When Kurosawa made a Christmas film

In Japan, Christmas is usually associated with romance and – thanks largely to a phenomenally successful marketing campaign in the 1970s – eating KFC. But the period still retains something of the Christmas spirit in the sense of a season of goodwill to all men, which sparks the opportunity for all to become their better selves.

Such is the case for the hero of Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 attack on the tabloid press Scandal. In this early Kurosawa title, made immediately before his international breakthrough with the same year’s Rashomon, a conflicted lawyer is jolted out of defeated futility by his pure-hearted daughter’s faith and eventual disappointment in him. 

The turning point arrives on Christmas Day as – to the sound of ’Jingle Bells’ on the soundtrack – Toshiro Mifune’s rebel artist Ichiro delivers a Christmas tree by motorcycle to the home of downbeat lawyer Hiruta. It’s an effort to entertain Hiruta’s teenage daughter Masako who has been bedridden with tuberculosis for the last five years. 

Ichiro and Miyako, a famous singer with whom he has become embroiled in tabloid scandal, sing carols to Masako, who is at her healthiest: a radiant angel sitting up and beaming with happiness. But the scene confronts Hiruta with his own failures both as a man and as a father. He rushes from his home and out into the night, unable to reconcile himself with the way he has treated these people who are filled with such goodness and integrity. 

When Ichiro runs after him, the pair end up at a small bar where Hiruta starts a rousing rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ one week early. Other drinkers join in, as they attempt to drown their sorrows in the frustrated hope that next year, unlike all the others, really will be different. 

Hiruta’s sin is that he has debased himself by accepting a bribe from the editor of the scandal rag Ichiro and Miyako are suing for invading their privacy. The paper snapped a picture of them at a mountain inn and printed it with a series of salacious headlines falsely claiming they are having an affair. 

Ichiro is suing on a point of principle, that the press shouldn’t be allowed to make things up and print them without fear of recrimination. Nor should they have the right to harass ordinary citizens. But cynical newspaper editor Hori has the temerity to cry press freedom and suggest that he’s being silenced by guilty parties who are embarrassed to have their dirty laundry aired in public. 

The battle is for the soul of postwar Japan as embodied in Hiruta’s own moral struggle. As Ichiro says, he’s not a bad man, just a weak one beaten into submission by a society that tells him he’s a sucker for not cheating others the way he has been cheated. 

Takashi Shimura’s haunted performance as the conflicted lawyer torn between cynicism and the goodness his daughter clings to anticipates his turn two years later in Kurosawa’s more famous film, Ikiru (1952), in which doomed businessman Watanabe experiences a late-life epiphany amid the snows of a similarly wintry Tokyo. 

In some ways, Scandal gives us the prototype for that celebrated character. In Kurosawa’s Christmas tale, like Ebenezer Scrooge or the George Bailey character in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Hiruta is saved by the goodness of those around him and the spirit of the festive season. 

He becomes his better self even if the world may need a little more time to catch up.

Scandal screens as part of our Akira Kurosawa season at BFI Southbank in January 2023.