Found Japan: Andrzej Wajda's International Inspirations

fkk-his-dom-etsuko_wajda_andrzej.jpg, default, Etsuko Takano, Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda, Andrzej Wajda, Japan, 1989, photo: © 2024 Kyoto–Krakow Foundation of Andrzeja Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatow, Found Japan: Andrzej Wajda's International Inspirations

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For international audiences and critics, no 20th century filmmaker is more synonymous with Polish cultural and national identity than Andrzej Wajda. Across the 60 years of an extremely prolific career, Wajda's work for cinema and stage repeatedly drew inspiration from Poland's past and present.

As Brooke's remarks suggest, Wajda was, from the outset, celebrated internationally as a director adept at fashioning the turbulent realities of Poland's recent past into films whose formal approach jibed with the aesthetics of the European art cinema of the period. Wajda would credit the English filmmaker and critic Lindsay Anderson's generous review of A Generation with helping to make his reputation on the global stage; that reputation would be further enhanced by Kanał's Special Jury Prize win at Cannes in 1957, followed by the FIPRESCI Prize and BAFTA nominations for Ashes and Diamonds in 1959. When, in 1990, Wajda was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement award from the European Film Academy, he was only the third director to be so honoured, after Fellini and Bergman.

Dedicating himself to creating work that could 'communicate with the audience behind the censor's back,' Wajda's cinema, and the Polish Film School from which it emerged and which it helped to define, also offered a window on Polish reality for global audiences, since the director always retained a sense of the medium's capacity to connect across cultures. 'The image,' Wajda would say, 'is cinema's essential element and its international language.'

Frame from ‘Kanał’ directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1956, photo: DPA/PAP

Perception of Wajda as a quintessentially Polish artist would be consolidated in the subsequent decades. Apart from the seminal Man of Marble (Człowiek z marmuru, 1977) and Man of Iron (Człowiek z żelaza, 1981), much of his highest-profile filmmaking and theatre work adapted classic Polish literature and plays: from Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz's The Birch Wood (Brzezina, 1970) and Young Ladies of Wilko (Panny z Wilka, 1979) through Stanisław Wyspiański The Wedding (Wesele, 1973) to Władysław Reymont's The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, 1975). Notably, while Wajda's output immediately post-communism (mostly consisting of projects that he'd previously been unable to realize due to state censorship) failed to find much favour with domestic audiences (and even less so with foreign ones), it was his 'heritage' adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz (1999) that would regain him the favour and affection of Polish filmgoers on a wide scale. The representative 20th century Polish filmmaker directing, 'in the tradition of Romanticism most close to him' (per Tadeusz Miczka), a version the 19th century national epic poem seemed both inevitable and irresistible.

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Andrzej Wajda on the set to 'Pan Tadeusz', 1998, photo: Cezary Pecold / Forum

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Added to this is the fact that, unlike many other high-profile Polish directors - Roman Polański, Jerzy Skolimowski, Agnieszka Holland, or Andrzej Żuławski - Wajda did not undergo a prolonged period of exile in the West, instead opting to remain in Poland. He would, it's true, make films and direct theatre abroad, and could even uniquely boast collaborations with actors ranging from a youthful, pre-fame Meryl Streep, in a production of the Dostoevsky-derived Camus play The Possessed at Yale Repertory Theatre (1974), to the veteran John Gielgud, in the 1979 film The Conductor (Dyrygent). While somewhat disappointed with the end result, Gielgud, in his published diaries, would reflect fondly on the experience of making The Conductor, praising Wajda as 'a brilliant, masterly director' and the Polish crew 'as defiantly hard-working and optimistic despite all sorts of dreary stringencies and lack of comfort and luxuries of all kinds.'

Christopher Lloyd and Meryl Streep in the play ‘The Possessed’ directed by Andrzej Wajda, music by Zygmunt Konieczny, 1974, Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, USA, photo: T. Charles Erikson/Yale Manuscripts and Archives

For Wajda, forays abroad were not always from choice, though. The most famous of his 'foreign' films, Danton (1982), an adaptation of Stanisława Przybyszewska's 1929 play The Danton Case which he'd previously directed in the theatre, was originally intended as a Polish production before being forced to relocate to France after the imposition of martial law. Moreover, Danton would be eagerly interpreted in allegorical terms that precisely emphasised that contemporary Polish context (see The Washington Post's article Danton and Polish Politics, for one example), with the protagonists viewed as stand-ins for Wałęsa and Jaruzelski, despite the director's denials.

Gerard Depardieu and Angela Winkler in ‘Danton’ directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1982, fot. Entertainment Pictures/ Forum

Another decisive moment for Wajda's international career would come with an invitation from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 1980s to collaborate on a project in the United States. Despite his association with European arthouse cinema, Wajda was in no sense hostile to American film; he took repeated inspiration from Orson Welles, enthusiastically praised Scorsese and Spielberg, and, as late as 2008, could be found lamenting that European filmmakers had 'never learned the American lesson of how to tell stories in a cinematic way so the audience laughs and cries at our bidding.'

However, having deliberated at length on Solzhenitsyn's offer, Wajda, aware that such a project would necessitate an extended move to the US with no guarantees of an easy return, ultimately chose to turn down the invitation and remain in Poland.

All of the above may seem to add up to a particular vision of Wajda as a figure almost exclusively concerned with, and defined by, Polishness. Yet such an account does not withstand closer scrutiny. Wajda's primary interest may have been in dramatising the history and conditions of his own nation but this focus did not preclude an engagement with culture beyond Polish borders. Indeed, Wajda was, in the words of his widow and frequent collaborator, the set and costume designer Krystna Zachwatowicz-Wajda, 'first and foremost a person very interested in the world.' This description is fully borne out by the wide-ranging references contained in the recently-published collection of Wajda's writings, Notesy: 1942-2016 (2024), in which reflections on global events, filmmakers, actors and artists abound.

The country whose culture proved particularly influential for Wajda was Japan, though his connection to it was initially established during a rather unlikely period: the Second World War. In 1944, during the German occupation, and despite his status as a Home Army member with 'bad papers,' the young Wajda attended an exhibition of Japanese woodcuts presented in Krakow's Cloth Hall. These pieces were already held in the National Museum there, having been donated by the famed art critic, dealer and patron Feliks Jasieński (1861-1929) from his private collection in 1920.

For Wajda, who studied painting before enrolling at Łódź Film School, the experience of the exhibition was a deeply formative one. The displayed works by the Japanese ukiyo-e masters excited and awakened him at an unexpected, intense and impressionable time, opening up new artistic horizons. 'It was the most difficult year of the German occupation for me,' Wajda reflected. 'But this exhibition... Well, never before had I seen so much brightness, light, order, and such sense of harmony.'

Frame from ‘Ashes and Diamonds’ directed by Andrzej Wajda, 1958, photo: Polflim / East News

It would be 26 years after that encounter that Wajda would visit Japan for the first time; he arrived in 1970 in order to promote Polish culture at the World Exposition in Osaka. There he would soon discover that his admiration for the country was a mutual one. His work had been seen and appreciated to the extent that the iconic 'look' of Zbigniew Cybulski's Maciek Chełmicki in Ashes and Diamonds had been emulated by Japanese fans of the film. According to Zachwatowicz-Wajda, the conflicted hero so indelibly portrayed by Cybulski also resonated in a more profound way with Japanese audiences, who responded to the protagonist as 'a man of honour who dies for his cause.'

For his part, Wajda's appraisal of Japanese 'character' could sound romantic but was undoubtedly sincere. 'In Japan I met people close to my heart,' he said years later. 'They have all those traits that I have been trying to develop and nurture in myself all my life: seriousness, a sense of responsibility and honour, and also the need for tradition.'

Following the first trip in 1970, Wajda visited Japan a further six times between 1980-1996, always taking copious notes and making sketches, as well as forging the friendships and creative partnerships that would deepen his connection to the country. One such association was with Bandō Tamasaburō V, the great Kabuki onnagata (a male actor specialising in female roles), whose image Wajda was instantly captivated by when he first saw it displayed outside the Kyoto theatre. An internationally active performer in various genres, Tamasaburō was known for holding audiences spellbound with his performances.

Tamasaburo Bando, Tokyo, 1990, photo: Yves Gellie/AKG Images/Forum

Seeing Tamasaburō in The Lady of the Camellias, Wajda was equally enthralled, and approached the actor with a specific collaboration in mind. This was to be a production of Nastasja, adapted by Wajda from the final chapter of Dostoevsky's The Idiot. Wajda had first developed the play as Nastasja Filipowna in Kraków in 1977, starring Jerzy Radziwiłowicz and Jan Nowicki, a highly experimental production noted at the time for taking inspiration from Japanese theatre. This time, however, the director's notion was that Tamasaburō would play two parts: that of Prince Mishkin and the play's titular heroine.

Tamasaburo Bando in ‘Nastasja’ directed by Andrzej Wajda, Japanese and Polish production, H.I.T., Say-To Workshop, TV Tokyo, Heritage Films, photo: https://wajda.pl

Despite initial reluctance about also taking on the male role, Tamasaburō finally agreed, and the piece was presented in 1989, first in Tokyo and then in Osaka, to great acclaim. Wajda described the rehearsals as 'a beautiful, fascinating' process and the experience of collaboration with Tamasaburō as 'a huge joy... there is no other actor like him,' stating that Tamasaburō's transitions between the male and female roles revealed something profound about the 'the essence of theatre, a quality that can't be created in any other medium.' Nonetheless, the pair would reunite in 1994 for a filmed version shot in Warsaw. Though received with some bafflement outside of Japan, the filmed Nastasja stands not only as an important document of a unique creative partnership but also as a fascinating synthesis of Japanese, Polish and Russian culture.

Undoubtedly the most significant visit that Wajda made to Japan was the one undertaken in 1987, when he received the prestigious Kyoto Prize, awarded in recognition of his film and theatre work. Wajda donated the entire sum of the prize money to establishing the Kyoto-Kraków Foundation, the aim of which was to construct a building in Kraków where works from the Feliks Jasieński collection that had so inspired Wajda as a young man could be properly stored and displayed.

Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko with Andrzej Wajda in Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, 2002, photo: Anna Kaczmarz/Reporter/East News

This dream project would not be realized until after the fall of communism: Zachwatowicz-Wajda has wryly recalled the suggestion of Aleksander Krawczuk, Poland's Culture Minister from 1986-1989, that the prize money could be used to fund the National Museum's new air conditioning system instead. But, aided by the tireless campaigning of figures such as Etsuko Takano, long-time director of Tokyo's famed Iwanami Hall arthouse cinema, in 1994 Kraków finally witnessed the opening of the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, situated in a bend on the bank of the Vistula.

Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, photo: Wojciech Kryński/ Forum

The building's design was by the celebrated architect Arata Isozaki, in collaboration with Kraków-based architects Krzysztof Ingarden, Jacek Ewy and JET Atelier office, and its location across the river from historic Wawel was a deliberate choice intended to signal a meeting of traditions and cultures. Still, the location of a modern edifice in this locale drew protests from some, including then-councillor Barbara Bubula, who objected to a 'non-Polish' building being created in such proximity to the Royal Castle.

Comprising exhibition and performance spaces, a culture centre, warehouses, offices, and a cafe serving dishes inspired by Japanese and other Asian cuisines, Manggha is multifunctional, but it's main aim remains to emphasise and examine the cultural connections between Japan and Poland. These include the important influence that Japan had on 19th century Polish artists and collectors, such as the pioneering Jasieński, from one of whose several pseudonyms the museum takes its name. Now celebrating its 30th year, Manggha has became a beloved fixture in the Kraków cultural landscape, and a draw to visitors to the city from all over the world.

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A work presented at ‘Andrzej Wajda. Japanese Notebook’ exhibition in Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Krakow, 2019, photo: Museum of Japanese Art and Technology Manggha, Kraków

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Reviewing Notesy for Tygodnik Powszechny and reflecting on Wajda's accounts of his travels abroad, Jakub Majmurek comes to the conclusion that 'Wajda's expeditions to the West ... always turn[ed] out to be disappointing.' Such a description could not be applied to the director's expeditions to the East, however. Drawn to what the American Japanologist Alex Kerr, in his seminal book of autobiographical essays Lost Japan (1983), has called 'the perfect balance between sensuality and ritual which are the two poles of Japanese culture,' Wajda spent his time in Japan in fruitful and creative ways. Inspiring sketches and drawings (now held at Manggha) that evidence the influence of the ukiyo-e prints, the trips allowed for immersion in a culture that fascinated him, as well as connecting him back to the 19-year-old who stood in front of invigorating art-works at the harshest moment of wartime and perhaps glimpsed something of his artistic future. When accepting the Kyoto Prize, Wajda commented on the wider significance of the award which, he said, 'creates a bridge between Poland and Japan, between the 20th and 21st centuries.' The establishment of Manggha represents a fulfilment of that bridge, a lasting legacy which speaks to the evolving story of Polish Japanese cultural collaboration, and to Wajda's vital role therein.

Tytuł (nagłówek do zdjęcia)

Andrzej Wajda Centenary

Link URL

Discover the Life & Films of Andrzej Wajda!

Language English

polish cinema

polish cinema abroad

film art