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Because I Am a Poet
- The University Press of Kentucky
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Because I Am a Poet Delight, then sorrow, aboard the cormorant fishing boat. —Matsuo Basho ON JUNE 13, 1944, bombers sank three small Japanese cargo ships moored near the tiny Pacific island of Anatahan in the Marianas, 100 kilometers north of Saipan. Thirty-three of the crew swam ashore. In February 1945 a U.S. Navy party sent to retrieve the bodies from a crashed B-29 discovered what remained of the group. It included an Okinawan woman, Kazuko Higa, who had been on the island when the castaways arrived, living with the former overseer of a now-derelict plantation. No one was ready to surrender. In particular, one noncommissioned officer, Nakagawa Ichiro, remained fanatically loyal to the emperor and threatened to kill any backsliders. For five years they lived off coconuts, taro, wild sugarcane, fish, and lizards. They made huts and clothes from palm fronds. Dried papaya leaves provided a kind of tobacco, and they brewed coconut wine, called tuba. The wreck of the B-29 yielded useful plunder, ranging from parachute fabric for clothes to aluminum for cooking pots. They also retrieved two guns. One of the less combative survivors, Michiro Maruyama, used wire to make a samisen. He also kept a diary, from which he later compiled a book about their life there. 250 Because I Am a Poet 251 Pamphlets air-dropped by the United States, explaining that the war was over, were taken to be a trap and ignored. Periodic attempts by the navy to coax the group out of the jungle failed until, in June 1950, Kazuko Higa signaled to a boat moored off the island, indicating that she wished to be removed. Once she identified the remaining castaways, the Japanese government dropped letters from their relatives, begging them to return. On June 30, 1951, the nineteen survivors left Anatahan. Even when they arrived back in Tokyo, their “commander,” Nakagawa, continued to dominate them. “All attempts at conversation were brushed aside,” wrote one reporter. “They muttered something incomprehensible, pointed to one member of the group, and seemed waiting for orders.” Also in 1951, von Sternberg was visited in New York by Nagamasa Kawakita, producer of Arnold Fanck’s Daughter of the Samurai, which he had watched being filmed in 1937. Kawakita had become Japan’s largest distributor of non-Japanese films. “We talked about a co-production between Japan and the US,” said Kawakita, “which would in a way make up for the stupidity of the war. Von Sternberg proposed the story of Anatahan. He showed me the book.”1 As Maruyama’s book didn’t appear in European languages until 1954, it’s more likely that Kawakita saw the July 16, 1951, issue of Life magazine, which included an article on the survivors, with photographs. The world press took some time to ferret out the full story of what took place on Anatahan, but when it did, the reports were sensational. The Los Angeles Times headline read: “Only Woman on Island with 31 Tells of Romance. ‘Queen Bee’ Insists Only Two Men (Not Six) Died for Her Love—One Shot, Other Stabbed.” Calling Kazuko a “source of passion, love, intrigue, hatred and murder,” the Times continued: “The 4-foot-8-inch 32-year-old woman indignantly charged that lurid newspaper and magazine stories that six men were killed because of her were misleading. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘only two died because of me. One was shot and the other stabbed to death.’” The report concluded, “She plans to go on the stage of one of Tokyo’s largest theatres to tell the audience her story—daily for four weeks.”2 Though skimpy, these pieces contained all the essentials of the film von Sternberg and Kawakita would make. As for the idea that filming the story would [3.91.176.3] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:43 GMT) Von Sternberg 252 “make up for the stupidity of the war,” that aim disappeared in favor of turning a profit. Hoping for a speedy production that could be released while the story was still news, Kawakita approached the Toho company, where his old partner Yoshio Osawa was president. It had produced a number of Akira Kurosawa’s films and also owned a chain of cinemas in the United States. But Toho was switching almost exclusively to monster movies and had no interest in drama, no matter how topical. Momentum faltered until Osawa resigned from Toho and he and Kawakita formed a new...