In The Bridge over the river Kwai, does Colonel Saito (Hayakawa Sessue) speak a specific Japanese dialect?

2 comments

1. Hello! I’ve asked mods here if I could crossroad this post here. It’s such a specific question so sorry for that.

   I saw The Bridge over the river Kwai for the first time few months ago and reacted that I couldn’t hear that colonel Saito ( acted by one time one of the biggest male stars in Hollywood, Hayakawa Sessue) spoke Japanese. I could with no problem hear that the other Japanese characters spoke Japanese, but not him. For me it was unrecognizable. However I only had the small learning of taking some basic language courses over 15 years ago that was fuelled by my weeb teenage years. AND I have a language disability that also doesn’t help me.
   Did Hayakawa speak some other dialect, or for some weird reason I can’t fathom, did he not speak Japanese at all (I doubt it, I’m guessing it’s a dialect)

   This has frustratingly taken hold of my mind and still comes up and annoy me. Does anyone know?

2. Sessue was born in Japan and lived there until he was around 18 and spoke Japanese fluently, most likely it’s just his age and way of speaking.

   Or, that he was the only native speaker of Japanese and might have enunciated less than and therefore less easy to understand.