Japanese Classic Cinema > “Shiro Sugata” (1943): The Judo Saga
✅ 🍿 Mantra of Agape Love 爱: Do What You Love and Love What You Do, Happy Dance 快乐的! ✅ 🍿
What do you love to do for fun?
It starts with love. . . .
✅ 🍿 Follow and Support: Dedicated to my Friend: “Love!”
Clap 50,000 times as you march in place and drink sour whiskey saki, stay 20 years or 30 seconds as you eat coco kimchi kuku sushi, comment as sing me a K-pop Latino song from Cuba, and tell me how my butt is wide, for. we are friends, not foes: Arigato, 谢谢, Thank you!
爱Be a happy warrior of love> Photo by Thao LEE on Unsplash 爱
✅ 🍿 The Mantra of Agape Love ✅ 🍿
I grew up in Japan, so when I start to teach the film scholar in my department ask which Asian director show we teach, and I quickly answered the best: Akira Kurosawa, the man behind the epic Seven Samurai.
The professor of cinema agreed, and asked me if I wanted to teach it, shocked I said, “Hell YES!”
Furthermore, he was editing a book on cinema and asked me if I wanted to write about Asian cinema, I sad, “Hell YES.”
That is how I accidentally because one of the most influential scholars in Asian cinema.
Life is sweet: 快乐的 . . . .Do What You Love and Love What You Do, Happy Dance 快乐的!
✅ 🍿 The Warriors Path of Judo: Love your Passions
The very first film that Akira Kurosawa directed was based on the way of the warrior, for he read a novel by Tsuneo Tomita and thought it would be a very good film.
Though the film is about the way of judo, it actually closely follows the life of Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s greatest Samurai.
The film was a success, and he would do a sequel, Sanshiro Sugata 2 (1945).
The main protagonist, Sugata, loves his art of Judo so much but he is not as good in the ways of life.
The final battle plays out much like a samurai death fight.
✅ 🍿Toho Productions ✅ 🍿
Time: Around 1888
Setting: Modernization of Japan
Themes: Apprenticeship, Old vs New
Judo vs Jujitsu
Judo Characters
Student Sugata (Susumi Fujita)
Sensei Shogoro Yano (Denjiro Okoohi), teacher
Jujitsu Characters:
Instructor Saburo Momma (Yoshio Kosugi), poor.
Daughter Osumi (Ronko Hanai), goes crazy.
Hansuje Murai (Takeshi Shimura), father like.
Daughter Sayo (Yukiyo Todoroki) love interest.
Gennosuke Higaki (Ryunosuke Tsukigata), master opponent, smokes, wears western clothes.
✅ 🍿Love and Buddhist Symbolism in the Pond Scene ✅ 🍿
Sugata, at one point, jumps into a pond and refuses to leave until he is enlightened, for water is often symbolic of the need to purity in Buddhism.
Lotus: grows in the muck (reality, dukka, suffering) but is beautiful.
Moon: reflection of the greater light (sun)
Pond: water, the mind.
Clouds: thoughts
The mind becomes cloudy as one tries to grasp the moon trapped on the water, and liberation means clarity and seeing what is.
Suffering remains an illusion created by desire.
✅ 🍿Thank you for reading.. . . ✅ 🍿
If you want to know a writer, read all of their books back to back chronologically in the order they were written.
✅ 🍿Who are some of your favorite film directors or author? ✅ 🍿
If you want to know a director, do the same, for that is what I do.
Clap 50,000 times as you march in place and drink sour whiskey saki, . . .
stay 20 years or 30 seconds as you eat coco kimchi kuku sushi, comment as sing me a K-pop Latino . . .
. . . song from Cuba, and tell me how my butt is wide, for. we are friends, not foes: Arigato, 谢谢,
✅ 🍿Arigato! ✅ 🍿
Love more to be more> > Photo by Nurpalah Dee on Unsplash
