Tsûsai Sugawara

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]

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]

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]

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.

• Tsûsai Sugawara on IMDb