I Live in Fear ( 生きものの記録): film locations / set-design

First-time poster context: I’m currently researching ‘Industrial architecture as cinematic stage’ for an academic-research project that I plan to publish in co-operation with the Association for Industrial Archaeology, and would welcome ‘crowdsourced’ guidance about filming locations and set-design of the iron foundry and gasholders in Akira Kurosawa’s ‘I Live in Fear ( 生きものの記録)’.

Research background: I Live in Fear ( 生きものの記録) film fits an ‘industrial’ genre of filmmaking, stretching back to cinema’s first film in 1895 (when Louis Lumiere filmed factory workers opening the doors of his camera factory in Lyon).
I’d also speculate that Kurosawa may (?) have been aware of the industrial scenes of Dziga Vertov’s ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ (1929) and in Alfred Hitchcock’s films.
In 1955 Kurosawa probably wouldn’t have been aware of Stanley Kubrick’s first colour film ‘The Seafarers’ (New York harbour) or Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Operation Concrete | Operation Beton’ but it’s a fascinating coincidence (and a fantastic visual resource for industrial archaeologists) that some of cinema’s most influential film auteurs shared a compulsion to film industrial architecture, especially since much of the industrial architecture has since been demolished or adapted (beyond recognition).
My project will geolocate and comment on:
* extant architecture (e.g. notably power-stations in Andrey Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ and Chris Marker’s ‘The Owl’s Legacy’)
* abandoned/demolished sites (Beckon gasworks in ‘Full Metal Jacket’, courtesy of set photography in the Stanley Kubrick Archive | Acton Lane Power Station: ‘Aliens’ | Cherokee nuclear plant: ‘the Abyss’ | Kaiser steel mill: ‘Terminator 2’)
*studio (?) sets (e.g. iron foundry in ‘Andrei Rublev’, printing presses in ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘Mirror’).

I Live in Fear ( 生きものの記録) is a particularly interesting film since the industrial architecture becomes an *antagonist*, i.e. part of the plot, not just a stage
(viz Kurosawa’s choice to include looming gasholders as backdrop in one of the supporting scenes).
When I watched the opening acts of the film I was convinced that the foundry filmed was in a real industrial location (in Japan), but (spoiler) having seen the final act I’m starting to think it may have been a (very-well built) studio stage with some supplementary external-location shots edited in.

The British Film Institute disc that I watched didn’t include location information in credits or booklet, so any suggestions that this community has for geolocating:
* the foundry (if ‘real’)
* gasholders

would be very welcome since I definitely want to include I Live in Fear ( 生きものの記録) as a film case study within the research (I plan to create a video-essay with the running joke: industrial architecture: it’s on a scale big enough to fit film auteurs’ egos!).

Any assistance gratefully appreciated:
Gordon Davies | Cambridge Museum of Technology | UK registered charity 1156685

Hi Gordon! This sounds like a really interesting project. I hope you can post us a link to the video essay when it’s finished!

I took a look at the available English language Kurosawa literature, but unfortunately I couldn’t find anyone discussing whether the film was shot on a set or at an actual location. For some reason I think it was a set, but as I can’t find any reference that would back that claim up, I’m hesitant to declare either way. In a lot of cases though, Kurosawa had elaborate sets built rather than using existing locations.

The Japanese Wikipedia page for the film mentions a typhoon that happened during filming and which, it writes, almost destroyed the “factory’s open set” (“工場のオープンセット”), referring to the 1959 article『生きものの記録』が出来るまで. This I suppose would suggest that it was a studio set?

Another place to look for information could be the Toho Masterworks episode of “It Is Wonderful To Create”, a series of great documentaries about the films that Kurosawa made for Toho. But while Criterion has included episodes of the documentary with English subtitles in their regular Kurosawa releases, their release of I Live In Fear came through their Eclipse line and therefore does not contain the documentary, or any other extras. This is a pity, as I don’t think the episode has been released with an English translation elsewhere, either. I also personally don’t have any access to the episode, as I don’t own the film’s Japanese release, so I can’t try to help even with my seriously broken understanding of Japanese. Perhaps someone else here might be of more help?

Also, note that the film has traditionally been called Record of a Living Being in English by many writers, as a more direct translation of the title.

Vili,
Thanks for your detailed response and source references (I’ve now also had a chance to double-check Kurosawa’s ‘Something Like An Autobiography’ and will explore the Toho publications).

As part of the due-diligence phase of my research, I will also ask iron-foundry experts from the Association for Industrial Archaeology to provide opinions
(film set or real industrial location or ‘hybrid’ cinematography), based on stills from the film; I’ve actually got the same question to ask them about the bell-foundry scenes in Andrey Tarkovsky’s ‘Andrei Rublev’ !

My aspiration is have a preview-trailer of the video-essay by mid-2025 for a couple of upcoming conferences (which I’ll share in due course),
so any other research suggestions from this community in meantime would be very welcome.