THE MEN WHO TREAD ON TIGER’S TAIL: Akira Kurosawa's Turning Point in Experimenting with Genre

The Men Who Tread On Tiger's Tail - TOHO

Akira Kurosawa is one of the most well-renowned foreign filmmakers of all time with even the general public knowing about his major drama and action films which have captivated audiences with their craft and intriguing ideas behind them. However, similar to the career path of also acclaimed Japanese drama director from the time Yasujiro Ozu, when Kurosawa started crafting cinema, his first few features were far from the profound and emotionally moving stories that would later drive his career to legendary status. Kurosawa's fourth overall feature film The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail is a perfect example of the filmmaker's earlier and more experimental genre work, that beckons to be discovered after being forgotten.

Before Kurosawa channelled the monumental output of defining classics in the director’s latter half of his career in the filmmaking industry, he took the time to experiment with various genres of film, taking advantage of his youth and a newfound era of Japanese cinema. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail takes the classic Kabuki play Kanjinchō and adapted it using a more comedic approach. Nearly immediately, Kurosawa showed no fear in adapting a source material putting a unique and personal spin on it. Watching the film, it is almost disorienting the level of physical humour that Kurosawa uses, feeling like more of a Charlie Chaplin picture at times than that of Kurosawa, perhaps an inkling into the westernisation of the east after their surrender to Allied forces. Kurosawa would still have touches of comedy sprinkled throughout his later projects; nevertheless, none would have the same comedic identity or experimentation as The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail until reminisced in one the directors' last features Dreams.

Completed in 1945, it was banned from release by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers who occupied Japan following World War II. Due to the comedic matter in which Kurosawa portrayed the Japanese traditions highlighted in the film, many saw it as disrespectful and distasteful. It was not until 1952 that the film was finally released. Production for The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail came just after Kurosawa failed to get a project titled The Lifted Spear into production causing the filmmaker to have back to back failures for a project to go through production and distribution. An ironic element as Kurosawa's budgets would soar with each of his latest features in production, needing western funding from the likes of understudies such as George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg coming to the directors' rescue.

To keep his career alive, Kurosawa could not continue to stagnate in development hell and experiment, causing his career to become more focused and conscious. The traditional release of conventional cinema was gone, and more internal and personalised visions were concentrated on and developed. Kurosawa was a director that focused on pushing the boundaries of films and trying to get a reaction from his audiences. In some cases going a bit too far ending up on a side that pushed the boat to an extreme that it offended, rather than stir debate and thought. An ideal that the Japanese director would restrain in his work, yet subtly curate with nuance through themes and not to directly subject his audience in watching, in order to layer his feature with weight.

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail shows the director crossing the invisible line of expectation for the first time in his career and paying the price, albeit with a consequence in hindsight that would free the auteur. By experimenting in his early career, Kurosawa allowed himself to fail and fall from grace. Ultimately leading to him up literally and metaphorically picking himself up off of the floor to reinvent his palette without the price of expectation set upon his head. A reinvention that held a more thematically profound and existential attitude that would be involved through the directors' career and would come to define the latter period of the auteur’s legacy.