The Search for the Gun: Murakami, the Public and the State in Stray Dogs
At the end of the Second World War, the Americans brought the Japanese empire on its knees. From there on, the wartime cabinet would be dismantled and its imperial system reformed. The purging of civil bureaucracies completely reshaped both ministries and the police force. When returning soldiers returned to what they thought would be their home, they encountered a strange land dressed in a foreign system. For those already on the island, it was a time of rebirth. Wartime criminals were being trialed and the economy was being rekindled. Bad luck, to them, could be an opportunity towards something more open and cleaner. Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) places itself in this early postwar period. Its protagonist, Murakami, sets out to find his stolen gun. In his journey, he performs multiple missions. The first two missions for Murakami, however, best highlight the relationship between the police and the people he is supposed to serve. One mission has a clear object: follow a woman until she gives you a hint. The other is unclear: wander around the black market in disguise until you are picked up by a scout. Both missions challenge the idea that this postwar period is a fertile ground for a clear path forward. Perhaps opportunity for a more democratic Japan is really there, but the best method to do so is muddled in debris of present freedom and wartime memories.
In the first mission, when Murakami pursued Ogin, a woman who he believes to have stolen his gun, he goes through the wide boulevards and open area of Tokyo. His objective is clear: follow Ogin until she opens up about her theft. She tries to avoid him by initially running through the narrow back alleys and even getting on a tram, but Murakami nevertheless succeeds in tailing her. Murakami’s tactic is simple. Despite being a police officer, he does not resort to force or even verbal assault. He patiently follows her until she comes to him, which she eventually gives in at the end of the day.
The bright sky, wide streets and the upper-class neighborhoods play a role as settings to support Murakami’s tactic and his postwar police personality. From the beginning, he makes his objective clear to both his superior and the woman he is pursuing. That is why Ogin tries to run away from him right at the beginning. Whenever she fails to do so, she always returns to the open streets where Murakami also emerges. Most of the chasing is the oscillation between an explicit chase and implicit strategies such as Ogin’s attempt to shake off Murakami by getting on a tram. The transitions between the shots support the simplicity in the chase by using wipes. At the same time, these wipes also guide the audience in a clear chronological order: the scene they see now succeeds the scene before. The scene starts off on a bright midsummer day and ends with the wide expanse of stars. The combination of a clear objective, open setting, smooth transitions and chronological progression highlights the transparency in how Murakami pursues Ogin.
This transparency reflects Murakami as a police officer under a new democratic state. In the periods following the end of the Second World War, the occupation power believed that disassembling of a militarized state was essential in creating a democratic Japan.[1] To do so, General Douglas McArthur (SCAP)’s demilitarization policies included the purge of bureaucrats in the Ministry of Home Affairs (the ministry that controled the police), confiscation of weapons and the arrest of prevalent officials.[2] This purge, completed in the winter of 1946, seemed to have given birth to a new era of governmental transparency, cleansed from its wartime atrocities. However, the occupation power went further and erased all symbols of imperial regime as well as placing censorships on media, literature and the arts.[3]
From the prewar era, the police were the embodiment of the state. Thus, the relationship between the state and the individual is especially dominant in Murakami’ character. Seen through this lens, Murakami’s character, chasing Ogin through the wide boulevards of Tokyo, can be used to reflect postwar Japan’s turning towards democracy. Murakami’s objective of extracting hints out of Ogin is as clear as democratic Japan’s goal of pursuing ‘peace.’ On the other hand, it can also reflect a state whose pride and legacy had been stripped bare by a foreign occupational power. The Americans gripped onto many aspects of the Japanese political economy: creation of the 1947 constitution, dismantling of the zaibatsu and even restricting international tourism until 1964.[4] In this way, the Japanese institution was essentially American.
The nuance in how Japanese should interpret this ‘freedom’ can be seen in the scene itself. When Ogin, annoyed of having Murakami pursue her, asks about her ‘civil rights.’ Murakami quickly responds that he is just taking a stroll, implying that he is legally following her. The historical context also supports Murakami’s response. After the war, General MacArthur tasked Prime Minister Kijūrō Shidehara to strip militaristic elements of the police. However, Shidehara only had a vague idea of how to do it.[5] Additionally, the constitution that came after guaranteed fundamental human rights, but many Japanese, both the public and the police, failed to interpret what ‘rights’ mean.[6] While the stripping of Japanese militarism allows for a clear path towards democracy and peace, there is still confusion on the best way to understand these values.
This confusion is amplified when Murakami takes on the role of soldier to lure out black market scouts who could be selling his gun. Murakami, police in the present, disguises as a soldier from the past. If Murakami is a coin, the past and the present are its two sides, existing at the same time.[7] In contrast to following Ogin, Murakami’s new objective is unclear. He does not know who or what he is looking for. All he understands is a vague idea of a ‘scout.’ The wide boulevards from the previous scene are squeezed into narrow streets of Downtown Tokyo, packed with lower to middle class residents, all of which are desperately trying to live. In this scene, each shot is much shorter and they fade into each other. One minute, Murakami is wiping away his sweat under the sun; the next, he is staring into the face of rickshaw drivers at night. The constant switching between day and night confuses the audience’s sense of time. One starts to wonder how much time has passed since Murakami started his search. Scenes are not the only elements that fade into each other, parts of Murakami’s body, particularly his eyes and feet, are mixed in with pedestrians on the street. It is as if Kurosawa combines Murakami’s identity with the collective consciousness of the public. His feet and eyes wander in all direction, adding further confusion to the scene.
While one can look at Murakami’s military disguise as a representation of wartime Japan, the idea that his mission represents postwar confusion can be equally compelling. In one shot, the camera focuses on the muddy water whose upside-down reflection depicts Murakami’s walking through a burned-down area of Tokyo before quickly fading into the next scene. This reflection blurs the line between the past and the present. Even though the war is over, there seems to be a lingering sense of wartime hardship that continues to exist. Kurosawa’s merging of Murakami and pedestrians is strategic in that the police and the public are not separate identities. They are both confused about their current condition and their relationship with the state. Is the present, the postwar period, just a reflection of the prewar period? Is Japanese democracy really representing the people? The unclear objective of finding the scout reflects on the confusion surrounding the definition of ‘democracy.’ An ironclad triangle of elected government, bureaucracy and big business became the engine of growth for the Japanese economy in the postwar period. As mentioned earlier, the Americans, while invisible in the film, continue to orchestrate both domestic and international policies, bringing Japan into the Cold War on its shoulders.[8] The domination of both Japanese politicians and American occupational force brings up the question of whether the country is really driven by its citizens or the pedestrians of Downtown Tokyo. Rain pours on Murakami towards the end of the scene. Murakami cannot see what is in front him. The Japanese public cannot see what to make out of this uncertain future. Both wonder if they will ever grasp onto what they really desire.
Simplicity in Ogin’s chase is only a façade to the confusion that runs amok behind the image. It is true that wide boulevards and the clear timeline of Ogin’s chase would signify a clear mission for Murakami. Similarly, with its bureaucracy and police cleansed from the prewar years, democratic Japan seemed to understand what was in front of them. But as reflected in the scene where Murakami disguises as a soldier, there is doubt in whether the future is a straight road for the country. The narrow alleys, the dense marketplace and the cramped streets make it hard for Murakami to make out his objective. Similarly, the Japanese state under American occupation struggled to define an objective that is unique for itself. Finally, the entanglement between the state and the public is highlighted in both scenes. Murakami’s interpretation of Ogin’s liberties signify the dissonance between the public and the state. But in the second scene, Murakami is separated from the state itself, merging with the public through the use of fade transitions. All of this builds up towards the confusion of whether Murakami really represents the state or the people. In both scenes, Murakami acts like a stray dog, one persistently following a person, the other mindlessly searching for something in the streets of Tokyo. But in the end, he accepts the uncertainty and patiently waits until his objectives come to him. Perhaps the Japanese state and public did not converge because a revolutionary event. Rather, it is by waiting for and implementing incremental changes through the decades that the state and the public could become one.
Notes
[1] John W. Dower, “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict,” in Postwar Japan as History (University of California Press, 1993), 3
[2] Michael Lucken, “Postwar Complexities,” in The Japanese and the War (Columbia University Press, 2013), 144
[3] Lucken, “Postwar Complexities,” 144
[4] Lucken, “Postwar Complexities,” 144
[5] Harry Emerson Wildes, “The Postwar Japanese Police,” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 43, no. 5 (1953), 658
[6] Wildes, “The Postwar Japanese Police,” 658
[7] This is similar to Michel Foucault’s Heterotopia in which two opposite features exist inside the same space. A good example of this is the graveyard because the graveyard exists in the present, allowing the families of the dead to visit, but it also exists in the past, through the collection of corpse underground.
[8] Dower, “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict,” 9
Bibliography
Dower, John W. “Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict.” In Postwar Japan as History, 3–33. University of California Press, 1993.
Lucken, Michael. “Postwar Complexities.” In The Japanese and the War, 139–50. Columbia University Press, 2013.
The Criterion Collection ; Janus Films ; Toho Co., Ltd. ; produced by Sojiro Motogi ; screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Ryuzo Kikushima, ; directed by Akira Kurosawa. Stray Dog. [Irvington, NY] : KALTURA, n.d.
Wildes, Harry Emerson. “The Postwar Japanese Police.” The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 43, no. 5 (1953): 655–71.