Cast of Directors

The question before the special meeting of the board of directors was as difficult as it was unique. Kokichi Obata, 57, managing director of Japan's Nagano radio and television network, wanted to take a leave of absence. And for what reason, director-san? Why, to be a movie star--to play the role of Admiral Nomura, Japan's prewar ambassador in Washington in Tora! Toraf, Tora!, Darryl Zanuck's multimillion-dollar spectacular about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The board members were dumfounded. Eventually, says Obata, they agreed because "they were convinced that if I could help tell Japan's story in the great tragedy correctly, then I should do so."

Prayers for Forgiveness. More or less the same scene was repeated by 31 other industrialists, bankers and assorted businessmen, including some of the most important in Japan. They agreed to act the roles of wartime admirals and diplomats in the movie, to be released worldwide by 20th Century-Fox about a year from now. But why put businessmen in those parts? For a very practical reason, says Director Akira Kurosawa (Rashomon, Seven Samurai), who is handling the Japanese portion of the co-production with U.S. moviemakers: there were few if any professional actors available who looked and acted like the nail-hard World War II militarists of Japan. Then Kurosawa figured that running the Imperial Japanese war machine was not so different from running the country's large businesses. Only high decision-making executives, he says, could have the style, the class and the personality of yesterday's stern naval officers.

The toughest role to cast was that of the top seadog, Admiral Yamamoto, who engineered the Pearl Harbor attack and is still a hero to many Japanese. The part finally went to an ex-army private, Takeo Kagitani, who is now the 56-year-old president of Takachiho Trading Co. (1967 sales: $27.7 million). Kagitani had no trouble getting a leave from his board. He owns some 90% of the stock in his com pany, which imports Burroughs business machines. The executive cropped his hair in the military style and visited Yamamoto's grave near Tokyo to offer his prayers. He asked the admiral's spirit, he says, for forgiveness for the "many mistakes I might commit in portraying him." Now Kagitani drives to the movie set in his white Cadillac while two secretaries read him his lines to memorize.

Like Old Times. Zanuck and 20th Century-Fox may spend twice as much on Tora! Tora! Tora!* as on The Longest Day, which cost about $9,000,000. But the Japanese businessmen-actors will cost little, if anything. Several volunteered their services without pay; others plan to turn their salaries over to charities. A key participant in the Pearl Harbor events, former Staff Officer Minoru Genda, now a member of Japan's Upper House, looked the businessmen over and was filled with nostalgia. "It was fantastic," he said, "like a reunion with all my bosses and colleagues in the old navy."

* The name is the code message used by Japanese pilots over Pearl Harbor to signal their mission's success.

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