Akira Kurosawa PDF

Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa (Japanese: 黒澤明 or 黒沢明 or 黑澤明

Akira Kurosawa
Kurosawa Akira; March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a
Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed 30 films in
a career spanning 57 years. He is regarded as one of the most
important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a

brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films
as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a
director during World War II with the popular action film
Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically
acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-
unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the
director's reputation as one of the most important young
filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on
another 15 films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise

winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. The
commercial and critical success of that film opened up Western
film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film Akira Kurosawa on the set of Seven
industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Samurai in December 1953
Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film Native name 黒澤明
per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a Born March 23, 1910
number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, such as Shinagawa, Tokyo,
Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the Japan
1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—
Died September 6, 1998
including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)
(aged 88)
—continued to win awards, though more often abroad than in
Setagaya, Tokyo,
Japan.
Japan
In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Resting An'yō-in, Kamakura,
Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the place Kanagawa, Japan
Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by Occupation Film director ·
AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the screenwriter ·
five people who most prominently contributed to the producer · editor
improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been Years active 1936–1993
honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies
Spouse(s) Yōko Yaguchi
in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media (m. 1945; her
formats. death 1985)
Children Hisao (b. 1945–) and
Kazuko (b. 1954–)
Japanese name
Contents
Shinjitai 黒沢明
Biography
Kyūjitai 黑澤明
Childhood to war years (1910–45)
Childhood and youth (1910–35) Hiragana くろさわあきら
Director in training (1935–41) Katakana クロサワアキラ
Wartime films and marriage (1942–45) Transcriptions
Early postwar years to Red Beard (1946–65) Romanization Kurosawa Akira
First postwar works (1946–50)
International recognition (1950–58)
Birth of a company and Red Beard (1959–65)
Hollywood ambitions to last films (1966–98)
Hollywood detour (1966–68)
A difficult decade (1969–77)
Two epics (1978–86)
Final works and last years (1987–98)
Style and main themes
Legacy
Legacy of general criticism
Reputation among filmmakers
Posthumous screenplays
Kurosawa Production Company
Film studios and awards
Documentaries
See also
Notes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
Biography
Childhood to war years (1910–45)
Childhood and youth (1910–35)

Kurosawa was born on March 23, 1910,[1] in Ōimachi in the Ōmori district of Tokyo. His father Isamu
(1864–1948), a member of a samurai family from Akita Prefecture, worked as the director of the Army's
Physical Education Institute's lower secondary school, while his mother Shima (1870–1952) came from a
merchant's family living in Osaka.[2] Akira was the eighth and youngest child of the moderately wealthy
family, with two of his siblings already grown up at the time of his birth and one deceased, leaving
Kurosawa to grow up with three sisters and a brother.[2][3]
In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa was open to Western traditions and
considered theater and motion pictures to have educational merit. He encouraged his children to watch
films; young Akira viewed his first movies at the age of six.[4] An important formative influence was his
elementary school teacher Mr. Tachikawa, whose progressive educational practices ignited in his young
pupil first a love of drawing and then an interest in education in general.[5] During this time, the boy also
studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship.[6]
Another major childhood influence was Heigo Kurosawa, Akira's older brother by four years. In the
aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, which devastated Tokyo, Heigo took the 13-year-old
Akira to view the devastation. When the younger brother wanted to look away from the human corpses
and animal carcasses scattered everywhere, Heigo forbade him to do so, encouraging Akira instead to
face his fears by confronting them directly. Some commentators have suggested that this incident would
influence Kurosawa's later artistic career, as the director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant
truths in his work.[7][8]
Heigo was academically gifted, but soon after failing to secure a place in Tokyo's foremost high school,
he began to detach himself from the rest of the family, preferring to concentrate on his interest in foreign
literature.[3] In the late 1920s, Heigo became a benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing
foreign films and quickly made a name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a
painter,[9] moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable.[10] With Heigo's guidance, Akira
devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances,[11] while exhibiting his paintings and
working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. However, he was never able to make a living with
his art, and, as he began to perceive most of the proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political
ideals directly onto the canvas", he lost his enthusiasm for painting.[12]
With the increasing production of talking pictures in the early 1930s, film narrators like Heigo began to
lose work, and Akira moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo committed suicide. Kurosawa
has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death[13] and the chapter of his
autobiography (Something Like an Autobiography) that describes it—written nearly half a century after
the event—is titled, "A Story I Don't Want to Tell".[14] Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother
also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his
three surviving sisters.[10][14]
Director in training (1935–41)

In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L. (which later became the
major studio, Toho), advertised for assistant directors. Although he had demonstrated no previous interest
in film as a profession, Kurosawa submitted the required essay, which asked applicants to discuss the
fundamental deficiencies of Japanese films and find ways to overcome them. His half-mocking view was
that if the deficiencies were fundamental, there was no way to correct them. Kurosawa's essay earned
him a call to take the follow-up exams, and director Kajirō Yamamoto, who was among the examiners,
took a liking to Kurosawa and insisted that the studio hire him. The 25-year-old Kurosawa joined P.C.L.
in February 1936.[15][16]
During his five years as an assistant director, Kurosawa worked under numerous directors, but by far the
most important figure in his development was Yamamoto. Of his 24 films as A.D., he worked on 17
under Yamamoto, many of them comedies featuring the popular actor Ken'ichi Enomoto, known as
"Enoken".[17] Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director
to chief assistant director after a year.[18] Kurosawa's responsibilities increased, and he worked at tasks
ranging from stage construction and film development to location
scouting, script polishing, rehearsals, lighting, dubbing, editing, and
second-unit directing.[19] In the last of Kurosawa's films as an
assistant director for Yamamoto, Horse (Uma, 1941), Kurosawa took
over most of the production, as his mentor was occupied with the
shooting of another film.[20]
One important piece of advice Yamamoto gave Kurosawa was that a

good director needed to master screenwriting.[21] Kurosawa soon
realized that the potential earnings from his scripts were much higher
than what he was paid as an assistant director.[22] Kurosawa would
later write or co-write all of his own films. He also frequently wrote
screenplays for other directors such as for the film director Satsuo
Yamamoto's film, A Triumph of Wings (Tsubasa no gaika, 1942). This Kajirō Yamamoto was
outside scriptwriting would serve Kurosawa as a lucrative sideline Kurosawa's mentor. Kurosawa
lasting well into the 1960s, long after he became world- was the assistant director for
famous.[23][24] over a dozen of Yamamoto's
films.
Wartime films and marriage (1942–45)

In the two years following the release of Horse in 1941, Kurosawa searched for a story he could use to
launch his directing career. Towards the end of 1942, about a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, novelist Tsuneo Tomita published his Musashi Miyamoto-inspired judo novel, Sanshiro Sugata,
the advertisements for which intrigued Kurosawa. He bought the book on its publication day, devoured it
in one sitting, and immediately asked Toho to secure the film rights. Kurosawa's initial instinct proved
correct as, within a few days, three other major Japanese studios also offered to buy the rights. Toho
prevailed, and Kurosawa began pre-production on his debut work as director.[25][26]
Shooting of Sanshiro Sugata began on location in Yokohama in

December 1942. Production proceeded smoothly, but getting the
completed film past the censors was an entirely different matter.
The censorship office considered the work to be objectionably
"British-American" by the standards of wartime Japan, and it was
only through the intervention of director Yasujirō Ozu, who
championed the film, that Sanshiro Sugata was finally accepted
for release on March 25, 1943. (Kurosawa had just turned 33.)
The movie became both a critical and commercial success.
Yukiko Todoroki played the female Nevertheless, the censorship office would later decide to cut out
lead in Sanshiro Sugata who would some 18 minutes of footage, much of which is now considered
win the heart of Sanshiro in lost.[27][28]
Kurosawa's early film.
Contemporaneous photograph from He next turned to the subject of wartime female factory workers
1937. in The Most Beautiful, a propaganda film which he shot in a
semi-documentary style in early 1944. In order to coax realistic
performances from his actresses, the director had them live in a
real factory during the shoot, eat the factory food and call each other by their character names. He would
use similar methods with his performers throughout his career.[29][30]
During production, the actress playing the leader of the factory workers, Yōko Yaguchi, was chosen by
her colleagues to present their demands to the director. She and Kurosawa were constantly at
loggerheads, and it was through these arguments that the two, paradoxically, became close. They married
on May 21, 1945, with Yaguchi two months pregnant (she never resumed her acting career), and the
couple would remain together until her death in 1985.[31][32] They had two children, both surviving
Kurosawa as of 2018: a son, Hisao, born December 20, 1945, who served as producer on some of his
father's last projects, and Kazuko, a daughter, born April 29, 1954, who became a costume designer.[33]
Shortly before his marriage, Kurosawa was pressured by the studio against his will to direct a sequel to
his debut film. The often blatantly propagandistic Sanshiro Sugata Part II, which premiered in May
1945, is generally considered one of his weakest pictures.[34][35][36]
Kurosawa decided to write the script for a film that would be both censor-friendly and less expensive to
produce. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, based on the Kabuki play Kanjinchō and starring the
comedian Enoken, with whom Kurosawa had often worked during his assistant director days, was
completed in September 1945. By this time, Japan had surrendered and the occupation of Japan had
begun. The new American censors interpreted the values allegedly promoted in the picture as overly
"feudal" and banned the work. (It was not released until 1952, the year another Kurosawa film, Ikiru, was
also released.) Ironically, while in production, the film had already been savaged by Japanese wartime
censors as too Western and "democratic" (they particularly disliked the comic porter played by Enoken),
so the movie most probably would not have seen the light of day even if the war had continued beyond
its completion.[37][38]
Early postwar years to Red Beard (1946–65)
First postwar works (1946–50)

After the war, Kurosawa, influenced by the democratic ideals of the Occupation, sought to make films
that would establish a new respect towards the individual and the self. The first such film, No Regrets for
Our Youth (1946), inspired by both the 1933 Takigawa incident and the Hotsumi Ozaki wartime spy case,
criticized Japan's prewar regime for its political oppression.[note 1] Atypically for the director, the heroic
central character is a woman, Yukie (Setsuko Hara), who, born into upper-middle-class privilege, comes
to question her values in a time of political crisis. The original script had to be extensively rewritten and,
because of its controversial theme (and because the protagonist was a woman), the completed work
divided critics, but it nevertheless managed to win the approval of audiences, who turned variations on
the film's title into a postwar catchphrase.[40]
His next film, One Wonderful Sunday premiered in July 1947 to mixed reviews. It is a relatively
uncomplicated and sentimental love story dealing with an impoverished postwar couple trying to enjoy,
within the devastation of postwar Tokyo, their one weekly day off. The movie bears the influence of
Frank Capra, D. W. Griffith and F. W. Murnau, each of whom was among Kurosawa's favorite
directors.[41][42] Another film released in 1947 with Kurosawa's involvement was the action-adventure
thriller, Snow Trail, directed by Senkichi Taniguchi from Kurosawa's screenplay. It marked the debut of
the intense young actor Toshiro Mifune. It was Kurosawa who, with his mentor Yamamoto, had
intervened to persuade Toho to sign Mifune, during an audition in which the young man greatly
impressed Kurosawa, but managed to alienate most of the other judges.[43]
Drunken Angel is often considered the director's first major
work.[44] Although the script, like all of Kurosawa's occupation-
era works, had to go through forced rewrites due to American
censorship, Kurosawa felt that this was the first film in which he
was able to express himself freely. A grittily realistic story of a
doctor who tries to save a gangster (yakuza) with tuberculosis, it
was also the director's first film with Toshiro Mifune, who would
proceed to play either the main or a major character in all but one
(Ikiru) of the director's next 16 films. While Mifune was not cast
as the protagonist in Drunken Angel, his explosive performance
as the gangster so dominates the drama that he shifted the focus
from the title character, the alcoholic doctor played by Takashi
Shimura, who had already appeared in several Kurosawa movies.
However, Kurosawa did not want to smother the young actor's
immense vitality, and Mifune's rebellious character electrified Takashi Shimura played the
audiences in much the way that Marlon Brando's defiant stance dedicated doctor helping the ailing
Mifune who portrayed the critically ill
would startle American film audiences a few years later.[45] The
gangster in Drunken Angel. Shimura
film premiered in Tokyo in April 1948 to rave reviews and was was also to star in Kurosawa's films
chosen by the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics poll as the best Seven Samurai, Ikiru, and
film of its year, the first of three Kurosawa movies to be so Rashomon.
honored.[46][47][48][49]
Kurosawa, with producer Sōjirō Motoki and fellow directors and friends Kajiro Yamamoto, Mikio
Naruse and Senkichi Taniguchi, formed a new independent production unit called Film Art Association
(Eiga Geijutsu Kyōkai). For this organization's debut work, and first film for Daiei studios, Kurosawa
turned to a contemporary play by Kazuo Kikuta and, together with Taniguchi, adapted it for the screen.
The Quiet Duel starred Toshiro Mifune as an idealistic young doctor struggling with syphilis, a deliberate
attempt by Kurosawa to break the actor away from being typecast as gangsters. Released in March 1949,
it was a box office success, but is generally considered one of the director's lesser
achievements.[50][51][52][53]
His second film of 1949, also produced by Film Art Association and released by Shintoho, was Stray
Dog. It is a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in that genre)[54] that explores the
mood of Japan during its painful postwar recovery through the story of a young detective, played by
Mifune, and his fixation on the recovery of his handgun, which was stolen by a penniless war veteran
who proceeds to use it to rob and murder. Adapted from an unpublished novel by Kurosawa in the style
of a favorite writer of his, Georges Simenon, it was the director's first collaboration with screenwriter
Ryuzo Kikushima, who would later help to script eight other Kurosawa films. A famous, virtually
wordless sequence, lasting over eight minutes, shows the detective, disguised as an impoverished
veteran, wandering the streets in search of the gun thief; it employed actual documentary footage of war-
ravaged Tokyo neighborhoods shot by Kurosawa's friend, Ishirō Honda, the future director of
Godzilla.[55][56][57] The film is considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy
cop film genres.[58]
Scandal, released by Shochiku in April 1950, was inspired by the director's personal experiences with,
and anger towards, Japanese yellow journalism. The work is an ambitious mixture of courtroom drama
and social problem film about free speech and personal responsibility, but even Kurosawa regarded the
finished product as dramatically unfocused and unsatisfactory, and almost all critics agree.[59] However,
it would be Kurosawa's second film of 1950, Rashomon, that would ultimately win him, and Japanese
cinema, a whole new international audience.
International recognition (1950–58)

After finishing Scandal, Kurosawa was approached by Daiei studios, which asked the director to make
another film for them. Kurosawa picked a script by an aspiring young screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto,
who would eventually work on nine of his films. Their first joint effort was based on Ryūnosuke
Akutagawa's experimental short story "In a Grove", which recounts the murder of a samurai and the rape
of his wife from various different and conflicting points-of-view. Kurosawa saw potential in the script,
and with Hashimoto's help, polished and expanded it and then pitched it to Daiei, who were happy to
accept the project due to its low budget.[60]
The shooting of Rashomon began on July 7, 1950, and, after extensive location work in the primeval
forest of Nara, wrapped on August 17. Just one week was spent in hurried post-production, hampered by
a studio fire, and the finished film premiered at Tokyo's Imperial Theatre on August 25, expanding
nationwide the following day. The movie was met by lukewarm reviews, with many critics puzzled by its
unique theme and treatment, but it was nevertheless a moderate financial success for Daiei.[61][62][63]
Kurosawa's next film, for Shochiku, was The Idiot, an adaptation of the
novel by the director's favorite writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The
filmmaker relocated the story from Russia to Hokkaido, but it is
otherwise very faithful to the original, a fact seen by many critics as
detrimental to the work. A studio-mandated edit shortened it from
Kurosawa's original cut of 265 minutes (nearly four-and-a-half hours) to
just 166 minutes, making the resulting narrative exceedingly difficult to
follow. The severely edited film version is widely considered today to be
one of the director's least successful works and the original full length
version no longer exists. Contemporary reviews of the much shortened
edited version were very negative, but the film was a moderate success at
Kurosawa's favorite author the box office, largely because of the popularity of one of its stars,
was Dostoyevsky, who wrote
Setsuko Hara.[64][65][66][67]
The Idiot, which Kurosawa
adapted into a Japanese
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kurosawa, Rashomon had been entered in
film version in 1951. Vasily
Perov portrait from 19th the prestigious Venice Film Festival, due to the efforts of Giuliana
century. Stramigioli, a Japan-based representative of an Italian film company, who
had seen and admired the movie and convinced Daiei to submit it. On
September 10, 1951, Rashomon was awarded the festival's highest prize,
the Golden Lion, shocking not only Daiei but the international film world, which at the time was largely
unaware of Japan's decades-old cinematic tradition.[68]
After Daiei very briefly exhibited a subtitled print of the film in Los Angeles, RKO purchased
distribution rights to Rashomon in the United States. The company was taking a considerable gamble. It
had put out only one prior subtitled film in the American market, and the only previous Japanese talkie
commercially released in New York had been Mikio Naruse's comedy, Wife! Be Like a Rose, in 1937: a
critical and box-office flop. However, Rashomon's commercial run, greatly helped by strong reviews
from critics and even the columnist Ed Sullivan, was very successful. (It earned $35,000 in its first three
weeks at a single New York theater, an almost unheard-of sum at the time.)
This success in turn led to a vogue in America and the West for Japanese movies throughout the 1950s,
replacing the enthusiasm for Italian neorealist cinema.[69] For example, by the end of 1952 Rashomon
was released in Japan, the United States, and most of Europe. Among the Japanese filmmakers whose
work, as a result, began to win festival prizes and commercial release in the West were Kenji Mizoguchi
(The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) and, somewhat later, Yasujirō Ozu (Tokyo Story, An
Autumn Afternoon)—artists highly respected in Japan but, prior to this period, almost totally unknown in
the West.[70] Kurosawa's growing reputation among Western audiences in the 1950s would make Western
audiences more sympathetic to the reception of later generations of Japanese filmmakers ranging from
Kon Ichikawa, Masaki Kobayashi, Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura to Juzo Itami, Takeshi Kitano
and Takashi Miike.
His career boosted by his sudden international fame, Kurosawa, now reunited with his original film
studio, Toho (which would go on to produce his next 11 films), set to work on his next project, Ikiru. The
movie stars Takashi Shimura as a cancer-ridden Tokyo bureaucrat, Watanabe, on a final quest for
meaning before his death. For the screenplay, Kurosawa brought in Hashimoto as well as writer Hideo
Oguni, who would go on to co-write 12 Kurosawa films. Despite the work's grim subject matter, the
screenwriters took a satirical approach, which some have compared to the work of Brecht, to both the
bureaucratic world of its hero and the U.S. cultural colonization of Japan. (American pop songs figure
prominently in the film.) Because of this strategy, the filmmakers are usually credited with saving the
picture from the kind of sentimentality common to dramas about characters with terminal illnesses. Ikiru
opened in October 1952 to rave reviews—it won Kurosawa his second Kinema Junpo "Best Film" award
—and enormous box office success. It remains the most acclaimed of all the artist's films set in the
modern era.[71][72][73]
In December 1952, Kurosawa took his Ikiru screenwriters, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, for a
forty-five-day secluded residence at an inn to create the screenplay for his next movie, Seven Samurai.
The ensemble work was Kurosawa's first proper samurai film, the genre for which he would become
most famous. The simple story, about a poor farming village in Sengoku period Japan that hires a group
of samurai to defend it against an impending attack by bandits, was given a full epic treatment, with a
huge cast (largely consisting of veterans of previous Kurosawa productions) and meticulously detailed
action, stretching out to almost three-and-a-half hours of screen time.[74]
Three months were spent in pre-production and a month in rehearsals. Shooting took up 148 days spread
over almost a year, interrupted by production and financing troubles and Kurosawa's health problems.
The film finally opened in April 1954, half a year behind its original release date and about three times
over budget, making it at the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made. (However, by Hollywood
standards, it was a quite modestly budgeted production, even for that time). The film received positive
critical reaction and became a big hit, quickly making back the money invested in it and providing the
studio with a product that they could, and did, market internationally—though with extensive edits. Over
time—and with the theatrical and home video releases of the uncut version—its reputation has steadily
grown. It is now regarded by some commentators as the greatest Japanese film ever made, and in 1979, a
poll of Japanese film critics also voted it the best Japanese film ever made.[74][75][76] In the most recent
(2012) version of the widely respected British Film Institute (BFI) Sight & Sound "Greatest Films of All
Time" poll, Seven Samurai placed 17th among all films from all countries in both the critics' and the
directors' polls, receiving a place in the Top Ten lists of 48 critics and 22 directors.[77]
In 1954, nuclear tests in the Pacific were causing radioactive rainstorms in Japan and one particular
incident in March had exposed a Japanese fishing boat to nuclear fallout, with disastrous results. It is in
this anxious atmosphere that Kurosawa's next film, Record of a Living Being, was conceived. The story
concerned an elderly factory owner (Toshiro Mifune) so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that
he becomes determined to move his entire extended family (both legal and extra-marital) to what he
imagines is the safety of a farm in Brazil. Production went much more smoothly than the director's
previous film, but a few days before shooting ended, Kurosawa's composer, collaborator and close friend
Fumio Hayasaka died (of tuberculosis) at the age of 41. The film's score was finished by Hayasaka's
student, Masaru Sato, who would go on to score all of Kurosawa's next eight films. Record of a Living
Being opened in November 1955 to mixed reviews and muted audience reaction, becoming the first
Kurosawa film to lose money during its original theatrical run. Today, it is considered by many to be
among the finest films dealing with the psychological effects of the global nuclear stalemate.[78][79][80]
Kurosawa's next project, Throne of Blood, an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth—set, like
Seven Samurai, in the Sengoku Era—represented an ambitious transposition of the English work into a
Japanese context. Kurosawa instructed his leading actress, Isuzu Yamada, to regard the work as if it were
a cinematic version of a Japanese rather than a European literary classic. Given Kurosawa's appreciation
of traditional Japanese stage acting, the acting of the players, particularly Yamada, draws heavily on the
stylized techniques of the Noh theater. It was filmed in 1956 and released in January 1957 to a slightly
less negative domestic response than had been the case with the director's previous film. Abroad, Throne
of Blood, regardless of the liberties it takes with its source material, quickly earned a place among the
most celebrated Shakespeare adaptations.[81][82][83][84]
Another adaptation of a classic European theatrical work followed almost immediately, with production
of The Lower Depths, based on a play by Maxim Gorky, taking place in May and June 1957. In contrast
to the Shakespearean sweep of Throne of Blood, The Lower Depths was shot on only two confined sets,
in order to emphasize the restricted nature of the characters' lives. Though faithful to the play, this
adaptation of Russian material to a completely Japanese setting—in this case, the late Edo period—
unlike his earlier The Idiot, was regarded as artistically successful. The film premiered in September
1957, receiving a mixed response similar to that of Throne of Blood. However, some critics rank it among
the director's most underrated works.[85][86][87][88]
Kurosawa's three consecutive movies after Seven Samurai had not managed to capture Japanese
audiences in the way that that film had. The mood of the director's work had been growing increasingly
pessimistic and dark, with the possibility of redemption through personal responsibility now very much
questioned, particularly in Throne of Blood and The Lower Depths. He recognized this, and deliberately
aimed for a more light-hearted and entertaining film for his next production, while switching to the new
widescreen format that had been gaining popularity in Japan. The resulting film, The Hidden Fortress, is
an action-adventure comedy-drama about a medieval princess, her loyal general and two peasants who all
need to travel through enemy lines in order to reach their home region. Released in December 1958, The
Hidden Fortress became an enormous box office success in Japan and was warmly received by critics
both in Japan and abroad. Today, the film is considered one of Kurosawa's most lightweight efforts,
though it remains popular, not least because it is one of several major influences on George Lucas's 1977
space opera, Star Wars.[89][90][91]
Birth of a company and Red Beard (1959–65)

Starting with Rashomon, Kurosawa's productions had become increasingly large in scope and so had the
director's budgets. Toho, concerned about this development, suggested that he might help finance his own
works, therefore making the studio's potential losses smaller, while in turn allowing himself more artistic
freedom as co-producer. Kurosawa agreed, and the Kurosawa Production Company was established in
April 1959, with Toho as the majority shareholder.[92]
Despite risking his own money, Kurosawa chose a story that was more directly critical of the Japanese
business and political elites than any previous work. The Bad Sleep Well, based on a script by Kurosawa's
nephew Mike Inoue, is a revenge drama about a young man who is able to infiltrate the hierarchy of a
corrupt Japanese company with the intention of exposing the men responsible for his father's death. Its
theme proved topical: while the film was in production, mass demonstrations were held against the new
U.S.–Japan Security treaty, which was seen by many Japanese, particularly the young, as threatening the
country's democracy by giving too much power to corporations and politicians. The film opened in
September 1960 to positive critical reaction and modest box office success. The 25-minute opening
sequence depicting a corporate wedding reception is widely regarded as one of Kurosawa's most
skillfully executed set pieces, but the remainder of the film is often perceived as disappointing by
comparison. The movie has also been criticized for employing the conventional Kurosawan hero to
combat a social evil that cannot be resolved through the actions of individuals, however courageous or
cunning.[93][94][95][96]
Yojimbo (The Bodyguard), Kurosawa Production's second film, centers on a masterless samurai, Sanjuro,
who strolls into a 19th-century town ruled by two opposing violent factions and provokes them into
destroying each other. The director used this work to play with many genre conventions, particularly the
Western, while at the same time offering an unprecedentedly (for the Japanese screen) graphic portrayal
of violence. Some commentators have seen the Sanjuro character in this film as a fantasy figure who
magically reverses the historical triumph of the corrupt merchant class over the samurai class. Featuring
Tatsuya Nakadai in his first major role in a Kurosawa movie, and with innovative photography by Kazuo
Miyagawa (who shot Rashomon) and Takao Saito, the film premiered in April 1961 and was a critically
and commercially successful venture, earning more than any previous Kurosawa film. The movie and its
blackly comic tone were also widely imitated abroad. Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars was a virtual
(unauthorized) scene-by-scene remake with Toho filing a lawsuit on Kurosawa's behalf and
prevailing.[97][98][99]
Following the success of Yojimbo, Kurosawa found himself under pressure from Toho to create a sequel.
Kurosawa turned to a script he had written before Yojimbo, reworking it to include the hero of his
previous film. Sanjuro was the first of three Kurosawa films to be adapted from the work of the writer
Shūgorō Yamamoto (the others would be Red Beard and Dodeskaden). It is lighter in tone and closer to a
conventional period film than Yojimbo, though its story of a power struggle within a samurai clan is
portrayed with strongly comic undertones. The film opened on January 1, 1962, quickly surpassing
Yojimbo's box office success and garnering positive reviews.[100][101][102]
Kurosawa had meanwhile instructed Toho to purchase the film rights to King's Ransom, a novel about a
kidnapping written by American author and screenwriter Evan Hunter, under his pseudonym of Ed
McBain, as one of his 87th Precinct series of crime books. The director intended to create a work
condemning kidnapping, which he considered one of the very worst crimes. The suspense film, titled
High and Low, was shot during the latter half of 1962 and released in March 1963. It broke Kurosawa's
box office record (the third film in a row to do so), became the highest grossing Japanese film of the year,
and won glowing reviews. However, his triumph was somewhat tarnished when, ironically, the film was
blamed for a wave of kidnappings which occurred in Japan about this
time (he himself received kidnapping threats directed at his young
daughter, Kazuko). High and Low is considered by many commentators
to be among the director's strongest works.[103][104][105][106]
Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, Red Beard. Based on a

short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto and incorporating elements
from Dostoyevsky's novel The Insulted and Injured, it is a period film,
set in a mid-nineteenth century clinic for the poor, in which Kurosawa's
humanist themes receive perhaps their fullest statement. A conceited and
materialistic, foreign-trained young doctor, Yasumoto, is forced to
become an intern at the clinic under the stern tutelage of Doctor Niide,
known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), played by Mifune. Although he Kurosawa based his 1963
resists Red Beard initially, Yasumoto comes to admire his wisdom and crime film High and Low on
courage, and to perceive the patients at the clinic, whom he at first the American author Ed
despised, as worthy of compassion and dignity.[107] McBain's novel King's
Ransom. Image of Ed
Yūzō Kayama, who plays Yasumoto, was an extremely popular film and McBain c. 2001.
music star at the time, particularly for his "Young Guy" (Wakadaishō)
series of musical comedies, so signing him to appear in the film virtually
guaranteed Kurosawa strong box-office. The shoot, the filmmaker's longest ever, lasted well over a year
(after five months of pre-production), and wrapped in spring 1965, leaving the director, his crew and his
actors exhausted. Red Beard premiered in April 1965, becoming the year's highest-grossing Japanese
production and the third (and last) Kurosawa film to top the prestigious Kinema Jumpo yearly critics
poll. It remains one of Kurosawa's best-known and most-loved works in his native country. Outside
Japan, critics have been much more divided. Most commentators concede its technical merits and some
praise it as among Kurosawa's best, while others insist that it lacks complexity and genuine narrative
power, with still others claiming that it represents a retreat from the artist's previous commitment to
social and political change.[108][109][110][111]
The film marked something of an end of an era for its creator. The director himself recognized this at the
time of its release, telling critic Donald Richie that a cycle of some kind had just come to an end and that
his future films and production methods would be different.[112] His prediction proved quite accurate.
Beginning in the late 1950s, television began increasingly to dominate the leisure time of the formerly
large and loyal Japanese cinema audience. And as film company revenues dropped, so did their appetite
for risk—particularly the risk represented by Kurosawa's costly production methods.[113]
Red Beard also marked the midway point, chronologically, in the artist's career. During his previous
twenty-nine years in the film industry (which includes his five years as assistant director), he had directed
twenty-three films, while during the remaining twenty-eight years, for many and complex reasons, he
would complete only seven more. Also, for reasons never adequately explained, Red Beard would be his
final film starring Toshiro Mifune. Yu Fujiki, an actor who worked on The Lower Depths, observed,
regarding the closeness of the two men on the set, "Mr. Kurosawa's heart was in Mr. Mifune's body."[114]
Donald Richie has described the rapport between them as a unique "symbiosis".[115]
Hollywood ambitions to last films (1966–98)

Hollywood detour (1966–68)
When Kurosawa's exclusive contract with Toho came to an end in 1966, the 56-year-old director was
seriously contemplating change. Observing the troubled state of the domestic film industry, and having
already received dozens of offers from abroad, the idea of working outside Japan appealed to him as
never before.[116]
For his first foreign project, Kurosawa chose a story based on a Life magazine article. The Embassy
Pictures action thriller, to be filmed in English and called simply Runaway Train, would have been his
first in color. But the language barrier proved a major problem, and the English version of the screenplay
was not even finished by the time filming was to begin in autumn 1966. The shoot, which required snow,
was moved to autumn 1967, then canceled in 1968. Almost two decades later, another foreign director
working in Hollywood, Andrei Konchalovsky, finally made Runaway Train (1985), though from a new
script loosely based on Kurosawa's.[117]
The director meanwhile had become involved in a much more ambitious Hollywood project. Tora! Tora!
Tora!, produced by 20th Century Fox and Kurosawa Production, would be a portrayal of the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor from both the American and the Japanese points-of-view, with Kurosawa helming
the Japanese half and an English-speaking filmmaker directing the American half. He spent several
months working on the script with Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, but very soon the project began
to unravel. The director of the American sequences turned out not to be David Lean, as originally
planned, but American Richard Fleischer. The budget was also cut, and the screen time allocated for the
Japanese segment would now be no longer than 90 minutes—a major problem, considering that
Kurosawa's script ran over four hours. After numerous revisions with the direct involvement of Darryl
Zanuck, a more or less finalized cut screenplay was agreed upon in May 1968.
Shooting began in early December, but Kurosawa would last only a little over three weeks as director. He
struggled to work with an unfamiliar crew and the requirements of a Hollywood production, while his
working methods puzzled his American producers, who ultimately concluded that the director must be
mentally ill. Kurosawa was examined at Kyoto University Hospital by a neuropsychologist, Dr.
Murakami, whose diagnosis was forwarded to Darryl Zanuck and Richard Zanuck at Fox studios
indicating a diagnosis of neurasthenia stating that, "He is suffering from disturbance of sleep, agitated
with feelings of anxiety and in manic excitement caused by the above mentioned illness. It is necessary
for him to have rest and medical treatment for more than two months."[118] On Christmas Eve 1968, the
Americans announced that Kurosawa had left the production due to "fatigue", effectively firing him. He
was ultimately replaced, for the film's Japanese sequences, with two directors, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio
Masuda.[119]
Tora! Tora! Tora!, finally released to unenthusiastic reviews in September 1970, was, as Donald Richie
put it, an "almost unmitigated tragedy" in Kurosawa's career. He had spent years of his life on a
logistically nightmarish project to which he ultimately did not contribute a foot of film shot by himself.
(He had his name removed from the credits, though the script used for the Japanese half was still his and
his co-writers'.) He became estranged from his longtime collaborator, writer Ryuzo Kikushima, and never
worked with him again. The project had inadvertently exposed corruption in his own production
company (a situation reminiscent of his own movie, The Bad Sleep Well). His very sanity had been called
into question. Worst of all, the Japanese film industry—and perhaps the man himself—began to suspect
that he would never make another film.[120][121]
A difficult decade (1969–77)

Knowing that his reputation was at stake following the much publicised Tora! Tora! Tora! debacle,
Kurosawa moved quickly to a new project to prove he was still viable. To his aid came friends and famed
directors Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi and Kon Ichikawa, who together with Kurosawa
established in July 1969 a production company called the Club of the Four Knights (Yonki no kai).
Although the plan was for the four directors to create a film each, it has been suggested that the real
motivation for the other three directors was to make it easier for Kurosawa to successfully complete a
film, and therefore find his way back into the business.[122][123]
The first project proposed and worked on was a period film to be called Dora-heita, but when this was
deemed too expensive, attention shifted to Dodesukaden, an adaptation of yet another Shūgorō
Yamamoto work, again about the poor and destitute. The film was shot quickly (by Kurosawa's
standards) in about nine weeks, with Kurosawa determined to show he was still capable of working
quickly and efficiently within a limited budget. For his first work in color, the dynamic editing and
complex compositions of his earlier pictures were set aside, with the artist focusing on the creation of a
bold, almost surreal palette of primary colors, in order to reveal the toxic environment in which the
characters live. It was released in Japan in October 1970, but though a minor critical success, it was
greeted with audience indifference. The picture lost money and caused the Club of the Four Knights to
dissolve. Initial reception abroad was somewhat more favorable, but Dodesukaden has since been
typically considered an interesting experiment not comparable to the director's best work.[124]
Unable to secure funding for further work and allegedly suffering from health problems, Kurosawa
apparently reached the breaking point: on December 22, 1971, he slit his wrists and throat multiple times.
The suicide attempt proved unsuccessful and the director's health recovered fairly quickly, with
Kurosawa now taking refuge in domestic life, uncertain if he would ever direct another film.[125]
In early 1973, the Soviet studio Mosfilm approached the filmmaker to ask if he would be interested in
working with them. Kurosawa proposed an adaptation of Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev's
autobiographical work Dersu Uzala. The book, about a Goldi hunter who lives in harmony with nature
until destroyed by encroaching civilization, was one that he had wanted to make since the 1930s. In
December 1973, the 63-year-old Kurosawa set off for the Soviet Union with four of his closest aides,
beginning a year-and-a-half stay in the country. Shooting began in May 1974 in Siberia, with filming in
exceedingly harsh natural conditions proving very difficult and demanding. The picture wrapped in April
1975, with a thoroughly exhausted and homesick Kurosawa returning to Japan and his family in June.
Dersu Uzala had its world premiere in Japan on August 2, 1975, and did well at the box office. While
critical reception in Japan was muted, the film was better reviewed abroad, winning the Golden Prize at
the 9th Moscow International Film Festival,[126] as well as an Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film. Today, critics remain divided over the film: some see it as an example of Kurosawa's
alleged artistic decline, while others count it among his finest works.[127][128]
Although proposals for television projects were submitted to him, he had no interest in working outside
the film world. Nevertheless, the hard-drinking director did agree to appear in a series of television ads
for Suntory whiskey, which aired in 1976. While fearing that he might never be able to make another
film, the director nevertheless continued working on various projects, writing scripts and creating
detailed illustrations, intending to leave behind a visual record of his plans in case he would never be able
to film his stories.[129]
Two epics (1978–86)

In 1977, American director George Lucas released Star Wars, a wildly successful science fiction film
influenced by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, among other works. Lucas, like many other New
Hollywood directors, revered Kurosawa and considered him a role model, and was shocked to discover
that the Japanese filmmaker was unable to secure financing for any new work. The two met in San
Francisco in July 1978 to discuss the project Kurosawa considered most financially viable: Kagemusha,
the epic story of a thief hired as the double of a medieval Japanese lord of a great clan. Lucas, enthralled
by the screenplay and Kurosawa's illustrations, leveraged his influence over 20th Century Fox to coerce
the studio that had fired Kurosawa just ten years earlier to produce Kagemusha, then recruited fellow fan
Francis Ford Coppola as co-producer.[130]
Production began the following April, with Kurosawa in high spirits. Shooting lasted from June 1979
through March 1980 and was plagued with problems, not the least of which was the firing of the original
lead actor, Shintaro Katsu—creator of the very popular Zatoichi character—due to an incident in which
the actor insisted, against the director's wishes, on videotaping his own performance. (He was replaced
by Tatsuya Nakadai, in his first of two consecutive leading roles in a Kurosawa movie.) The film was
completed only a few weeks behind schedule and opened in Tokyo in April 1980. It quickly became a
massive hit in Japan. The film was also a critical and box office success abroad, winning the coveted
Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival in May, though some critics, then and now, have faulted the
film for its alleged coldness. Kurosawa spent much of the rest of the year in Europe and America
promoting Kagemusha, collecting awards and accolades, and exhibiting as art the drawings he had made
to serve as storyboards for the film.[131][132]
The international success of Kagemusha allowed Kurosawa to

proceed with his next project, Ran, another epic in a similar vein.
The script, partly based on William Shakespeare's King Lear,
depicted a ruthless, bloodthirsty daimyō (warlord), played by
Tatsuya Nakadai, who, after foolishly banishing his one loyal
son, surrenders his kingdom to his other two sons, who then
betray him, thus plunging the entire kingdom into war. As
Japanese studios still felt wary about producing another film that
would rank among the most expensive ever made in the country,
international help was again needed. This time it came from
French producer Serge Silberman, who had produced Luis
Buñuel's final movies. Filming did not begin until December
Sidney Lumet successfully effected a 1983 and lasted more than a year.[133]
nomination for Kurosawa as Best
Director for his film Ran at the 58th In January 1985, production of Ran was halted as Kurosawa's 64-
Academy Awards which was year-old wife Yōko fell ill. She died on February 1. Kurosawa
ultimately won by Sidney Pollack for
returned to finish his film and Ran premiered at the Tokyo Film
Out of Africa.
Festival on 31 May, with a wide release the next day. The film
was a moderate financial success in Japan, but a larger one
abroad and, as he had done with Kagemusha, Kurosawa embarked on a trip to Europe and America,
where he attended the film's premieres in September and October.[134]
Ran won several awards in Japan, but was not quite as honored there as many of the director's best films
of the 1950s and 1960s had been. The film world was surprised, however, when Japan passed over the
selection of Ran in favor of another film as its official entry to compete for an Oscar nomination in the
Best Foreign Film category, which was ultimately rejected for competition at the 58th Academy Awards.
Both the producer and Kurosawa himself attributed the failure to even submit Ran for competition to a
misunderstanding: because of the Academy's arcane rules, no one was sure whether Ran qualified as a
Japanese film, a French film (due to its financing), or both, so it was not submitted at all. In response to
what at least appeared to be a blatant snub by his own countrymen, the director Sidney Lumet led a
successful campaign to have Kurosawa receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director that year (Sydney
Pollack ultimately won the award for directing Out of Africa). Ran's costume designer, Emi Wada, won
the movie's only Oscar.[135][136]
Kagemusha and Ran, particularly the latter, are often considered to be among Kurosawa's finest works.
After Ran's release, Kurosawa would point to it as his best film, a major change of attitude for the
director who, when asked which of his works was his best, had always previously answered "my next
one".[137][138]
Final works and last years (1987–98)

For his next movie, Kurosawa chose a subject very different from any that he had ever filmed before.
While some of his previous pictures (for example, Drunken Angel and Kagemusha) had included brief
dream sequences, Dreams was to be entirely based upon the director's own dreams. Significantly, for the
first time in over forty years, Kurosawa, for this deeply personal project, wrote the screenplay alone.
Although its estimated budget was lower than the films immediately preceding it, Japanese studios were
still unwilling to back one of his productions, so Kurosawa turned to another famous American fan,
Steven Spielberg, who convinced Warner Bros. to buy the international rights to the completed film. This
made it easier for Kurosawa's son, Hisao, as co-producer and soon-to-be head of Kurosawa Production,
to negotiate a loan in Japan that would cover the film's production costs. Shooting took more than eight
months to complete, and Dreams premiered at Cannes in May 1990 to a polite but muted reception,
similar to the reaction the picture would generate elsewhere in the world.[139] In 1990, he accepted the
Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.[140]
Kurosawa now turned to a more conventional story with

Rhapsody in August—the director's first film fully produced in
Japan since Dodeskaden over twenty years before—which
explored the scars of the nuclear bombing which destroyed
Nagasaki at the very end of World War II. It was adapted from a
Kiyoko Murata novel, but the film's references to the Nagasaki
bombing came from the director rather than from the book. This
was his only movie to include a role for an American movie star:
Richard Gere, who plays a small role as the nephew of the elderly
heroine. Shooting took place in early 1991, with the film opening
on 25 May that year to a largely negative critical reaction,
especially in the United States, where the director was accused of
promulgating naïvely anti-American sentiments,[141][142] though
Kurosawa rejected these accusations.
Steven Spielberg was instrumental in
Kurosawa wasted no time moving onto his next project: the financing and production of
Madadayo, or Not Yet. Based on autobiographical essays by several of Kurosawa's final films.
Hyakken Uchida, the film follows the life of a Japanese professor Spielberg at his masterclass at the
of German through the Second World War and beyond. The Cinémathèque Française in 2012.
narrative centers on yearly birthday celebrations with his former
students, during which the protagonist declares his unwillingness to die just yet—a theme that was
becoming increasingly relevant for the film's 81-year-old creator. Filming began in February 1992 and
wrapped by the end of September. Its release on April 17, 1993, was greeted by an even more
disappointed reaction than had been the case with his two preceding works.[143]
Kurosawa nevertheless continued to work. He wrote the original screenplays The Sea is Watching in
1993 and After the Rain in 1995. While putting finishing touches on the latter work in 1995, Kurosawa
slipped and broke the base of his spine. Following the accident, he would use a wheelchair for the rest of
his life, putting an end to any hopes of him directing another film.[144] His longtime wish—to die on the
set while shooting a movie[142][145]—was never to be fulfilled.
After his accident, Kurosawa's health began to deteriorate. While his mind remained sharp and lively, his
body was giving up, and for the last half-year of his life, the director was largely confined to bed,
listening to music and watching television at home. On September 6, 1998, Kurosawa died of a stroke in
Setagaya, Tokyo, at the age of 88.[146][147] At the time of his death, Kurosawa had two children, his son
Hisao Kurosawa who married Hiroko Hayashi and his daughter Kazuko Kurosawa who married
Harayuki Kato, along with several grandchildren.[33] One of his grandchildren, the actor Takayuki Kato
and grandson by Kazuko, became a supporting actor in two films posthumously developed from
screenplays written by Kurosawa which remained unproduced during his own lifetime, Takashi
Koizumi's After the Rain (1999) and Kei Kumai's The Sea is Watching (2002).[148]
Style and main themes

From the beginning, Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema
yet quite distinct from it. Kurosawa was extensively involved with every aspect of film production.[149]
He was also a gifted screenwriter, and would usually work in close collaboration with his co-writers from
the beginning of the development of a film to ensure a high-quality script, which he insisted was the
absolute foundation of a good film. He frequently served as editor of his own films and was regarded by
his production team as "the greatest editor in the world". Though it was common in the Japanese film
industry of that time for established directors to assemble around them a team, or "-gumi", with people
drawn from the same pool of creative technicians, crew members and actors working from film to film
(for example, the director Hiroshi Inagaki, who worked at Toho during the same period as Kurosawa, had
such a team), Kurosawa's team, known as the "Kurosawa-gumi" (Kurosawa group)—including, for
example, the cinematographer Asakazu Nakai, the production assistant Teruyo Nogami and the actor
Takashi Shimura—was remarkable for its loyalty to the director and the consistent quality of its work.
Kurosawa's style is marked by a number of devices and techniques which Kurosawa introduced in his
films over the decades. In his films of the 1940s and 1950s, Kurosawa frequently employs the "axial cut",
in which the camera moves closer to, or further away from, the subject, not through the use of tracking
shots or dissolves, but through a series of matched jump cuts.[150] Another stylistic trait which scholars
have pointed out is Kurosawa's tendency to "cut on motion": that is, to edit a sequence of a character or
characters in motion so that an action is depicted in two or more separate shots, rather than one
uninterrupted shot.[151]
A form of cinematic punctuation very strongly identified with Kurosawa is the wipe. This is an effect
created through an optical printer, in which, when a scene ends, a line or bar appears to move across the
screen, "wiping" away the image while simultaneously revealing the first image of the subsequent scene.
As a transitional device, it is used as a substitute for the straight cut or the dissolve (though Kurosawa
often used both of those devices as well). In his mature work, Kurosawa employed the wipe so frequently
that it became a kind of signature. For example, one blogger has counted no fewer than 12 instances of
the wipe in Drunken Angel.[152] Kurosawa by all accounts always gave great attention to the soundtracks
of his films, especially with an emphasis on sound-image counterpoint, in which the music or sound
effects would ironically comment upon the image rather than merely reinforcing it. (Teruyo Nogami's
memoir gives several such examples from Drunken Angel and Stray Dog.) He was also involved with
several of Japan's outstanding contemporary composers, including Fumio Hayasaka (who died in 1955)
and the internationally famous Tōru Takemitsu.[153]
Kurosawa employed a number of recurring major themes in his films. These include: (a) the master-
disciple relationship between a usually older mentor and one or more novices, which often involves
spiritual as well as technical mastery and self-mastery; (b) the heroic champion, the exceptional
individual who emerges from the mass of people to produce something or right some injustice; (c) the
depiction of extremes of weather as both dramatic devices and symbols of human passion; and (d) the
recurrence of cycles of inexorable savage violence within history. According to Stephen Prince, the latter
theme began with Throne of Blood (1957), and recurred in Kurosawa films of the 1980s. Mr. Prince calls
this theme "the countertradition to the committed, heroic mode of Kurosawa's cinema".[154]
Legacy
Legacy of general criticism

Since the early to mid-1950s, a number of critics from the French New Wave championed the films of
the older Japanese master, Kenji Mizoguchi, at the expense of Kurosawa's work. New Wave critic-
filmmaker Jacques Rivette, said: "You can compare only what is comparable and that which aims high
enough ... [Mizoguchi] seems to be the only Japanese director who is completely Japanese and yet is also
the only one that achieves a true universality, that of an individual."[155] According to such French
commentators, Mizoguchi seemed, of the two artists, the more authentically Japanese. But at least one
film scholar has questioned the validity of this dichotomy between "Japanese" Mizoguchi and "Western"
Kurosawa by pointing out that "Mizo" had been at least as much influenced by Western cinema and
Western culture in general as Kurosawa had ever been, and that this awareness of foreign trends is
reflected in his work.[156]
In Japan, there have been critics and other filmmakers who have accused Kurosawa's work of elitism,
because of his focus on exceptional, heroic individuals and groups of men. In her DVD commentary on
Seven Samurai, Joan Mellen maintains that certain shots of the samurai characters Kambei and Kyuzo,
which as far as she is concerned reveal Kurosawa "privileging" these samurai, "support the argument
voiced by several Japanese critics that Kurosawa was an elitist ... Kurosawa was hardly a progressive
director, they argued, since his peasants could not discover among their own ranks leaders who might
rescue the village ... Kurosawa defended himself against this charge in his interview with me. 'I wanted to
say that after everything the peasants were the stronger, closely clinging to the earth ... It was the samurai
who were weak because they were being blown by the winds of time.' "[151][157]
Owing to Kurosawa's popularity with European and American audiences from the early 1950s onward,
he did not escape the charge of deliberately catering to the tastes of Westerners to achieve or maintain
that popularity. Joan Mellen, recording the violently negative reaction (in the 1970s) of the left-wing
director Nagisa Oshima to Kurosawa and his work, states: "That Kurosawa had brought Japanese film to
a Western audience meant [to Oshima] that he must be pandering to Western values and politics."[158]
Kurosawa always strongly denied pandering to Western tastes: "He has never catered to a foreign
audience" writes Audie Bock, "and has condemned those who do".[159]
Reputation among filmmakers

Many celebrated directors have been influenced by Kurosawa and have expressed admiration for his
work. The filmmakers cited below can be presented according to four categories: (a) those who, like
Kurosawa himself, established international critical reputations in the 1950s and early 1960s; (b) the so-
called "New Hollywood" directors, that is, American moviemakers who, for the most part, established
their reputations in the early to mid-1970s; (c) other Asian directors; and (d) modern-day directors.
The Swedish director Ingmar Bergman called his own film The Virgin
Spring "touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa", and added, "At that
time my admiration for the Japanese cinema was at its height. I was
almost a samurai myself!"[160] In Italy, Federico Fellini in an interview
declared the director "the greatest living example of all that an author of
the cinema should be"—despite admitting to having seen only one of
his films, Seven Samurai.[161] In France, Roman Polanski in 1965 cited
Kurosawa as one of his three favorite filmmakers (with Fellini and
Orson Welles), singling out Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and The
Hidden Fortress for praise.[162] The Italian director Bernardo
Bertolucci considered the Japanese master's influence to be seminal:
"Kurosawa's movies and La Dolce Vita of Fellini are the things that
A bust of the Swedish director pushed me, sucked me into being a film director."[163] German New
Ingmar Bergman, located in Wave director Werner Herzog has cited Kurosawa as one of his greatest
Poland. Kurosawa was influences: "Of the filmmakers with whom I feel some kinship,
several years Bergman's Griffith ... Buñuel, Kurosawa and Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, all
senior and admired him as a
come to mind."[164] When asked to list his favorite directors, Russian
fellow craftsman, writing him a
commemorative letter at his
director Andrei Tarkovsky cited Kurosawa as one of his favorites and
70th birthday. named Seven Samurai[165] as one of his ten favorite films.
According to his personal assistant Anthony Frewin, Stanley Kubrick

"thought Kurosawa was one of the great film directors and followed him closely. In fact I cannot think of
any other director he spoke so consistently and admiringly about. So, if Kubrick was cast away on a
desert island and could only take a few films, what would they be? My money would be on The Battle of
Algiers, Danton, Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood."[166]
Kurosawa's New Hollywood admirers have included Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven
Spielberg,[167] Martin Scorsese, George Lucas,[168] and John Milius.[169] In his early years while still a
television director, Robert Altman stated that when he first saw Rashomon he was so impressed by its
cinematographer's achievement of shooting several shots with the camera aimed directly at the sun—
allegedly it was the first film in which this was done successfully—that he claims he was inspired the
very next day to begin incorporating shots of the sun into his television work.[170] It was Coppola who
said of Kurosawa, "One thing that distinguishes [him] is that he didn't make one masterpiece or two
masterpieces. He made, you know, eight masterpieces."[171] Both Spielberg and Scorsese have praised
the older man's role as teacher and role model, and Scorsese called him his sensei, using the Japanese
term.[172] Spielberg has declared, "I have learned more from him than from almost any other filmmaker
on the face of the earth",[168] while Scorsese remarked, "Let me say it simply: Akira Kurosawa was my
master, and ... the master of so many other filmmakers over the years."[168] Several of these moviemakers
were also instrumental in helping Kurosawa obtain financing for his late films: Lucas and Coppola
served as co-producers on Kagemusha,[130] while the Spielberg name, lent to the 1990 production,
Dreams, helped bring that picture to fruition.[139]
As the first Asian filmmaker to achieve international prominence, Kurosawa has naturally served as an
inspiration for other Asian auteurs. Of Rashomon, the most famous director of India, Satyajit Ray, said:
"The effect of the film on me [upon first seeing it in Calcutta in 1952] was electric. I saw it three times on
consecutive days, and wondered each time if there was another film anywhere which gave such sustained
and dazzling proof of a director's command over every aspect of film making."[173] Other Asian admirers
include the Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano,[174] Hong Kong filmmaker John
Woo,[175][176][177] Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki[178] and mainland Chinese director Zhang
Yimou, who called Kurosawa "the quintessential Asian director".[179]
Even today, Kurosawa continues to inspire and influence contemporary filmmakers. Alexander Payne
spent the early part of his career watching Kurosawa's films, most notably Seven Samurai and Ikiru.[180]
Guillermo del Toro referred to Kurosawa "one of the essential masters", citing Throne of Blood, High and
Low and Ran as among his favorite films.[181] Kathryn Bigelow praised Kurosawa as one of "high-
impact filmmakers" who can create emotionally invested characters.[182] J.J. Abrams says he drew from
Kurosawa while making Star Wars: the Force Awakens.[183] At the age of 19, Alejandro González
Iñárritu remembers being spellbound when he first saw Ikiru and praises Kurosawa as "one of the first
storytelling geniuses who began to change the narrative structure of films".[184] When Spike Lee posted a
list of 87 films every aspiring director should see, he included three Kurosawa movies: Rashomon,
Yojimbo and Ran.[185]
Posthumous screenplays
Following Kurosawa's death, several posthumous works based on his unfilmed screenplays have been
produced. After the Rain, directed by Takashi Koizumi, was released in 1999,[186][187] and The Sea Is
Watching, directed by Kei Kumai, premiered in 2002.[188] A script created by the Yonki no Kai ("Club of
the Four Knights") (Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa), around the
time that Dodeskaden was made, finally was filmed and released (in 2000) as Dora-heita, by the only
surviving founding member of the club, Kon Ichikawa.[189] Huayi Brothers Media and CKF Pictures in
China announced in 2017 plans to produce a film of Kurosawa's posthumous screenplay of The Masque
of the Black Death by Edgar Allan Poe for 2020.[190] Patrick Frater writing for Variety magazine in May
2017 stated that another two unfinished films by Kurosawa were planned, with Silvering Spear to start
filming in 2018.[191]
Kurosawa Production Company

In September 2011, it was reported that remake rights to most of Kurosawa's movies and unproduced
screenplays were assigned by the Akira Kurosawa 100 Project to the L.A.-based company Splendent.
Splendent's chief Sakiko Yamada, stated that he aimed to "help contemporary film-makers introduce a
new generation of moviegoers to these unforgettable stories".[192]
Kurosawa Production Co., established in 1959, continues to oversee many of the aspects of Kurosawa's
legacy. The director's son, Hisao Kurosawa, is the current head of the company. Its American subsidiary,
Kurosawa Enterprises, is located in Los Angeles. Rights to Kurosawa's works were then held by
Kurosawa Production and the film studios under which he worked, most notably Toho. These rights were
then assigned to the Akira Kurosawa 100 Project before being reassigned in 2011 to the L.A. based
company Splendent.[192] Kurosawa Production works closely with the Akira Kurosawa Foundation,
established in December 2003 and also run by Hisao Kurosawa. The foundation organizes an annual
short film competition and spearheads Kurosawa-related projects, including a recently shelved one to
build a memorial museum for the director.[193]
Film studios and awards

In 1981, the Kurosawa Film Studio was opened in Yokohama; two additional locations have since been
launched in Japan.[194] A large collection of archive material, including scanned screenplays, photos and
news articles, has been made available through the Akira Kurosawa Digital Archive, a Japanese
proprietary website maintained by Ryukoku University Digital Archives Research Center in collaboration
with Kurosawa Production.[195] Anaheim University's Akira Kurosawa School of Film was launched in
spring 2009 with the backing of Kurosawa Production. It offers online programs in digital film making,
with headquarters in Anaheim and a learning center in Tokyo.[196]
Two film awards have also been named in Kurosawa's honor. The Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime
Achievement in Film Directing is awarded during the San Francisco International Film Festival, while
the Akira Kurosawa Award is given during the Tokyo International Film Festival.[197][198] In 1999 he
was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek
magazine and CNN, cited as "one of the [five] people who contributed most to the betterment of Asia in
the past 100 years".[199] In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa's birth in 2010, a
project called AK100 was launched in 2008. The AK100 Project aims to "expose young people who are
the representatives of the next generation, and all people everywhere, to the light and spirit of Akira
Kurosawa and the wonderful world he created".[200]
Anaheim University in cooperation with the Kurosawa Family established the Anaheim University Akira
Kurosawa School of Film[201] to offer online and blended learning programs on Akira Kurosawa and
filmmaking. The animated Wes Anderson film, Isle of Dogs, is partially inspired by Kurosawa's filming
techniques.[202] At the 64th Sydney Film Festival, there was a retrospective of Akira Kurosawa where
films of his were screened to remember the great legacy he has created from his work.[203]
Documentaries
A significant number of full-length and short documentaries concerning the life and films of Kurosawa
were made during his lifetime and after his death. AK was filmed in 1985 and is a French documentary
film directed by Chris Marker. Though it was filmed while Kurosawa was working on Ran, the film
focuses more on Kurosawa's remote but polite personality than on the making of the film. The
documentary is sometimes seen as being reflective of Marker's fascination with Japanese culture, which
he also drew on for one of his best-known films, Sans Soleil.[204] The film was screened in the Un
Certain Regard section at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.[205][204] Other documentaries concerning
Kurosawa's life and works produced posthumously include:
Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (Alex Cox, 1999)[206]

A Message from Akira Kurosawa: For Beautiful Movies (Hisao Kurosawa, 2000)[207]
Kurosawa (Adam Low, 2001)[208]
Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create (Toho Masterworks, 2002)[207]
Akira Kurosawa: The Epic and the Intimate (2010)[209]
Kurosawa's Way (Catherine Cadou, 2011)[210]
See also
List of creative works by Akira Kurosawa
Notes
1. In 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with his mentor, Kajiro Yamamoto, and Hideo Sekigawa, the
feature Those Who Make Tomorrow (Asu o tsukuru hitobito). Apparently, he was
commanded to make this film against his will by Toho studios, to which he was under
contract at the time. (He claimed that his part of the film was shot in only a week.) It was the
only film he ever directed for which he did not receive sole credit as director, and the only
one that has never been released on home video in any form. The movie was later
repudiated by Kurosawa and is often not counted with the 30 other films he made, though it
is listed in some filmographies of the director.[39][23]
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207. Maunula, Vili (November 16, 2015). "Documentaries on Akira Kurosawa" (http://akirakurosa
wa.info/documentaries-on-akira-kurosawa/). Akira Kurosawa info. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
208. WH. "Kurosawa" (https://www.timeout.com/london/film/kurosawa). Time Out. London.
209. "Ran (Blu-ray)" (http://www.oldies.com/product-view/6130FD.html). Oldies.com. Retrieved
June 24, 2017.
210. "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams" (https://www.criterion.com/films/28700-akira-kurosawa-s-dream
s). Criterion Collection. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
Sources
Bock, Audie (1978). Japanese Film High, Peter B. (2003). The Imperial
Directors. Kodansha. ISBN 0-87011-304- Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the
6. Fifteen Years' War, 1931–45. The
Desser, David (1988). Eros Plus Massacre University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-
(https://archive.org/details/erosplusmassac 0-299-18134-5.
re00davi). Indiana University Press. Kurosawa, Akira (1983). Something Like
ISBN 978-0-253-20469-1. an Autobiography. Translated by Audie E.
Dodes'ka-den (Criterion Collection Spine Bock. Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-
#465) (DVD). Criterion. 71439-4.
Drunken Angel (DVD). Criterion. Kurosawa, Akira (1999). Yume wa tensai
Fellini, Federico (2006). Bert Cardullo de aru (A Dream Is a Genius). Bungei
(ed.). Federico Fellini: Interviews (https://ar Shunjū. ISBN 978-4-16-355570-6.
chive.org/details/federicofellini00fede). Kurosawa, Akira (2008). Bert Cardullo
University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978- (ed.). Akira Kurosawa: Interviews.
1-57806-885-2. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-
Galbraith, Stuart, IV (2002). The Emperor 1-57806-996-5.
and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (DVD-R).
Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune (https://archi Channel Four (UK)/Exterminating Angel
ve.org/details/emperorwolf00galb). Faber Productions. 1999.
and Faber, Inc. ISBN 978-0-571-19982-2. Kurosawa (DVD). WNET, BBC and NHK.
Godard, Jean-Luc (1972). Tom Milne (ed.). 2000.
Godard on Godard. Da Capo Press. Martinez, Delores P. (2009). Remaking
ISBN 978-0-306-80259-1. Kurosawa: Translations and Permutations
Goodwin, James (1993). Akira Kurosawa in Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan.
and Intertextual Cinema. The Johns ISBN 978-0-312-29358-1.
Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0- Mellen, Joan (1975). Voices from the
8018-4661-8. Japanese Cinema. Liveright Publishing
Goodwin, James (1994). Perspectives on Corporation. ISBN 978-0-87140-604-0.
Akira Kurosawa. G. K. Hall & Co. Mellen, Joan (1976). The Waves at Genji's
ISBN 978-0-8161-1993-6. Door (https://archive.org/details/wavesatge
njisdoo0000mell). Pantheon Books.
ISBN 978-0-394-49799-0.
Mellen, Joan (2002). Seven Samurai (BFI Richie, Donald (2001). A Hundred Years of
Classics). British Film Institute. ISBN 978- Japanese Film. Kodansha International.
0-85170-915-4. ISBN 978-4-7700-2682-8.
Morrison, James (2007). Roman Polanski San Juan, Eric (2018). Akira Kurosawa: A
(Contemporary Film Directors). University Viewer's Guide (https://books.google.com/
of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07446-2. books?id=SVVyDwAAQBAJ). Rowman &
Nogami, Teruyo (2006). Waiting on the Littlefield. ISBN 9781538110904.
Weather. Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1- Sato, Tadao (1987). Currents in Japanese
933330-09-9. Cinema. Kodansha International Ltd.
Peckinpah, Sam (2008). Kevin J. Hayes ISBN 978-0-87011-815-9.
(ed.). Sam Peckinpah: Interviews. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (DVD).
University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978- 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
1-934110-64-5. 2006.
Prince, Stephen (1999). The Warrior's Seven Samurai: 3-disc Remastered
Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa Edition (Criterion Collection Spine #2)
(2nd, revised ed.). Princeton University (DVD). Criterion.
Press. ISBN 978-0-691-01046-5. Tirard, Laurent (2002). Moviemakers'
Rashomon (DVD). Criterion. 2002. Master Class: Private Lessons from the
Ray, Satyajit (2007). Our Films Their World's Foremost Directors. Faber and
Films. Orient Blackswan. ISBN 978-81- Faber Ltd. ISBN 978-0-571-21102-9.
250-1565-9. Yojimbo: Remastered Edition (Criterion
Richie, Donald (1999). The Films of Akira Collection Spine #52) (DVD). Criterion.
Kurosawa (Third, Expanded and Updated Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro (2000). Kurosawa:
ed.). University of California Press. Film Studies and Japanese Cinema. Duke
ISBN 978-0-520-22037-9. University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-2519-
2.
Further reading
Buchanan, Judith (2005). Shakespeare on Film. Pearson Longman. ISBN 0-582-43716-4.
Burch, Nöel (1979). To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema (h
ttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cjfs/aaq5060.0001.001). University of California Press. ISBN 0-
520-03605-0.
Cowie, Peter (2010). Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema. Rizzoli Publications. ISBN 0-8478-
3319-4.
Davies, Anthony (1990). Filming Shakespeare's Plays: The Adaptions of Laurence Olivier,
Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-
39913-0.
Desser, David (1983). The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa (Studies in Cinema No. 23).
UMI Research Press. ISBN 0-8357-1924-3.
Kurosawa, Akira (1999). Kurosawa Akira zengashū [The complete artworks of Akira
Kurosawa] (in Japanese). Shogakukan. ISBN 978-4-09-699611-9.
Leonard, Kendra Preston (2009). Shakespeare, Madness, and Music: Scoring Insanity in
Cinematic Adaptations. Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-6946-2.
Sorensen, Lars-Martin (2009). Censorship of Japanese Films During the U.S. Occupation of
Japan: The Cases of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa. Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-
4673-7.
Wild, Peter. (2014) Akira Kurosawa Reaktion Books ISBN 978-1-78023-343-7
External links
Akira Kurosawa (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000041/) on IMDb
Akira Kurosawa (http://www.tcm.turner.com/participant/participant.jsp?participantId=106389)
at the TCM Movie Database
Akira Kurosawa (https://www.criterion.com/shop/collection/3-akira-kurosawa) at the
Criterion Collection
Akira Kurosawa: News, Information and Discussion (http://akirakurosawa.info/)
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database (https://web.archive.org/web/2010070
4194325/http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/kurosawa.html)
Akira Kurosawa at Japanese celebrity's grave guide (https://web.archive.org/web/20081024
014317/http://www.horror-house.jp/cat2/19101998.html) (in Japanese)
Akira Kurosawa (http://www.jmdb.ne.jp/person/p0121190.htm) at the Japanese Movie
Database (in Japanese)
Several trailers (https://sites.google.com/site/illustratedjapanesevocabulary/film/kurosawa)
Anaheim University Akira Kurosawa School of Film (http://www.anaheim.edu/schools-and-in
stitutes/akira-kurosawa-school-of-film)
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Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (Japanese: 黒 澤 明 or 黒 沢 明 or 黑 澤 明

Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a

Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo, became the surprise

Childhood to war years (1910–45)

Childhood and youth (1910–35)

Director in training (1935–41)

One important piece of advice Yamamoto gave Kurosawa was that a

Wartime films and marriage (1942–45)

Shooting of Sanshiro Sugata began on location in Yokohama in

Early postwar years to Red Beard (1946–65)

First postwar works (1946–50)

International recognition (1950–58)

Birth of a company and Red Beard (1959–65)

Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, Red Beard. Based on a

Hollywood ambitions to last films (1966–98)

A difficult decade (1969–77)

Two epics (1978–86)

The international success of Kagemusha allowed Kurosawa to

Final works and last years (1987–98)

Kurosawa now turned to a more conventional story with

Style and main themes

Legacy of general criticism

Reputation among filmmakers

According to his personal assistant Anthony Frewin, Stanley Kubrick

Kurosawa Production Company

Film studios and awards

Kurosawa: The Last Emperor (Alex Cox, 1999)[206]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Akira_Kurosawa&oldid=931617187"

This page was last edited on 20 December 2019, at 01:11 (UTC).

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Akira Kurosawa (Japanese: 黒澤明 or 黒沢明 or 黑澤明