Record of a Living Being: Music

There is very little music in Record of a Living Being. The theme, repeated at the beginning and the end of the film, is in some ways a very typical jazzy piece found in many contemporary Kurosawa films. But what makes it different is the instrument that gives the tune a very eerie, haunting mood, in some ways reminiscent of many science fiction films of the time.

What is that instrument? Is it a theremin?

And why, do you think, it was used in the film?

I have seen it remarked a few times that Record of a Living Being is “Kurosawa’s scifi film”. Although I take these comments to be of the less serious kind, I wonder if they were influenced by the theme music, rather than the actual content of the film, which at least in my mind has no real connection with science fiction.

While I think calling it science fiction is taking it a bit too far, I can somewhat see where it comes from as it’s a film that explores the effects scientific advancement has on people and society. The problem with this label, though, is that science fiction typically looks at something down the road and hypothesizes about how it may play out, whereas this film was merely reflecting things genuinely occurring in Japan at the time.

As for the instrument, I’m no expert, but that sounds like a theremin to me. If I may pass off a completely unresearched guess, I believe films dealing with the atom bomb were still rarely made in Japan at the time as, up until a year or two prior, the censorship of the American occupation was still in affect. But around that time, such allegorical sci fi films were a dime a dozen in the States, with the theremin being introduced as a major element through 1951’s DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. We know at least some of these films were playing in Japan because 1953’s BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS was a direct influence (from what I’ve read) on GODZILLA in the following year, and the fact that the classic monster movie was directed by Kurosawa’s friend and crewmate Ishiro Honda means he may have caught some of these with his friend, or heard about them. Maybe this is Kurosawa’s comment to them, grounding the nuclear element in an honest and realistic way instead of broad allegory.

Once again, this is pure speculation.

A few minutes ago, I watched Ikimono no kiroku – for the second time, I think – and just noticed the jazzy music at the end (the same theme at the beginning drew my attention less than the images and sounds of the street traffic, and the titles).

I was about to post here to ask about it, when I saw this topic.
Could this music have a more specific title than “main theme” ?

After a short research, it looks that Fumio Hayasaka (who composed the musical score of this film) is not known for jazz music, except maybe for the rondo part of his piano concerto in D minor (seven years before the film), which is described as a blend of japanese style, french style, and american jazz.
So, when you say, Vili, that jazzy pieces are found in contemporary Kurosawa films, could you refresh my memory about those ?
Would it be films directed without the collaboration of Hayasaka ?
(Maybe after his death, as he sadly disappeared before this film was completed.)

And to answer to your last question, the ghostly tune might be heard as if spirits of people who died because of the atomic bomb were trying to express something.
That thing could be between caution (fear ?) and praising for reasonable changes (renounce the bomb). The lively sound of jazz weighing maybe more towards the latter.

About jazz, since Brazil is part of the story, linked to Japan by migrations, and, at the time, blooming with its idiosyncratic forms of jazz (only four years after Ikimono no kiroku, comes to screen Orfeu Negro, revealing the bossa nova), this choice might have been a homage, or a criticism (jazz music with strange vibrations).

Somewhat like NoelCT, I can understand the science fiction categorization, if taken literally, as a work of fiction imagining or depicting consequences of scientific progress.

I am thinking of the stakeout scenes in STRAY DOG and HIGH AND LOW where jazzy music is playing in crowded dancehalls fills with American GIs. In both instances I feel Kurosawa is using the music to convey chaos and menace. It seems reasonable that to convey the paranoia resulting from obliteration by a nuclear weapon he would want a heavy flavor of American music in the theme to convey that same sense of menace.

There is a heavy Bernard Hermann feel to the theme, even besides the theramin. Aside from that one concession to sci-fi the theme gives off more of a noir vibe anyway. Film noir seems to fit as a genre more than anything else. A lone man, isolated by his own psychosis, driven perhaps to madness.

In my opinion, Kurosawa’s greatest work of science fiction or fantasy is HIGH AND LOW, wherein a rich man has a conscience, haha.

Hi yjmbobllns, I thought of drunken angel in terms of upbeat music. I’m not sure whether Kurosawa intentionally used american-influenced music to connote negative things, but he did say that the usage of upbeat music in drunken angel was counterpoint intentionally used when the protagonist was at his lowest moments. It’s possible that contrast was part of his motivation for I live in fear. Fumio Hayasaka’s first work with Kurosawa happens to be Drunken Angel, and there is a part in Something like an autobiography (p 162-163) about their choice of “counterpoint”. Here is somethiing from his notes on filmmaking: “Even before the camera rolls, along with all the other things I consider, I decide what kind of sound I want.” and on Fumio Hayasaka’s work with him: “… From Drunken Angel onward, I have used light music for some key sad scenes, and my way of using music has differed from the norm– I don’t put it in where most people do. Working with Hayasaka, I began to think in terms of the counterpoint of sound and image as opposed to the union of sound and image”.

I’m pretty sure Teruyo Nogami’s memoir details the situation with the soundtrack of I live in fear.

Also that does sound like a theremin.