Bridge for Passing by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online

otherwise, except by an imperious wave of his enormous hand bidding us to be seated. We sat down in low chairs around a low table and a pretty girl served tea while we waited. He broke off the conversation at last with a fierce bellow and came to greet us, all cordiality and kindness and impatience and a certain air of desperation, which later we learned was his habitual mood.
    He put aside formalities and spoke with apparent frankness—certainly frankness of the moment. I make this qualification, for I have learned even in my own country that the charming and disarming frankness of the permanent citizens of the theater world does not necessarily convey what is commonly called truth. Truth in the theater may be strictly momentary and confined within the limits of hope, expectation, or even possibly, intention. The production manager therefore belonged strictly to the theater world. He spoke in Japanese, his interpreter one of the pretty young women educated in the United States, who softened what he said without destroying its force. She was very skillful. But we did not yet really know him. That day he merely said, looking harassed, that he would do everything he could to help us, asking us only one favor. We were to allow him to arrange financial matters with the cast. Japanese film companies, he told us, were not very favorable to co-producing American pictures. Americans paid absurd salaries and made actors discontented and unruly afterward when dealing with their own Japanese companies. He banged his big fist on the table. Witness, he roared, what had happened in Italy! It must not happen in Japan! We promised, and took our leave.
    Now that we had met all the important persons, programing was the next task. In making a motion picture film, programing is as important as the assembling of input material for a computing machine. All the necessary ingredients must be provided at once and in such order that the proper result is assured. Thus we had not only to consider the arrangements with our co-operating Japanese film company, but we had at the same time to think of finding locations for the filming as well as choosing actors and composer and cameraman and all the et ceteras that go into the vast complexity of a film. Now that our picture is finished, I find that I have a great deal more respect for all motion pictures, even the bad ones, than I had before. However unsatisfactory they may be from the artistic viewpoint, immense pain and effort, many disappointments and much agony went into their making, not to mention weariness of mind and body. To make a film is big business.
    While the production manager was fulfilling his promises about helping us to find our cast, we decided to set to work on locations. Seacoast, fisherman’s house, farmhouse, a gentleman’s home and a live volcano were the sets we needed. Landscape and incident would enrich the story that was to be lived in these sets. There was also to be the tidal wave but more of that later.
    We went into consultation as to what we should do first, now that preliminary contacts had been made, and we decided upon finding locations and especially the volcano. We hoped to find everything near Tokyo if possible, for the studios are in Tokyo. Privately I had no such hope, for in my memory I saw a little village set in a wide cove beside the sea, the terraced hillside of a farm above it, and somewhere near it Old Gentleman’s house. Such a landscape was not, I was sure, to be found near Tokyo. The volcano, however, was another matter. The strange black island of Oshima is not far away from that city—only a few hours by shaky little coastal steamer, and forty-five minutes by air. We decided on the ship, still hoping that as we sailed along the indented shores we might discover a fishing village to which we could return. The ocean was likely to be rough, as we were told, and certainly the ship was small. It was a clean little ship, however, and when we went aboard it