Stray Dog: A Country in Mourning

This is a contribution to the Japanese Cinema Blogathon hosted by the cool guys at Cinematon! Cinematon!, who along with others in the blogsphere are celebrating Japan's contribution to the world of cinema.  Please feel free to contribute to the week long celebration and share your favourite moments, directors and films from Japan and help to spread aid relief with every post for a country in need of global support.

(Akira Kurosawa, 1949)

The effects of an evident hangover subtly plays out in the background during Kurosawa's, detective procedural and noir styled, Stray Dog; a year before the international success of Rashomon (1950) and like the elephant in the room it's routinely ignored, best avoided and not to be mentioned, yet inevitably, can't help but to manifest, infect and permeate everything in comes in contact with. Kurosawa taps into a country's collective guilt, the consequences and moral questioning of its role in the Second World War, and where it turns now in the years of depression, occupation and shame without ever fully implying so. It takes 50 minutes for the word 'war' even to be muttered but ever since that unsettling close up of the craze-eyed dog, left out to boil in the mid-day sun, from the opening moments of the credit sequence, we've felt it's presence keenly, as if it never needed saying.

Set in the heaving metropolis of Tokyo in post-war Japan, rife with inner-city crime, a disaffected populous seeking solace in sake and cheap cabaret shows, jaded policemen and poverty, Stray Dog formally plays out like a police procedural drama playing with a film noir template. Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) plays the rookie cop who becomes victim to a pickpocket that easily steals his gun on a packed bus, ladened with shame and bound by the sense of honour so prevalent in Japanese culture, on top of his overwhelming guilt that still hangs heavy from his years of soldering, he offers his resignation which is swiftly refused by his bosses. Given this second chance he is teamed with Sato (Takashi Shimura, another Kurosawa regular) an older and wiser detective, in order to track down his missing gun which is now linked with a shooting of a young woman, sending Murakami into a frantic hunt weighed down by his own failings, history and guilt.

In trying to locate the gun, Murakami and Sato take a tour through the desperate social conditions of the country and the people that revel or sink in its murky waters. It's scenes, such as Murakami's montage through the black market that take Stray Dog to another level, not always reached by the generic film noir of the day, in which he brings the realities of this land into stark, bold focus rather than navel gazing at a rogues gallery of assorted low life, we get to feel that hardship on our back.  Early into their investigation, a name is attached to the shooting, a young man by the name of Yusa, dressed in a white linen suit, an ex-soldier from the war who had his identity stolen from him (his knapsack) on his return; it soon becomes apparent that Murakami could easily have been this man, his doppelganger, his alternative self, if life had treated him differently.

The war hangs on Murakami like a bad smell, his face (as always) a grimace, a fixture of torment and anxiety, never lets up and rarely can he look you in the eye without turning away riddled with guilt and shame. He's been fighting those demons daily and not sure if he's winning the battle, there's a vague notion that he turned to police work in order to battle those thoughts, after admitting that, at his lowest ebb, when he too had his knapsack stolen, 'thinking I was at a dangerous point, I chose this work (policing)' rather than following the road of Yusa on the easier one of criminality. Or maybe he simply didn't want to be on the losing side again. He's one of the nation's stray dogs, fortunately bound by character and morality, Yusa, like the dog in the opening titles has slowly been driven mad by the elements, by nature, by society. Half-baked.

The palatable heat of Stray Dog knits the film together, suture like, with a tense, claustrophobic edge, its noir credentials safely entwined in the world of the bustling, underclass cityscape. The city is coated in a constant layer of sweat, the humidity bringing a lot of the action to a standstill, protagonists having to fan themselves or devour ice lollies in-between sentences. Hot on the heels of their man, the closer, the more oppressive it becomes, clothes hang heavy, brows drip with sweat until finally they are within yards of him and the heavens open with a deluge of rain. It's a brilliant use of weather to measure the frustration of a brooding and angry nation, as well as raising suspense, a particular recurring theme that one will come to see time and again in Kurosawa's work.

Weighing in with the humanity of neo-realism, Stray Dog , ultimately, strives for redemption, belief and a better future; the belief that one can make a go of life with application and hard work. Murakami and Yusa are separated by fate, the cop and the killer; ying and yang, Murakami understanding this predicament better than anyone, 'There are no bad people, only bad environment' he tells Sato, after they had witnessed Yusa's living conditions in the small outhouse of his sister's home, not that his elder colleague shares his viewpoint, one of the many differences that separate the elder and après guerre generations. In an occupied country, striving to make sense of its identity, cultural heritage and psychological mindset, Sato and Murakami's different understanding of the same person underlines this Japan, at this time, in crisis.