The Idiot (1951)

Masayuki Mori: Kinji Kameda

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Quotes 

• Ayako : How did it feel when you were facing certain death?

  Kinji Kameda : Everyone in the world suddenly seemed so dear to me.

  Ayako : Everyone in the world?

  Kinji Kameda : Each and every person I'd ever known. Everyone I'd ever passed on the street. And not just people - the puppy I'd thrown a rock at as a child. Why hadn't I been kinder?

• [first lines] 

  [Kameda's cries in his sleep wakes himself up and others on the train, including Denkichi Akama] 

  Denkichi Akama : That was some scream.

  Kinji Kameda : Forgive me. I was dreaming.

  Denkichi Akama : Dreaming? Sounded like you were being murdered.

  Kinji Kameda : I was - about to be shot. It's a recurring nightmare of mine. You see, I was convicted as a war criminal.

• Denkichi Akama : What ails you?

  Kinji Kameda : Idiocy. They call it epileptic dementia. I had so many fits that I eventually became an idiot.

  Denkichi Akama : An idiot?

• Mutsuo Kayama, the secretary : Allow me to introduce Mr. Kameda, a very interesting fellow. A relative of Mr. Ono's.

  Taeko Nasu : Forgive me. I took you for a servant.

  Kinji Kameda : Not at all. I...

  Taeko Nasu : But how do you know me? And why did you look so surprised when you saw me?

  Kinji Kameda : I felt - as if I'd seen your eyes somewhere before.

• Kinji Kameda : He was barely 20 years old with the face of a boy. He seemed as if in a trance, tied there to that post. Suddenly he began to tremble. He looked over at us, his eyes filled with reproach. They were the eyes of a man who had suffered alone, day and night, for a very long time. They seemed to be crying out, "Why must I suffer like this?" What torment he must have endured!

• Kinji Kameda : You've suffered alone for so long that it feels wrong if you're not in pain. You are ill. You need a kind nurse. I'll nurse you back to health.

• Kinji Kameda : When I first saw your picture, you seemed to be calling to me.

  Taeko Nasu : You see I've been waiting for somebody like you. Ever since I began this awful life as a kept woman, I hoped and prayed imagining someone like you. Hoping that a good, honest, kind man would appear. "Taeko, it's not your fault. I still respect you." How I longed to hear those words! But instead it was always just him. He'd do lewd and shameful things to me and then leave. I can't take it anymore. I'd rather die in the street than go on living like this. Yet, I'm afraid the life you envision for us is a fairy tale.

• Kinji Kameda : On such a bright, sunny day, a man burns with hope.

• Kinji Kameda : What would you do if your closest friend, as close as a sibling, were thrown in a cage and brutally beaten? You'd be miserable. You'd wish to be beaten instead, right?

• Kinji Kameda : You only know that she was a kept woman, that it began when she was only a child, and that it traumatized her. But there's more to her unhappiness than that. If you take a piece of candy from a sensitive child, she'll throw a tantrum and stomp on the candy she has left. That's how she is. It drives me mad to think how things might be if she weren't like that. She thinks her happiness will always be tainted by that wound, so she crushes whatever happiness comes her way.

• Satoko, Ayako's mother : Did anything happen that might make a mother worry?

  Kinji Kameda : I don't think so.

  Satoko, Ayako's mother : Then you can meet again.