Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese painter and director. He was born on March 23, 1910 in Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan. His father was raised in a samurai family from the Akita Prefecture. His mother in a family of merchants from Osaka. Akira was the youngest of his seven siblings. He was the closest with his brother Heigo.
Heigo encouraged Akira and helped push him out of his routine. The two observed the fallout from the Great Kantō earthquake and eventual massacre of 1923. The young director was horrified of the lurid mixture of concrete and flesh. Countless animals were spliced into the ruins. Heigo lifted the fear from his brother and made him witness the carnage. The experience was humbling for Kurosawa.
Heigo was a silent film narrator (benshi) in the late 1920’s. The inseparable brothers lived together. Akira hoped to become an artist. The thirties introduced sound into cinema. The audio forced Heigo out of work. Akira moved back home. Heigo took his own life in the middle of 1933. Akira was twenty-three. Three years later he was hired as an assistant director by the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories (P.C.L.). The director Kajirō Yamamoto was impressed and helped nurture Akira’s talent.
Directorial Debut
Time passed. Kurosawa secured the film rights for the novel Sanshiro Sugata by Tsuneo Tomita. His directorial debut was released in theaters in 1943 to commercial and critical success. He was thirty-three. The sequel Sanshiro Sugata Part II was shown in 1945. The director was against it. The reviews were poor. Japan surrendered. The allies and democratic policy entered the Land of the Rising Sun.
Akira was influenced by the occupation. The current events and new ideas altered his script. No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) divided the pundits and won the approval of the audience. Drunken Angel was released two years later. It is considered his first major work and tells the story of an alcoholic doctor tending to a sick yakuza. The gangster is played by Toshiro Mifune who would act in lead roles in fifteen of the next sixteen Kurosawa productions.
Mifune swapped roles and was cast as a doctor in The Quiet Duel (1949). Scandal debuted in 1950. Rashomon premiered sometime in August in Tokyo. The movie was lucrative and introduced Japanese cinema to global audiences. The Idiot was adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel in 1951. Rashomon entered the Venice Film Festival in September. It exited winning the Golden Lion.
Seven Samurai
Seven Samurai (1954) was written during a forty-five-day secluded retreat. It took a year to shoot and cost more to make than any previous Japanese film. The end product was an opus that ranks among one of the greatest films today. The plot has been adapted and remade countless times. Throne of Blood was modeled from William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. It emerged in 1957 and won two Mainichi Film Awards. The Hidden Fortress (1958) was the fourth highest grossing film of the year in Japan. It had a profound influence on George Lucas and his vision for Star Wars.
The Kurosawa Production Company was established in 1959. Yojimbo (1961) was the company’s second film and another classic. Kagemusha (1980) won the Palme d’Or and was nominated for an Academy Award. Ran was based on King Lear by William Shakespeare. It won an Oscar in 1986 for Best Costume Design. It was nominated for three others. Years passed.
The director suffered a spine injury while working in 1995. He was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The handicap ended his longtime wish to die while shooting cinema. His health soon deteriorated. He was confined to his bed and spent the days watching television and listening to music. Akira Kurosawa died from a stroke on September 6, 1998 in Setagaya, Tokyo. He was eighty-eight years old.
Akira Kurosawa Filmography
| Title | Year |
|---|---|
| Sanshiro Sugata (Sugata Sanshirō) | 1943 |
| The Most Beautiful (Ichiban utsukushiku) | 1944 |
| Sanshiro Sugata Part Two (Zoku Sugata Sanshirō) | 1945 |
| The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (Tora no o wo fumu otokotachi) | 1945 |
| Those Who Make Tomorrow (Asu o tsukuru hitobito) | 1946 |
| No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kuinashi) | 1946 |
| One Wonderful Sunday (Subarashiki nichiyōbi) | 1947 |
| Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi) | 1948 |
| The Quiet Duel (Shizukanaru kettō) | 1949 |
| Stray Dog (Nora inu) | 1949 |
| Scandal (Sukyandaru) | 1950 |
| Rashomon (Rashōmon) | 1950 |
| The Idiot (Hakuchi) | 1951 |
| Ikiru (Ikiru) | 1952 |
| Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai) | 1954 |
| I Live in Fear (Ikimono no kiroku) | 1955 |
| Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jō) | 1955 |
| The Lower Depths (Donzoko) | 1957 |
| The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi toride no san akunin) | 1958 |
| The Bad Sleep Well (Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru) | 1960 |
| Yojimbo (Yōjinbō) | 1961 |
| Sanjurō (Tsubaki Sanjūrō) | 1962 |
| High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku) | 1963 |
| Red Beard (Akahige) | 1965 |
| Dodes’ka-den (Dodesukaden) | 1970 |
| Dersu Uzala (Derusu Uzāra) | 1975 |
| Kagemusha (Kagemusha) | 1980 |
| Ran (Ran) | 1985 |
| Dreams (Yume) | 1990 |
| Rhapsody in August (Hachigatsu no rapusodī) | 1991 |
| Madadayo (Mādadayo) | 1993 |
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
― Akira Kurosawa
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