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137-407: Akira Kurosawa ( 黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明 , Kurosawa Akira , March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema . Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style , strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he

274-570: A "favorite directors" list than a "greatest films" list.) This chapter, but not the remainder of the book, can be found in English on the Internet. ( ISBN   4163555706 ) Complete Drawings (with text in Japanese) was published by Shogakukan in 1999. ( ISBN   4096996114 ) The screenplays of many of Kurosawa's films have been published in English. For further information, consult

411-628: A Buddhist-style memorial hall/museum, a memorial bell donated by Taiwanese Buddhists, a memorial to the victims of World War II Tokyo air raids , and a memorial to the Korean victims of the vigilante killings. In the historical fantasy novel Teito Monogatari ( Hiroshi Aramata ) a supernatural explanation is given for the cause of the Great Kantō earthquake, connecting it with the principles of feng shui . In Yasunari Kawabata 's 1930 novel The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa several chapters deal with

548-409: A Genius ) was published posthumously. It has not been translated into English, except for Chapter 3. This chapter consists of a selection of 100 of the director's favorite films, listed in chronological order, with detailed commentaries on each film, all given at the request of Kurosawa's daughter, Kazuko. (Since he deliberately limits himself to one film per director, however, the list emerges as more of

685-522: 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

822-427: 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 1999, a poll of Japanese film critics also voted it

959-451: A boom period of high-speed growth and rising standards of living. Out of step with the prevailing mood of the era, Kurosawa's films questioned the possibility of redemption through personal responsibility, 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

1096-527: 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. 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

1233-554: 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. His second film of 1949, also produced by Film Art Association and released by Shintoho ,

1370-476: A costume designer. 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. 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

1507-484: A critical and commercial success. Nevertheless, the censorship office would later decide to cut out some 18 minutes of footage, much of which is now considered lost. He next turned to the subject of wartime female factory workers in The Most Beautiful , a propaganda film which he shot in a semi-documentary style in early 1944. To elicit realistic performances from his actresses, the director had them live in

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1644-467: A culture of militarism . After the earthquake, Gotō Shinpei organized a reconstruction plan of Tokyo with modern networks of roads, trains, and public services. Parks were placed all over Tokyo as refuge spots, and public buildings were constructed with stricter standards than private buildings to accommodate refugees. The outbreak of World War II and subsequent destruction severely limited resources. Frank Lloyd Wright received credit for designing

1781-507: A lucrative sideline lasting well into the 1960s, long after he became famous. 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

1918-413: A name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a painter, moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable. With Heigo's guidance, Akira devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances, 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

2055-475: 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 ,

2192-515: 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. Three months were spent in pre-production and a month in rehearsals. Shooting took up 148 days spread over almost

2329-408: A portable radio and use it to listen to reliable information, and not to be misled by rumors in the event of a large earthquake. Following the devastation of the earthquake, some in the government considered the possibility of moving the capital elsewhere. Proposed sites for the new capital were even discussed. Japanese commentators interpreted the disaster as an act of divine punishment to admonish

2466-416: 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. 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 odds, and it was through these arguments that

2603-589: A result of large fires that broke out. Fires started immediately after the earthquake. Some fires developed into firestorms that swept across cities. Many people died when their feet became stuck on melting tarmac . The single greatest loss of life was caused by a fire whirl that engulfed the Rikugun Honjo Hifukusho (formerly the Army Clothing Depot) in downtown Tokyo, where about 38,000 people who had taken shelter there during

2740-604: 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, before this period, almost totally unknown in the West. Kurosawa's growing reputation among Western audiences in the 1950s would make Western audiences more sympathetic to

2877-410: A retreat from the artist's previous commitment to social and political change. 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. His prediction proved quite accurate. Beginning in

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3014-479: 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. 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

3151-413: 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, the massive Anpo protests were held against the new U.S.–Japan Security treaty , which was seen by many Japanese, particularly

3288-411: 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

3425-402: 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. Another adaptation of a classic European theatrical work followed almost immediately, with production of The Lower Depths , based on

3562-738: 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

3699-407: 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,

3836-724: 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

3973-429: 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

4110-461: 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 resists Red Beard initially, Yasumoto comes to admire his wisdom and courage and to perceive

4247-408: Is among the victims; they get back together, and Tousei allows them to. In Makiko Hirata's josei manga and anime Kasei Yakyoku the story finishes some time after the earthquake, as a corollary to the main love triangle between the noblewoman Akiko Hashou, her lover Taka Itou, and Akiko's personal maid Sara Uchida. The earthquake happens just as the marriage between Akiko and her fiancé Kiyosu Saionji

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4384-566: Is announced. Sara is in the streets, and Taka is taking Sara's brother Junichirou to a hospital after he was injured in a yakuza-related incident. The Hashou's mansion is destroyed, leading to an emotional confrontation between Akiko and Saionji; meanwhile, Sara's humble house in the suburbia is also destroyed and her and Junichirou's mother dies of injuries she sustained in the earthquake. Maurice Tourneur 's 1924 silent film Torment has an earthquake in Yokohama in its plot, and uses footage of

4521-476: Is designated as Disaster Prevention Day to commemorate the earthquake and remind people of the importance of preparedness, as August and September are the peak of the typhoon season. Schools and public and private organizations host disaster drills. Tokyo is located near a fault zone beneath the Izu Peninsula which, on average, causes a major earthquake about once every 70 years, and is also located near

4658-463: Is estimated to have exceeded US$ 1 billion (or about $ 18 billion today). There were 57 aftershocks. Ethnic Koreans were massacred after the earthquake. The Home Ministry declared martial law and ordered all sectional police chiefs to make maintenance of order and security a top priority. A false rumor was spread that Koreans were taking advantage of the disaster, committing arson and robbery, and were in possession of bombs. Anti-Korean sentiment

4795-489: Is known about the film, and its release date is even in question. For instance, though the film is often said to have aired in August 1970, it is thought that the film features footage of events that did not take place until the summer of 1971. It was considered a lost film for decades and was not available on home video in any form. At some point in the 2010s, the film was rediscovered. It was remastered and released on DVD by

4932-487: Is taken in by a friend of the late Takao, Dr. Oikawa. Waki Yamato 's manga Haikara-san ga Tōru actually reaches its climax after the Great Kantō earthquake—which happens right before the wedding of the female lead, Benio Hanamura, and her second love Tousei. Benio barely survives when the Christian church she's getting married in collapses, and then she finds her long-lost love Shinobu whose other love interest Larissa

5069-637: 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. I Live in Fear opened in November 1955 to mixed reviews and muted audience reaction, becoming

5206-503: Is widely considered 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 the box office, largely because of the popularity of one of its stars, Setsuko Hara. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kurosawa, Rashomon had been entered in the Venice Film Festival , due to

5343-614: The Imperial Hotel, Tokyo , to withstand the quake, although in fact the building was damaged, though standing, by the shock. The destruction of the US embassy caused Ambassador Cyrus Woods to relocate the embassy to the hotel. Wright's structure withstood the anticipated earthquake stresses, and the hotel remained in use until 1968. The innovative design used to construct the Imperial Hotel, and its structural fortitude, inspired

5480-636: The Okhotsk microplate along the line of the Sagami Trough . In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the Kantō Massacre began. Rumors emerged that ethnic Koreans in Japan had poisoned wells or were planning to attack cities. In response, the Japanese police and bands of armed vigilantes killed ethnic Korean civilians and anyone they suspected of being Korean. Estimates of the death toll from

5617-548: The Sagami Trough , a large subduction zone that has potential for large earthquakes. Every year on this date, schools across Japan take a moment of silence at the precise time the earthquake hit in memory of the lives lost. Some discreet memorials are located in Yokoamicho Park in Sumida Ward , at the site of the open space in which an estimated 38,000 people were killed by a single fire whirl . The park houses

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5754-580: 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 ,

5891-510: The 1870s, the rate in Tokyo remained high, more so in the upper-class residential northern and western districts than in the densely populated working-class eastern district. An explanation is the decline of waste disposal, which became particularly serious in the northern and western districts when traditional methods of waste disposal collapsed due to urbanization. The 1923 earthquake led to record-high morbidity due to unsanitary conditions following

6028-424: The 1930s and also the wartime period in the 1940s, either when he was still an assistant director or had just graduated to full director. Some of these won prizes in screenwriting contests, establishing his reputation as a promising talent even though they were never filmed. Kurosawa edited all his own films, though he only occasionally took screen credit for it. There are, however, a few instances in which he edited

6165-531: The 1960s he became much less prolific; even so, his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive great acclaim. In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement . Posthumously, he was named " Asian of the Century " in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN , cited there as being among

6302-466: The American independent company SamuraiDVD in 2017, complete with English subtitles. Prior to writing the screenplay to his film, Stray Dog ( Nora Inu , 1949), Kurosawa created, in about six weeks, a novel based on the same story (presumably also called Stray Dog ), which he never published. It was written in the style of one of his favorite writers, the French crime author Georges Simenon . Writing it

6439-524: The Great Kanto earthquake is recreated in the 1998 film, After Life , known in Japanese as Wandafuru Raifu (or Wonderful Life ). Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda , the plot takes place in a way station for those who have just died. The newly deceased will take their happiest memory with them into the afterlife. One of the newly deceased has a memory of being in the woods after the earthquake. Michiyo Akaishi's josei manga Akatsuki no Aria features

6576-580: The Great Kantō earthquake. In the TV adaptation of the novel Pachinko by Min Jin Lee , a young Hansu escapes Yokohama with his father's former yakuza employer, Ryoichi, from the Great Kantō Earthquake. The Great Kantō Earthquake is not featured in the book. In Oswald Wynd 's novel The Ginger Tree , Mary Mackenzie survives the earthquake, and later bases her clothes designing company in one of

6713-541: The Imperial Army used the pretext of civil unrest to liquidate political dissidents. Socialists such as Hirasawa Keishichi  [ ja ] (平澤計七), anarchists such as Sakae Ōsugi and Noe Itō , and the Chinese communal leader, Ō Kiten  [ ja ] (王希天), were abducted and killed by local police and Imperial Army, who claimed the radicals intended to use the crisis as an opportunity to overthrow

6850-449: The Japanese construction company Kajima Kobori Research's conclusive report of September 2004, 105,385 deaths were confirmed in the 1923 quake. The damage from this natural disaster was one of the greatest sustained by Imperial Japan . In 1960, on the 37th anniversary of the quake, the government declared September 1 an annual "Disaster Prevention Day". Because the earthquake struck when people were cooking meals, many were killed as

6987-654: The Japanese government. Director Chongkong Oh made two documentary films about the pogrom : Hidden Scars: The Massacre of Koreans from the Arakawa River Bank to Shitamachi in Tokyo (1983) and The Disposed-of Koreans: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Camp Narashino (1986). They largely consist of interviews with survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators. The importance of obtaining and providing accurate information following natural disasters has been emphasized in Japan ever since. Earthquake preparation literature in modern Japan almost always directs citizens to carry

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7124-483: The Japanese people for their self-centered, immoral, and extravagant lifestyles. In the long run, the response to the disaster was a strong sense that Japan had been given an unparalleled opportunity to rebuild the city and rebuild Japanese values. In reconstructing the city, the nation, and the Japanese people, the earthquake fostered a culture of catastrophe and reconstruction that amplified discourses of moral degeneracy and national renovation in interwar Japan, fostering

7261-468: The Kantō earthquake in the film. In the 2013 animated film by director Hayao Miyazaki , The Wind Rises , the protagonist Jiro Horikoshi is traveling to Tokyo by train to study engineering. On the way, the 1923 earthquake strikes, damaging the train and causing a huge fire in the city. In the 2022 animated film Suzume no Tojimari , directed by Makoto Shinkai , the earthquake is briefly alluded to in

7398-552: 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, I Live in Fear , 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

7535-562: 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

7672-509: The Misplaced Pages articles relating to the individual films. 1923 Great Kant%C5%8D earthquake The Great Kantō earthquake ( 関東大地震 , Kantō dai-jishin, Kantō ō-jishin ) also known in Japanese as Kantō daishinsai ( 関東大震災 ) struck the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshū at 11:58:32 JST (02:58:32 UTC ) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate

7809-454: The best Japanese film ever made. In the most recent (2022) version of the widely respected British Film Institute (BFI) Sight & Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll, Seven Samurai placed 20th among all films from all countries in the critics' and tied at 14th in the directors' polls, receiving a place in the Top Ten lists of 48 critics and 22 directors. In 1954, nuclear tests in

7946-509: 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. Shooting of Sanshiro Sugata began on location in Yokohama in December 1942. Production proceeded smoothly, but getting

8083-516: 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

8220-491: The chapter of 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". 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. In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L. (which later became

8357-465: The closeness of the two men on the set, "Mr. Kurosawa's heart was in Mr. Mifune's body." Donald Richie has described the rapport between them as a unique "symbiosis". 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,

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8494-594: The coast of Sagami Bay , Bōsō Peninsula , Izu Islands , and the east coast of Izu Peninsula within minutes. The tsunami caused many deaths, including about 100 people along Yui-ga-hama Beach in Kamakura and an estimated 50 people on the Enoshima causeway. Over 570,000 homes were destroyed, leaving an estimated 1.9 million homeless. Evacuees were transported by ship from Kantō to as far as Kobe in Kansai. The damage

8631-491: The columnist Ed Sullivan , earned $ 35,000 in its first three weeks at a single New York theatre, 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. By the end of 1952 Rashomon was released in Japan, the United States, and most of Europe. Among the Japanese film-makers whose work, as

8768-407: 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

8905-496: The completion of Drunken Angel , Toho became embroiled in a months-long labor strike , in which the Toho union occupied the grounds of the studio. When Toho management ceased paying workers' salaries, Kurosawa formed a touring acting troupe to raise funds, directing Anton Chekhov 's The Proposal , and an adaptation of Drunken Angel starring Mifune and Shimura. Disillusioned by the division and violence between employees at Toho,

9042-456: The conventional Kurosawan hero to combat a social evil that cannot be resolved through the actions of individuals, however courageous or cunning. 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

9179-616: The creation of the popular Lincoln Logs toy. The unfinished battlecruiser Amagi was in drydock being converted into an aircraft carrier in Yokosuka in compliance with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. The earthquake damaged the ship's hull beyond repair, leading it to be scrapped , and the unfinished fast battleship Kaga was converted into an aircraft carrier in its place. In contrast to London , where typhoid fever had been steadily declining since

9316-551: 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 . 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. In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa

9453-429: The director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant truths in his work. 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. In the late 1920s, Heigo became a benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films and quickly made

9590-500: The director's birth to his winning the Golden Lion for Rashomon from the Venice Film Festival in 1951; the period from 1951 through 1980 is not covered. The title of the book is a reference to a legend according to which, if one places a deformed toad in a box full of mirrors, it will become so afraid of its own reflection that it will begin to sweat, and this sweat allegedly had medicinal properties. Kurosawa compared himself to

9727-526: The duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. Extensive firestorms and a fire whirl added to the death toll. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale (M w  ), with its focus deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay . The cause was a rupture of part of the convergent boundary where the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath

9864-432: The earthquake in volume 8. Several places frequented by the protagonist Aria Kanbara, like her boarding school and the house of the rich Nishimikado clan that she is an illegitimate member of, become shelters for the wounded and the homeless. Aria's birth mother is severely injured by debris and later dies, and this triggers a subplot about Aria's own heritage. In Yuu Watase's 2017 josei manga Fushigi Yûgi Byakko Senki ,

10001-453: The earthquake struck Tokyo, and were never in any danger. American Acting Consul General Max David Kirjassoff and his wife Alice Josephine Ballantine Kirjassoff died in the earthquake. The consulate itself lost the entirety of its records in the subsequent fires. Many homes were buried or swept away by landslides in the mountainous and hilly coastal areas in western Kanagawa Prefecture ; about 800 people died. A collapsing mountainside in

10138-596: The earthquake were incinerated. The earthquake broke water mains all over the city, and putting out the fires took until late in the morning of September 3, nearly two full days. A strong typhoon centered off the coast of the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture brought high winds to Tokyo Bay at about the same time as the earthquake. These winds caused fires to spread rapidly. Emperor Taishō and Empress Teimei were staying at Nikko when

10275-483: The earthquake, and it prompted the establishment of antityphoid measures and the building of urban infrastructure. The Honda Point Disaster on the West Coast of the United States, in which seven US Navy destroyers ran aground eight days later, killing 23 sailors, has been attributed in part to navigational errors caused by unusual currents set up by the earthquake in Japan. Beginning in 1960, every September 1

10412-490: The efforts of Giuliana 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. After Daiei briefly exhibited

10549-455: The few buildings that remained standing in the aftermath. In Natsumi's short story Taishō Romance , about a boy in the Reiwa era who became a pen pal with a Taishō-era girl, the story mentions the Great Kantō earthquake, causing the boy unable to contact her. The short story was adapted to the song " Taishō Roman " by Yoasobi , which the music video shows the giant clock pointing to 11:58,

10686-399: 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 complex reasons, he would complete only seven more. Also, for reasons never adequately explained, Red Beard would be his final film starring Toshiro Mifune. Yū Fujiki , an actor who worked on The Lower Depths , observed, regarding

10823-438: 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 . 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

10960-462: 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. Following the success of Yojimbo , Kurosawa found himself under pressure from Toho to create

11097-462: 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. Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, Red Beard . Based on a short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto and incorporating elements from Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and Injured , it

11234-467: The film's title into a postwar catchphrase . 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

11371-493: The finished product as dramatically unfocused and unsatisfactory, and almost all critics agree. However, it would be Kurosawa's second film of 1950 that would ultimately win him, and Japanese cinema, a whole new international audience. After finishing Scandal , Kurosawa was approached by Daiei studios 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

11508-483: 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. 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

11645-547: The first time that Kurosawa directed Mifune, who went on to play major roles in all but one of the director's next 16 films (the exception being Ikiru ). 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

11782-485: The first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, including Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963) and Red Beard (1965). After

11919-428: The five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media. Kurosawa was born on March 23, 1910, in Ōimachi in the Ōmori district of Tokyo. His father Isamu (1864–1948), a member of a samurai family from Akita Prefecture , worked as

12056-401: The footage from which has apparently not survived). Finally, near the end of his life, he completed scripts he intended to direct but did not live to make, which were then filmed by others. A table of all these screenplays is given below; all titles are Japanese productions unless otherwise noted. In addition, Kurosawa wrote the following unproduced scripts, composed during the pre-war period in

12193-450: The future director of Godzilla . The film is considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres. 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

12330-412: 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 gender of its protagonist, the completed work divided critics. Nevertheless, it managed to win the approval of audiences, who turned variations on

12467-550: The heroine Suzuno Osugi enters The Universe of the Four Gods for the first time right after the earthquake: her father Takao, who is dying from injuries he suffered when the family house fatally collapsed on him and Suzuno's mother Tamayo, orders her to do so, so she will survive the disaster and its aftermath. After a brief time there, she's sent back to the already destroyed Tokyo, and she, alongside her soon-to-be love interest Seiji Horie and two young boys named Hideo and Kenichi,

12604-411: The idea of working outside Japan appealed to him as never before. 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

12741-636: The last of Kurosawa's films as an assistant director for Yamamoto, Horse (1941), Kurosawa took over most of the production, as his mentor was occupied with the shooting of another film. Yamamoto advised Kurosawa that a good director needed to master screenwriting. Kurosawa soon realized that the potential earnings from his scripts were much higher than what he was paid as an assistant director. He later wrote or co-wrote all his films, and frequently penned screenplays for other directors such as Satsuo Yamamoto 's film, A Triumph of Wings ( Tsubasa no gaika , 1942). This outside scriptwriting would serve Kurosawa as

12878-402: 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. Red Beard also marked the midway point, chronologically, in the artist's career. During his previous twenty-nine years in

13015-419: 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

13152-531: The massacre vary, with most third-party sources citing fatalities ranging from 6,000 to 10,000. Since 1960, September 1 has been designated by the Japanese government as Disaster Prevention Day ( 防災の日 , Bōsai no hi ) , or a day in remembrance of and to prepare for major natural disasters including tsunami and typhoons . Drills, as well as knowledge promotion events, are centered around that date as well as awards ceremonies for people of merit. The SS Dongola 's captain reported that, while he

13289-417: The most acclaimed of all the artist's films set in the modern era. 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

13426-459: 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 twelve 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

13563-458: 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,

13700-402: The other judges. Drunken Angel is often considered the director's first major work. Although the script, like all of Kurosawa's occupation-era works, had to go through rewrites due to American censorship, Kurosawa felt that this was the first film in which he was able to express himself freely. A gritty story of a doctor who tries to save a gangster ( yakuza ) with tuberculosis , it was also

13837-406: The patients at the clinic, whom he at first despised, as worthy of compassion and dignity. Yūzō Kayama , who plays Yasumoto, was an extremely popular film and 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

13974-413: The popular actor Ken'ichi Enomoto , known as "Enoken". Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director to chief assistant director after a year. 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. In

14111-449: 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. Kurosawa's next film, for Shochiku,

14248-416: The proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas", he lost his enthusiasm for painting. 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 died by suicide. Kurosawa has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death and

14385-465: The reception of later generations of Japanese film-makers 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 . Based on Leo Tolstoy 's The Death of Ivan Ilyich ,

14522-530: The remainder of this filmography is derived primarily from the complete filmography created by Kurosawa's biographer, Stuart Galbraith IV, supplemented by IMDb 's Kurosawa page. For the following films that Kurosawa directed, he also received a production credit: In addition, Kurosawa received a production credit on one film that he himself did not direct: Haru no tawamure (1949) ( Spring Flirtation ), written and directed by Kajiro Yamamoto, on which he served as an associate producer. Kurosawa wrote or co-wrote

14659-484: The rumor and warning residents against attacking Koreans, but in many cases, vigilante activity only ceased as a result of Army operations against it. In several documented cases, soldiers and policemen participated in the killings, and in other cases, authorities handed groups of Koreans over to local vigilantes, who proceeded to kill them. Amidst the mob violence against Koreans in the Kantō Region, regional police and

14796-478: The rumors as fact, including the allegation that Koreans were poisoning wells. The numerous fires and cloudy well water, a little-known effect of a large quake, all seemed to confirm the rumors of the panic-stricken survivors who were living amidst the rubble. Vigilante groups set up roadblocks in cities, and tested civilians with a shibboleth for supposedly Korean-accented Japanese: deporting, beating, or killing those who failed. Army and police personnel colluded in

14933-476: The screenplays for all the films he himself directed. However, to supplement his income, he also wrote scripts for other Japanese directors throughout the 1940s, and even through the 1950s and part of the 1960s, long after he had become world-famous. He also worked on the scripts for two Hollywood productions he was slated to direct, but which, for complex reasons, were completed by and credited to other directors (although he did shoot some scenes for Tora tora tora! ,

15070-502: 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. 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

15207-488: 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 ,

15344-437: The then little-known 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 fifteen films. Rashomon (1950), 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

15481-504: 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. List of works by Akira Kurosawa All the following are Japanese productions unless otherwise specified. Note: Data for

15618-453: The time that the earthquake occurred. The earthquake is recreated in the 1983 asadora Oshin , from episode 114 to 117, showing the financial and human losses the disaster caused, as the new factory Oshin and her husband Ryuzo built is destroyed, and their faithful retainer Genji dies protecting their son Yu. The earthquake becomes a major a plot point as it drives the family to move to Saga, to live with Ryuzo's parents. An incident after

15755-491: The toad, nervous about having to contemplate, through the process of writing his life story, his own multiple "reflections." It was published as a book in Japan in 1981, and in English translation the following year under the title Something Like an Autobiography . The book's appearance coincided with the revival of interest in Kurosawa's work following the international release of Kagemusha . ( ISBN   0394509382 ) In 1999, his book, Yume wa tensai de aru ( A Dream Is

15892-416: 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. 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

16029-563: The underhanded tactics of Toho leadership, and the breaking of the occupation by police and military standoff , Kurosawa left Toho, later recalling "I had come to understand that the studio I had thought was my home actually belonged to strangers". 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

16166-591: The vigilante killings in some areas. Of the 3,000 Koreans taken into custody at the Army Cavalry Regiment base in Narashino , Chiba Prefecture , 10% were killed at the base, or after being released into nearby villages. Moreover, anyone mistakenly identified as Korean, such as Chinese, Ryukyuans , and Japanese speakers of some regional dialects, suffered the same fate. About 700 Chinese, mostly from Wenzhou , were killed. A monument commemorating this

16303-524: The village of Nebukawa, west of Odawara , pushed the entire village and a passenger train carrying over 100 passengers, along with the railway station, into the sea. The RMS Empress of Australia was about to leave Yokohama harbor when the earthquake struck. It narrowly survived and assisted in rescuing 2,000 survivors. A P&O liner, Dongola , was also in the harbor at the moment of disaster and rescued 505 people, taking them to Kobe . A tsunami with waves up to 10 m (33 ft) high struck

16440-525: 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. Atypically for the director,

16577-474: The work of others, as listed below. During the mid-to-late 1940s, for the first and apparently the only time in his career, Akira Kurosawa involved himself in a number of theater-related projects. A documentary about horses called Song of the Horse (or Uma no Uta ), directed by Kurosawa, was broadcast in Japan, supposedly on August 31, 1970 (Kurosawa otherwise totally avoided working in television). Very little

16714-415: The young actor's immense vitality, and Mifune's rebellious character electrified audiences in much the way that Marlon Brando 's defiant stance would startle American film audiences a few years later. The film premiered in Tokyo in April 1948 to rave reviews and was chosen by the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics poll as the best film of its year, the first of three Kurosawa movies to be so honored. After

16851-480: 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

16988-412: Was Stray Dog . It is a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in that genre) 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

17125-452: Was The Idiot , an adaptation of the novel by the director's favorite writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky . The story is relocated from Russia to Hokkaido , but otherwise adheres closely 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 to just 166 minutes, making the resulting narrative exceedingly difficult to follow. The severely edited film version

17262-583: Was Heigo Kurosawa (1906–1933), Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake and the subsequent Kantō Massacre of 1923, Heigo took the thirteen-year-old Akira to view the devastation. When Akira wanted to look away from the corpses of humans and animals 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

17399-472: Was among Kurosawa's favorite directors. 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

17536-407: Was anchored in Yokohama's inner harbor: At 11.55 a.m. ship commenced to tremble and vibrate violently and on looking towards the shore it was seen that a terrible earthquake was taking place, buildings were collapsing in all directions and in a few minutes nothing could be seen for clouds of dust. When these cleared away fire could be seen starting in many directions and in half an hour the whole city

17673-468: 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. The shooting of Rashomon began on July 7, 1950, and, after extensive location work in

17810-716: Was built in 1993 in Wenzhou. In response, the government called upon the Japanese Army and the police to protect Koreans; 23,715 Koreans were placed in protective custody across Japan, 12,000 in Tokyo alone. The chief of police of Tsurumi (or Kawasaki by some accounts) is reported to have publicly drunk the well water to disprove the rumor that Koreans had been poisoning wells. In some towns, even police stations into which Korean people had escaped were attacked by mobs, whereas in other neighborhoods, civilians took steps to protect them. The Army distributed flyers denying

17947-496: Was heightened by fear of the Korean independence movement . In the confusion after the quake, mass murder of Koreans by mobs occurred in urban Tokyo and Yokohama, fueled by rumors of rebellion and sabotage. The government reported that 231 Koreans were killed by mobs in Tokyo and Yokohama in the first week of September. Independent reports said the number of dead was far higher, ranging from 6,000 to 10,000. Some newspapers reported

18084-599: Was in flames. This earthquake devastated Tokyo , the port city of Yokohama , and the surrounding prefectures of Chiba , Kanagawa , and Shizuoka , and caused widespread damage throughout the Kantō region. The earthquake's force was so great that in Kamakura , over 60 km (37 mi) from the epicenter, it moved the Great Buddha statue, which weighs about 121 tonnes, almost 60 centimeters. Estimated casualties totaled about 142,800 deaths, including about 40,000 who went missing and were presumed dead. According to

18221-432: Was involved with all aspects of film production . 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 (1943). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast

18358-407: 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. After

18495-535: Was open to Western traditions and considered theatre 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. 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. During this time, Akira also studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship. Another major childhood influence

18632-452: 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. Kurosawa's three next 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 even as Japan entered

18769-408: Was supposed to help him compose the script as quickly as possible, but he found that writing the screenplay took even longer than usual because of the complex differences between literature and film. In 1980, inspired by the memoir of one of his heroes, Jean Renoir , he began to publish in serial form his autobiography, entitled Gama no abura ( An Oily Toad ). The book deals with the period from

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