed the stormy ......", and he cried as he sang the theme song of the movie "Love Dye Katsuna". It was a 1938-1939 Shochiku film starring Ms. Kinyo and Ken Uehara that made her a big star. He was the assistant director of the year.
Later, the funeral was held at Tsukiji Honganji. A large number of important figures from the film and television industry, including President Shiro Shiro Shochiku of Shochiku and Mr. Masumi Fujimoto of Toho, attended the ceremony, and I read the eulogy as a member of the funeral committee.
Outside the mourning hall, more than 2,000 people flocked to the altar, and we urgently enlarged the altar. The incense burning queue is continuous, and something glittering can be seen in the smoke rising from the incense sticks. When I realized that it was a rain of incense thrown in by people who couldn't get the funeral, I couldn't help but cry.
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Zhang Ling, Xie Ying/Translation
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Pictured: Stills from related movies
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