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111-489: Established in 1955, and near to the hypocenter of the explosion, remnants of a concrete wall of Urakami Cathedral can still be seen. Urakami Cathedral was the grandest church in east Asia at the time. At the park's north end is the 10-meter-tall Peace Statue created by sculptor Seibo Kitamura of Nagasaki Prefecture . The statue's right hand points to the threat of nuclear weapons while the extended left hand symbolizes eternal peace. The mild face symbolizes divine grace and

222-522: 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

333-427: 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

444-451: 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

555-423: 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 the then little-known actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of

666-529: 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

777-558: 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 ,

888-480: 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

999-486: 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

1110-602: A gangster ( yakuza ) with tuberculosis , it was also 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

1221-509: 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

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1332-416: 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

1443-475: 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 ,

1554-516: 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

1665-418: 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

1776-605: 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

1887-415: 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

1998-482: 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

2109-413: 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

2220-411: 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

2331-406: 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

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2442-738: 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

2553-407: 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,

2664-724: 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

2775-429: 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

2886-461: 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

2997-637: 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

3108-408: Is uncertainty in such measurements that grows with the wavelength so the focal depth of the source of these long-wavelength (low frequency) waves is difficult to determine exactly. Very strong earthquakes radiate a large fraction of their released energy in seismic waves with very long wavelengths and therefore a stronger earthquake involves the release of energy from a larger mass of rock. Computing

3219-401: 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

3330-586: 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 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

3441-714: The Israeli Ambassador to its ceremony held three days prior. Of the G7 members' ambassadors that skipped the 2024 ceremony, the British and American ambassadors, together with the Israeli Ambassador, attended a memorial service on that day held at Zojoji in Tokyo. In 1978 the city of Nagasaki established a "Peace Symbols Zone" on both sides of the park and invited donations of monuments from countries round

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3552-597: The Venice Film Festival , due to 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

3663-636: 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 ,

3774-487: 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 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

3885-604: The 1991 Akira Kurosawa film Rhapsody in August , in which a Japanese child points out that there is no sculpture in the Peace Symbols Zone from the United States. "Constellation Earth" was donated in 1992, a year after the film's release, after this omission was noted by St. Paul mayor James Schiebel during a trip to Nagasaki in 1990. Hypocenter A hypocenter or hypocentre (from Ancient Greek ὑπόκεντρον ( hupókentron )  'below

3996-552: 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

4107-548: The Peace Statue is titled Words from the Sculptor and reads: After experiencing that nightmarish war, that blood-curdling carnage, that unendurable horror, Who could walk away without praying for peace? This statue was created as a signpost in the struggle for global harmony. Standing ten meters tall, it conveys the profundity of knowledge and the beauty of health and virility. The right hand points to

4218-562: 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

4329-537: The atmosphere rather than strike the surface, is the closest point on the surface to the explosion. The Tunguska event occurred in Siberia in 1908 and flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km (830 sq mi) of forest. The trees at the hypocenter of the blast were left standing, but all their limbs had been blown off by the shockwave. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor 's hypocenter in Russia

4440-568: The atomic attacks, released in June 1946, used the term liberally, defining it as: For convenience, the term 'ground zero' will be used to designate the point on the ground directly beneath the point of detonation, or 'air zero.' William Laurence , an embedded reporter with the Manhattan Project , reported that "Zero" was "the code name given to the spot chosen for the [Trinity] test" in 1945. The Oxford English Dictionary , citing

4551-538: The atomic bomb, the left hand points to peace, and the face prays deeply for the victims of war. Transcending the barriers of race and evoking the qualities of Buddha and God, it is a symbol of the greatest determination ever known in the history of Nagasaki and the highest hope of all mankind. A plaque at the nearby hypocenter gives the following account and statistics of the damage caused that day. At 11:02 A.M., August 9, 1945 an atomic bomb exploded 500 meters above this spot. The black stone monolith marks

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4662-456: The atomic bomb. At the time, many of those Koreans were being used as forced labor as a part of the Japanese war effort. This monument commemorates the Korean victims and serves as a message asking for peace in the world, an abolition of nuclear weapons, and a peaceful reunification of the Korean nation. The Monument for Korean Atomic Victims was unveiled on August 9, 1979. The park was shown in

4773-458: 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

4884-567: 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

4995-516: 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

5106-703: The center of this open space was nicknamed "Cafe Ground Zero". During the September 11 attacks in 2001, two aircraft were hijacked by 10 al-Qaeda terrorists and were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City , causing massive damage and starting fires that caused the weakened 110-story skyscrapers to collapse . The destroyed World Trade Center site soon became known as "ground zero". Rescue workers also used

5217-495: The center'), also called ground zero or surface zero , is the point on the Earth 's surface directly below a nuclear explosion , meteor air burst , or other mid-air explosion. In seismology , the hypocenter of an earthquake is its point of origin below ground; a synonym is the focus of an earthquake. Generally, the terms ground zero and surface zero are also used in relation to epidemics , and other disasters to mark

5328-494: 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

5439-467: 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,

5550-492: 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

5661-407: 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

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5772-497: 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,

5883-460: 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

5994-432: 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

6105-399: 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

6216-442: 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

6327-465: 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

6438-466: 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

6549-468: 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

6660-494: 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

6771-541: 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

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6882-454: 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

6993-461: The gently closed eyes offer a prayer for the repose of the bomb victims' souls. The folded right leg and extended left leg signify both meditation and the initiative to stand up and rescue the people of the world. The statue represents a mixture of western and eastern art, religion, and ideology. Installed in front of the statue is a black marble vault containing the names of the atomic bomb victims and survivors who died in subsequent years. A plaque by

7104-412: 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

7215-627: The hypocenter of the attack was Shima Hospital , approximately 800 ft (240 m) away from the intended aiming point at Aioi Bridge . During the Cold War , the Pentagon (headquarters of United States Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia ) was an assured target in the event of nuclear war . The open space in the center of the Pentagon became known informally as ground zero. A snack bar that used to be located at

7326-510: The hypocenter remains as an international peace park and a symbol of the aspiration for world harmony. (Large numbers of people have died in the following years from the effects of radioactive poisoning .) Every year, on 9 August, the anniversary of the atomic bombing, a Peace Memorial Ceremony is held in front of the statue and the Mayor of Nagasaki delivers a Peace Declaration to the World. At

7437-416: The hypocenter. The fierce blast wind, heat rays reaching several thousand degrees and deadly radiation generated by the explosion crushed, burned, and killed everything in sight and reduced this entire area to a barren field of rubble. About one-third of Nagasaki City was destroyed and 150,000 people killed or injured and it was said at the time that this area would be devoid of vegetation for 75 years. Now,

7548-466: The hypocenters of foreshocks, main shock, and aftershocks of earthquakes allows the three-dimensional plotting of the fault along which movement is occurring. The expanding wavefront from the earthquake's rupture propagates at a speed of several kilometers per second; this seismic wave is what is measured at various surface points in order to geometrically determine an initial guess as to the hypocenter. The wave reaches each station based upon how far away it

7659-412: 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

7770-497: The initial estimated hypocenter. These equations are solved by the method of least squares which minimizes the sum of the squares of the differences between the observed and calculated arrival times, and a new estimated hypocenter is computed. The system iterates until the location is pinpointed within the margin of error for the velocity computations. Akira Kurosawa Akira Kurosawa ( 黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明 , Kurosawa Akira , March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998)

7881-639: 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

7992-403: 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

8103-419: 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

8214-420: 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

8325-528: 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 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

8436-460: 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

8547-458: 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,

8658-502: The ongoing Israel–Hamas war . The Mayor of Nagasaki City, Shiro Suzuki , justified his decision to exclude Israel (as well as Russia and Belarus, who are involved in the invasion of Ukraine ) in an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun stating that "something might happen if we invite participants of a conflict where the ceremony cannot proceed peacefully and solemnly". This was in contrast to Hiroshima City which had invited

8769-407: 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

8880-599: The point of the most severe damage or destruction. The term is distinguished from the term zero point in that the latter can also be located in the air, underground, or underwater. The term "ground zero" originally referred to the hypocenter of the Trinity test in Jornada del Muerto desert near Socorro, New Mexico , and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan . The United States Strategic Bombing Survey of

8991-416: 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

9102-452: 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,

9213-418: 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

9324-465: 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 ,

9435-501: The site labeled it the " Ground Zero mosque ". In advance of the 10th anniversary of the attacks, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg urged that the "ground zero" moniker be retired, saying, "…the time has come to call those 16 acres [6.5 hectares] what they are: The World Trade Center and the National September 11th Memorial and Museum." The hypocenter of a meteor air burst , an asteroid or comet that explodes in

9546-431: The south end of the park is a "Fountain of Peace". This was constructed in August, 1969, as a prayer for the repose of the souls of the many atomic bomb victims who died searching for water, and as a dedication to world peace. Lines from a poem by a girl named Sachiko Yamaguchi, who was nine at the time of the bombing, are carved on a black stone plaque in front of the fountain. It reads: "I was thirsty beyond endurance. There

9657-503: 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

9768-488: 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 ,

9879-403: 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

9990-532: The term "The Big Momma!", referring to the pile of rubble that was left after the buildings collapsed. Even after the site was cleaned up and construction on the new One World Trade Center and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum were well under way, the term was still frequently used to refer to the site, as when opponents of the Park51 project that was to be located two blocks away from

10101-399: 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 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

10212-419: 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

10323-564: 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

10434-487: The use of the term in a 1946 New York Times report on the destroyed city of Hiroshima , defines ground zero as "that part of the ground situated immediately under an exploding bomb, especially an atomic one." The term was military slang, used at the Trinity site where the weapon tower for the first nuclear weapon was at "point zero", and moved into general use very shortly after the end of World War II . At Hiroshima,

10545-527: 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,

10656-565: The world. The following monuments can be seen in the park: The Monument for Korean Atomic Victims is located in Nagasaki Peace Park in Nagasaki, Japan. At the time of the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, there were many people of nationalities other than Japanese that were living in the area. There were an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 Koreans living in Nagasaki during the bombing. It is believed that up to 2,000 of them died because of

10767-420: 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

10878-423: The young man greatly impressed Kurosawa, but managed to alienate most of 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

10989-480: 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

11100-413: 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

11211-452: 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

11322-419: 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 was involved with all aspects of film production . Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following

11433-400: 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

11544-469: 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

11655-561: 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 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

11766-427: Was from the hypocenter. A number of things need to be taken into account, most importantly variations in the waves speed based upon the materials that it is passing through. With adjustments for velocity changes, the initial estimate of the hypocenter is made, then a series of linear equations is set up, one for each station. The equations express the difference between the observed arrival times and those calculated from

11877-483: 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 was Heigo Kurosawa (1906–1933), Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake and

11988-559: Was more populated than that of Tunguska, resulting in civil damage and injury, mostly from flying glass shards from broken windows. An earthquake's hypocenter or focus is the position where the strain energy stored in the rock is first released, marking the point where the fault begins to rupture. This occurs directly beneath the epicenter , at a distance known as the hypocentral depth or focal depth . The focal depth can be calculated from measurements based on seismic wave phenomena. As with all wave phenomena in physics , there

12099-409: 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

12210-456: 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

12321-522: Was something oily on the surface of the water, but I wanted water so badly that I drank it just as it was." In 2024, on the eve of the 79th anniversary of the bombing, ambassadors from all members of the G7 as well as the European Union announced that they will be skipping the ceremony due to Israel's exclusion, instead sending representatives, citing fears of politicization of the ceremony in light of

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