Instead of a video post, I will be writing about one exceptional movie that was highly important for the emergence of Taiko as a modern performance art today. It had a lasting effect on Tajiri Kōzō (better known as Den Tagayasu) and was one his main motivations to found the taiko performance group Ondekoza, which is widely credited as “one of the groups to have set the groundwork for taiko as a performance art”, as they describe themselves on their homepage. The name of this special movie is “Muhōmatsu no Isshō 無法松の一生” (“The Life of Matsu the Lawless”). It features star actor Toshirō Mifune taking on the role of a poor rickshaw driver who finds himself taking care of a young woman and her difficult son after the woman’s husband dies rather suddenly. The story is thus summarized in the New York Times Movie database: Continue reading
The movie that started it all: Muhōmatsu no Isshō 無法松の一生
Great article! Just last night I read the chapter in Sean Bender’s book regarding this film and am searching online for the taiko scene from this movie. Have you ever come across it?
Also, in conversing w/ a sensei recently, he mentioned that he actually prefers an earlier version of the movie – on that predates the Mifune version. Have you heard mention of earlier versions?
Hello there, thank you for your comment!
The 1958 movie with Toshiro Mifune I was talking about in the article can actually be watched in full length on Hulu; you can only access it from the U.S., though, or via proxy. I think the Taiko scene is in the second half of the movie, somewhere around the 80-minute mark.
Yeah, there are a total of at least four versions of the movie, which I have also mentioned in the article:
The other versions seem to be impossible to get online, though. Best bet would probably be Japanese DVD shops.