Tsûsai Sugawara

Tsûsai Sugawara (菅原通済 or 菅原通濟, Sugawara [also Sugahara] Tsûsai [also Tsusai, Tsu'sai, Tsūsai, Tsuzai, or Tsūzai], 16 February 1894 – 13 June 1981) was a Japanese social activist, business leader, writer, art patron, and occasional actor.[1] In the West he is best known for his cameo appearances in several of the last films directed by Yasujirō Ozu.[2]

Tsûsai Sugawara
Tsûsai Sugawara in Floating Weeds (1959)
Born	16 February 1894 Kashiwa, Japan
Died	13 June 1981(1981-06-13) (aged 87)
Other names	Michinari Sugawara 菅原みちなり (real name); Tsusai Sugawara, Tsu'sai Sugawara, Tsūsai Sugawara, Tsuzai Sugawara, Tsūzai Sugawara, Tsûsai Sugahara, Tsusai Sugahara, Tsu'sai Sugahara, Tsūsai Sugahara, Tsuzai Sugahara, Tsūzai Sugahara (alternate English translations)
Occupation	Civic Leader, Businessman, Writer, Art Patron, Actor

Business career

The son of a Kamakura railroad magnate, Sugawara became a real estate developer and industrialist, notably effecting the subdivision, improvement, and accessibility of Kamakurayama (the city's mountain district) as a high-end residential area in the 1930s.[3] He bridged Ōfuna to the island of Enoshima with Japan's first toll road, and he developed and managed the region's Enoshima Electric Railway, which connects Kamakura with Fujisawa.[4]

He served as president of Japan's Construction Industry Association and was instrumental in the restoration that followed the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923.[5] A stone tablet near the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū shrine in Kamakura honors Sugawara for his contribution to the city's prosperity.[6]

Civic Activity

Sugawara's driving ambition, his passion for Japanese public policy, and his status as a “noted man of independent means”[7] led to his lifelong reputation as an influential “fixer.”[8] The American Political Science Review asserted in 1948 that Sugawara headed Japan's powerful “contractor syndicate” and provided “generous” financial support to multiple rival political parties because he “want[ed] railway contracts.”[9]

Among the politicians whose careers he cultivated was Shintaro Ishihara, a “disciple”[10] of his who eventually became governor of Tokyo. As a backer of Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida, Sugawara became embroiled in the Showa Denko corruption scandal that drove Ashida from office in 1948.[11]

Social Reform Agenda

An active social reformer, Sugawara led a public crusade in postwar Japan against the “three vices” of prostitution, venereal disease, and narcotics abuse.[7] His high-profile activities as founder and president of “The Society for the Banishment of the Three Evils” even included appearing in several crime films inspired by his campaign, three of which starred Sonny Chiba.[12]

In 1959, UPI reported a story about the plight of modern-day geisha that was culled from an article Sugawara had written for the magazine Bungei Shunju. Identified as a “financier, essayist, art connoisseur, and chairman of the council for the prevention of prostitution,” Sugawara decried that an estimated 27 percent of geisha were engaging in prostitution, a result of rising expenses associated with the lifestyle. (Citing the diminishing number and advancing average age of geisha in Japan, he also asserted that girls now “prefer[red] to become dancers, models, and cabaret and bar hostesses rather than start training in music and dancing at the age of seven or eight,” the traditional route required to become a full geisha by 18 or 19 years old.)[13]

Sugawara's top-level relationships enabled him to influence Japan's social policy also through direct appointments by Prime Ministers to various councils and committees.[7][14] Working with Shiro Nabarro, a member of Japan's House of Representatives and Chairman of both the Labor Committee and the Cabinet Commission on Narcotics Problems, Sugawara implemented a four-part plan he devised to end the nation's “serious threat” of heroin abuse in the early 1970s:[15]

1. To destroy the smuggling routes.
2. To make the penalties more severe, including life imprisonment.
3. To appeal to the general public for cooperation by enlightening them into the realization of the misery of narcotic addiction.
4. To commit narcotic addicts to treatment centers and cure them at government expense.

The plan is credited with nearly eliminating the problem “in a very short time,”[15] and as chairman of the Committee on Drug Abuse Control, which operated out of the Prime Minister's office, Sugawara served as a consultant to the U.S. government's National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse shortly thereafter.[16]

Cultural Legacy

Detail of Sugawara's own version of one of the two Japanese National Treasures that he owned which are now held by the Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation. Sugawara's interpretation, also rendered as a hanging scroll, truncates the text and includes a self-portrait. The original, created in 1339 by Seisetsu Shōchō (Ch'ing-cho Cheng-ch'eng 清拙正澄), is a death verse that chronicles a large wave soaking the stars and deities as a rod-wielding temple guardian futilely tries to stop the end of the world by chasing after the lightning.

Sugawara was an avid art collector, particularly of Japanese and Chinese antiquities, founding the Tokiwayama Bunko (Library) Foundation to hold and catalog his acquisitions, which the organization continues to display at museum exhibitions.[17] His devotion to Japanese cultural preservation is also reflected in his numerous books and essays.[18]

A friend of Yasujirō Ozu, Sugawara appeared in seven of the director's last eight films, making him a ubiquitous presence in many of the most popular and accessible works of “one of the most influential and famous filmmakers in the history of Japanese cinema.”[19] Beginning in Early Spring and excluding only The End of Summer, the brief roles enhance the movies’ historical resonance and cultural realism,[20] featuring in-jokes such as social commentary by Sugawara or references to traits for which he was known, such as his business acumen or imposing personality.

For example, in Good Morning, the Ozu film in which a viewer is most likely to infer that Sugawara is playing himself, he is asked at a bar to comment on journalist Sōichi Ōya's 1957 warning that television was part of a mass media campaign to turn Japan into “a nation of 100 million idiots.”[21] Sugawara leans back and says, “Yes. TV sets are a nuisance.” In Tokyo Twilight, the only one to feature his character in multiple scenes, he muses over a newspaper article announcing the end of legal prostitution in Japan.[22]

Sugawara received a “special appearance” credit in Kurahara’s I Hate But Love (1962), briefly playing himself on a TV panel with star Yûjirô Ishihara, brother of his protege Shintaro Ishihara.

References

1. "Sugawara Tsûsai". Kotobanku (in Japanese). Asahi Shinbun. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
2. "Tsûsai Sugawara". Movie Walker (in Japanese). movie.walkerplus.com. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
3. Kamakura, A Historical and Cultural Mosaic. The Japan Heritage “Iza, Kamakura” Consociation. 2017. p. 40.
4. "Former Sanki-en Estate in Kamakura". Japan Property Central. japanpropertycentral.com. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
5. "Landscape with Flowers". Ginza News (in Japanese). ginnews.whoselab.com. 20 January 2018. Retrieved 8 May 2019.
6. "Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine". Kamakura Citizen Net. kcn-net.org. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
7. Welfield, John (2013). An Empire in Eclipse: Japan in the Post-war American Alliance System: A Study in the Interaction of Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy. A&C Black. p. 434. ISBN 1780939957.
8. Matsuda, Takeshi (2007). Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Early Postwar Japan and Permanent Dependency. Stanford University Press. p. 76. ISBN 0804700400.
9. Wildes, Harry Emerson (December 1948). "Underground Politics in Post-War Japan". American Political Science Review. American Political Science Association. Retrieved 10 April 2019.
10. Wani, Yukio (8 July 2012). "Barren Senkaku Nationalism and China-Japan Conflict". The Asia-Pacific Journal. apjjf.org. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
11. "Arrest For Swindle". The Northern Miner. Charters Towers, Queensland, Australia. 8 December 1948. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
12. "Tokyo Seoul Bangkok Drug Triangle". Sketches of Chiba. Wordpress.com. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
13. "Goodby to Geisha Girl, She's on Her Way Out". The Ogden Standard-Examiner. Ogden, Utah. 27 September 1959. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
14. Saaler, Sven; Schwentker, Wolfgang (2008). The Power of Memory in Modern Japan. Global Oriental. p. 218. ISBN 9004213201.
15. Garner, T.G. (September 1988). "Special Needs Populations: The Drug and Alcohol Dependent Introductory Address, The Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation". Disability Information Resources. 16th World Congress of Rehabilitation International No.12. Retrieved 16 April 2019.
16. United States Marihuana and Drug Abuse Commission (1973). Drug Use in America: Problem in Perspective, Vol. 2. U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 779.
17. "About the Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation". Tokiwayama Bunko Foundation (in Japanese). tokiwayama.org. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
18. Wispelwey, Berend (2013). Japanese Biographical Index. Walter de Gruyter. p. 838. ISBN 3110947986.
19. Schoneveld, Erin (2017). "In the Style of Ozu: Critical Making and Postwar Japanese Cinema". ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts. ASIANetwork Exchange. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
20. Harding, Ryan. "Yearning For a Lost Era: Cultural Identity, Nostalgia, and the Transience of Time in the Films of Ozu Yasujiro and Wong Kar-wai". Ryan Harding. ryan-harding.com. Retrieved 12 April 2019.
21. Chun, Jayson Makoto (2006). A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots? A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973. Routledge. p. 3. ISBN 1135869774.
22. "Tsusai Sugawara". British Film Institute. bfi.org.uk. Retrieved 4 April 2019.

External links

• Tsûsai Sugawara on IMDb