Kurosawa's Teachings on Leadership & Academe

Today we commemorate the achievements of the great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa on the tenth anniversary of his passing. Kurosawa made countless contributions to the understanding of human behavior. He provided us with one of the most impressive descriptions of the changing relationship between humans and nature with his narrative on the life of the hunter Dersu Uzalain the vastness of Siberia around the turn of the last century. In Rashomon,he tells us about the treacherous mission of a judge attempting to establish the truth in a criminal case. The search ends in the admission that objective actuality cannot be established from subjective experience, arguing profoundly for the use of the scientific method in our lives. Kurosawa's most striking contributions touch on human leadership. In one of his short films collected in Dreams,a retired officer recounts his life-long nightmare of having sent his soldiers on a mission, from which none returned. The film paints in graphic, indelible strokes the pains of war and the horrid memories that torment the man decades after the experience. It argues strongly that for their own sanity officers must go first, leading their troops into action. In Seven Samurai,Kurosawa portrays the ambiguous relationship between citizenry and military. In times of war, we love our military. In times of peace, we feel no need for it. Leadership and power pervade Kurosawa's brilliant adaptations of Shakespear's plays, transposing them into the Japan of the Shoguns and Samurai (Ran).

The master tells about the challenges of leadership most strikingly in Kagemusha.A great warlord is mortally wounded in a siege. In order to ensure the success of the campaign, his advisers decide to search for a substitute. They find the ideal candidate in the person of a beggar sentenced to die for a small crime. In exchange for his life, the man pledges to play the lord's role until the campaign is over. He resembles the deceased noble so much that even the wives and concubines mistake him. The advisers teach him the manners of life at court. The man learns his lessons and gradually adopts his new role as the lord. However, at all times he is plagued by the anxiety about wrongfully assuming the role of some one above his station. Moreover, his fear lingers that the nobles will kill him, once they do not need him anymore. But he plays his role well, so well in fact that he assumes true leadership in the most decisive moment on the battlefield.

After his formidable performance, the exhilarated advisers ask him to stay on. He declines. His ingrained sense of status forbids it. He feels that lordship is not a beggar's station. Plus, he was just a stand in, a deception. With regret, the nobles set him free. They toss him out on a country road where he resumes his old life of an impoverished vagrant. But his innocence is lost. He remains eternally tormented, witnessing that without his leadership the kingdom succombs to the onslaught of its adversaries.

This great tale offers many lessons for modern leadership. For example, academe today is still governed with a strong sense hierarchy. Young talent is hired on the promise of success and tenured once the promise is fulfilled. In U.S. research universities, the success is pegged to the amount of research dollars garnered from Federal agencies. These agencies add about 50 % indirect cost for overhead expenditures on every dollar they pay out in direct costs for the research. Only a bit more than a tenth of the research proposals is funded. However, assuming a rate of 50 % overhead American universities recover roughly $8 billion in indirect cost from grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health alone in fiscal year 2008. Without this sizable allotment, many institutions could not sustain themselves. Therefore, the pressure on the faculty to obtain federal funding is exorbitant. Established funding histories become necessary prerequisites for tenure and further promotion. This struggle consumes many a talented scientist, turning beggars into warlords they should not be, in analogy to Kurosawa's tale.

Often the energy is spent, once tenure is obtained. Creativity is drained. Productivity ceases. Soon funding evaporates. It becomes harder and harder to make a scientific contribution or even to keep up appearances. At that stage, universities have not developed adequate and effective mechanisms to realign faculty salary with performance. Offers for early retirement may leave a decade of limbo which neither the concerned faculty nor the university knows how to fill meaningfully. Administrative promotion may not provide a solution. Too easily, the Peter Principle applies. That is, faculty members are promoted to functions with ever greater expectations and fail. Since the academic promotion system is unidirectional, a sizable fraction of the hard-won Federal funding is bound to be spent on high salaries with little to show for. Frustration mounts among the involved parties, and the mind that is supposed to be preoccupied with finding the solutions for tomorrow's problems is increasingly consumed with the struggle for meaning and place in a combative environment. At this juncture, it is wholesome to reflect on one's original goals in life and on a timely strategy to negotiate a dignified and respectful path back to these goals.

In Kurosawa's tale, the beggars' decision to return to his former life was of defining importance not only for his own fate, but also for the fate of his country. The audience is left with the sense that he should have stayed on the job. His belief in predestination and his truthfulness prevented him from doing so. In our society unbound by destined fate, thorough reflection and careful planning should help us to develop and offer favorable individualized solutions, facilitating the proper choice at the opportune moment.

Addendum

• Today, National Public Radio's All Things Considered reported in a segment by Iris Mann entitled "A Kurosawa Celebration, From Many Angles" about Akira Kurosawa's achievements on the occasion of the restoration of Rashomon (11/10/08).

Limits of Brain & Mind

While I was pedaling across a beautiful college campus the other day, the above inscription caught my eye. It adorns a magnificently restored building. The statement gave me pause. I am a anatomist. The human brain weighs roughly 1,350 g and fits snug into a half-gallon pale. I looked down into my bicycle helmet. The brain does not take much room. Yet, this clump of nondescript soft tissue allows us to produce statements that bold.

The interactions between the nerve cells in the brain define who we are. Networks of nerve cells control our behavior and permit us to muse about the world around us, ponder the limits of the sky and make dreams come true. We are even able to comprehend happenings in places too distant for us to travel. We can imagine the universe. Our mind is indeed wider than the sky.

Alas, the brain is vulnerable, the mind is fragile. Injury to the brain alters the mind. Both are inseparably complementary. Rhymes formed up in my mind. I put them down in a poem with magic ink. Take six minutes and watch the words unfold in the viewer below.

Addendum

• "The brain is wider than the sky..." is the opening to a poem by Emily Dickinson who lived in the 19^th century. She was no neuro-anatomist. Her poem is more beautiful than mine.

Continuity of the Mind

Today the National Convention of the Democratic Party nominated Senator Barack Obama as candidate for the election to the highest office in the United States. His campaign for candidacy took about two years. Though conditions and means have changed decisively, the challenges that have to be met by the hopefuls for this type of position have remained remarkably similar over the past millenium.

Roughly 800 years ago an ambitious young man set out from his home in the pursuit of the highest office of his nation. It was the beginning of a long campaign trail that took him thousands of miles across the land he aspired to govern, learning about differences in culture of a diverse people and gaining insights into their daily problems. The journey was cumbersome and needed elaborate organization. Several hundred aids accompanied him. They had to set up camp, see to his security, and prepare the next moves. His message had to go out. It had to resonate. He had to convey that he understood the people's needs and that, once elected, he was going to help them. The locals had to be entertained. Vast sums of money were spent. Promises were made. Though his journey was educational, the main purpose of the endeavor was to rally support for his cause. He had a powerful and influential opponent and needed the overwhelming endorsement from people of all walks of life in order to win.

He had the professional credentials. He was formally educated to stand up to the challenges of government. He was well prepared in public administration and law. He was fluent in the legal language of his time and proficient in several other languages. However, he needed to learn the language instrumental in his struggle for national leadership: German. The majority of the people in the nation spoke German. The members of the Electoral Council considered themselves German. They met in a German city to elect the new head of state and government, and they wanted a popular leader.

This was a great disadvantage for our candidate. He had grown up in Southern Italy. He was considered a minority, an outsider. His mother was Norman. Though his father was German, our candidate conversed poorly in the high language. A superb command of German was imperative. Therefore, he campaigned much in Germany and made a great effort to learn the language. Eventually, he mastered it so well that he could write poetry. His was a brilliant mind. He dazzled those who met him. He was gregarious, smart and engaging. His sophistication impressed. He had a great gift of endearment. He attained wide popularity, becoming known as the Kid from Apulia after his birthplace in Italy where he would continue to live for many years. Apulia is quite deforested and arid today. In the our candidate's time, the landscape could have easily resembled Turner's vision.

His popularity would eventually give our candidate the edge in the election. His opponent struck a rather dull pose, though he could impress with a fabled pedigree. He was the member of a Saxon dynasty, known as the Wolves. They counted several figures of worldwide acclaim in their ranks. Alas, the Saxon did not show much political skill, reveled in military prowess and was given to adventure. On election day, the Kid from Apulia carried the vote. Though the Council of Electors had only seven members, the effort on our candidate's part was tremendous. Three electors were clergy. Our candidate had a complicated relationship with the Church. He and the Holy See held diametrically opposed views on the separation of church and state and the prerogatives of the two branches. He was to assume a difficult position.

Although he became nominally head of the nation, his governance was riddled with problems. Revenue was hard to collect. Resources beyond his own were never certain. Any decision of national importance needed the support of powerful locals who pursued their own special interests. He spent much time on the road to negotiate support for his ideas. Alliances were ever shifting, and the Holy See never seized to challenge his claims to power. The struggle would consume much of his energy and almost cost him his life. But, ultimately the Kid from Apulia is not remembered for his political achievements, but for his scholarly writings, the poetry he left behind, and his philanthropy.

He founded one of the first universities in continental Europe, the University of Naples. He enjoyed falconry. Some of his accounts on falcon behavior and training are preserved. His modern-minded examination of the subject strikes today's reader in awe. This man was determined, yet flexible. He had excellent observation skills and a brilliant analytical mind. He kept his mind open, willing to learn and embrace the unanticipated and unknown. He understood that even the most powerful can ill afford ignorance. Hopefully, the next President of the United States will be blessed with such abilities.

Who was this man? His name was Frederic. He was crowned Frederic II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations in A.D. 1220. We do not know much about his looks. Some believe that the horseman statue in the Cathedral of Bamberg is sculpted in his likeness. We are left with a bronze of his beloved hunting companions and his writings about them. The bronze is on display at the Cloisters in New York City. Pages of his treatise on falcon behavior can be seen in the Vatican Library.