Nora inu
Akira Kurosawa (1949)
The opening credits appear over close-ups of a dog’s head, mostly alternating shots of the two sides of its face. Later in this Tokyo-noir, one of the main detectives talks of how a stray dog can turn into a mad dog. He means human criminals, not canines, but the creature at the start could pass as either stray or mad. What’s certain is that it’s also a hot dog – tongue out, panting. This too sets the scene economically: the film’s action takes place during a heat wave. (‘It was a stifling day,’ announces an opening voiceover: it so happened I saw Stray Dog on television at my friends’ home in York, at the end of an unusually hot day there, too.) Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), recently promoted to the rank of detective in the Tokyo police homicide unit, is travelling on a sweltering, jam-packed bus when he realises a pickpocket has swiped his police pistol – a theft that sets in motion Kurosawa’s crime drama (which he wrote with Ryūzō Kikushima), released in Japanese cinemas just a year before Rashomon.
Stray Dog has several fascinations. Although he shot it largely at a rented studio, Kurosawa creates a vivid physical impression of Tokyo during the post-war American occupation of Japan. The plotting and occasional bits of dialogue also reflect the despondent national mood in the aftermath to World War II defeat. Set pieces – a club sequence focusing on the showgirls performing there, a baseball game in a huge stadium with a crowd to match – are doubly impressive: absorbing per se and at the same time relevant to the central investigation, by Murakami and Satō (Takashi Shimura), the older, much more experienced officer with whom he’s partnered, of the gun’s disappearance and its consequences. The detectives learn that Tachibana aka Honda (Reizaburô Yamamoto), a gun dealer of interest to them, is a baseball fan. A series of what are – compared with the film’s prevailing mood – almost light-hearted announcements on the stadium’s public address system, ends with a call for ‘Mr Tachibana’ to report to a location in the bowels of the arena, where Satō and Murakami take him into custody.
At the time Murakami’s Colt pistol is stolen, it contains seven unused bullets. Kurosawa’s countdown narrative sees to it that every bullet matters and leads to a conclusive woodland showdown between Murakami and the man who comes into possession of the gun. This is Yusa (Isao Kimura), a bitterly disillusioned war veteran now involved with a yakuza gang – and the stray dog liable to turn rabid. With three bullets left, he shoots Murakami in the arm but misses his target with the last two. The two men wrestle on the ground; when Murakami, despite his injury, gains the upper hand, Yusa emits alarming baying sounds. He’s the standout last leg in a relay of keening – preceded by the mother (Eiko Miyoshi) of Yusa’s showgirl lover, Harumi (Keiko Awaji); by the distraught husband (a seemingly uncredited though powerful cameo) of a woman killed by one of the gun’s bullets in a robbery at their home; and by Murakami himself, when Satō, the recipient of two more bullets, lies badly wounded in hospital.
According to Wikipedia, Kurosawa’s opinion of Stray Dog changed over the years. He was enthusiastic about it in his 1982 autobiography but had previously gone on record as describing the film as ‘too technical’, as containing ‘all that technique and not one real thought …’ Although that seems harsh, you can see what Kurosawa meant. I struggled to engage with the story, thanks to the deliberate plotting and what came to feel like a surfeit of moments supplying artful contrasts with the main action. These continue right through to the climax: a woman playing a ‘sublime’ Mozart piano piece in a room whose open window overlooks the wood where Murakami and Yusa are fighting it out; and, as their struggle ends, a crocodile of singing schoolchildren processing nearby.
It isn’t Kurosawa’s fault that the contrasting cop partnership – handsome, impulsive newcomer and ordinary-looking, seen-it-all veteran – has become so familiar since this film was made. Besides, the actors concerned make an excellent team. Toshiro Mifune, still in his twenties at the time, sustains Murakami’s nervy anxiety at a remarkably high energy level (especially given the heat). As the phlegmatic Satō, Takashi Yamura – who would go on to play the protagonist of Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952) so memorably – gives, as well as confidence to his younger colleague, a human grounding to the film as a whole. The episode in which Murakami has an evening meal at Satō’s home and meets his wife (Kazuko Motahashi) and children, isn’t at all typical of Stray Dog but it’s very welcome.
20 June 2025
