Akira Kurosawa

Japanese film director

• Born: March 23, 1910
• Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan
• Died: September 6, 1998
• Place of death: Tokyo, Japan

Throughout his long career as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, Kurosawa explored a humane and profound vision of existence with a brilliantly inventive use of the art of film.

Early Life

Akira Kurosawa (ah-kee-rah koo-roh-saw-ah) was the youngest of seven children born to a family that recognized its rural roots but prided itself on being Edokko, or third-generation dwellers in Tokyo. In Kurosawa’s youth, Japanese country life was slow and peaceful and the culture of the city was just beginning to absorb ideas from the outside world. Kurosawa’s father was a graduate of a school for training army officers and was a severe disciplinarian who valued the varieties of experience that a man might encounter; his devotion to the ancient code of the samurai, Bushido, was an important influence on his son, both as a model and as a rigid pattern against which to react. Kurosawa was also deeply impressed with his mother’s quiet strength and iron will and by his darkly sardonic and brilliantly perceptive elder brother Heigo, whose suicide in 1933 led him to become “impatient with my own aimlessness.”

As a student in primary and secondary school, Kurosawa concentrated on the art and literature courses that he liked and ignored his required studies in math and science. He treasured teachers who taught with imagination and creativity, despised those who operated by rote, substituted reckless behavior for a lack of physical dexterity, and failed every aspect of military training he was required to take. Although his father was a noted figure in army society, he was not a military fanatic; he taught Kurosawa both calligraphy and poetry as a child and did not complain when Kurosawa decided to become a painter after graduation from middle school in 1927.

When Kurosawa was rejected by the army in 1930 as physically unfit, he joined several leftist political organizations, as much for the fascination of new experience as for his genuine sympathy for the people in Tokyo slums, and while working as a courier for underground political organizations, he spent his leisure time among friends of his brother, who had become a noted narrator of silent films. Kurosawa was gradually becoming involved in the avant-garde world of theatrical and artistic creativity, but his own career had not progressed at all. After his brother’s suicide, he worked as a commercial artist (“illustrations of the correct way to cut giant radishes”) to earn money to buy canvases and paints, but he was becoming anxious about his inability to find a real calling. In 1935, he noticed an advertisement announcing openings for assistant directors at the newly established studio Photo Chemical Laboratory (PCL). Kurosawa had been an avid filmgoer since elementary school; his test essay on the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese films was accepted, and he joined the studio. Although he found his first assignment routine and trivial, his father persuaded him to stay on, saying that anything Kurosawa tried “would be worth the experience.” His next assignment was with the director Kajirō Yamamoto, “the best teacher of my entire life,” and his life’s work had begun.

Life’s Work

Kurosawa joined PCL immediately after the “2-26 Incident” of February, 1936, in which young army-officer extremists assassinated cabinet ministers whose policies they found too moderate. Kurosawa recalled that the studio was a true “dream factory” in those days, making films “as carefree as a song about strolling through fragrant blossoms.” Kurosawa was assigned to the group headed by his mentor, “Yama-san,” advancing from third assistant director to chief assistant director, concentrating on editing and dubbing from 1937 to 1941, as PCL grew into the huge Tōhō company, the single largest film studio in Japan. While the studio tried to avoid political issues, the severity of the censors led to increasing tension between the creative artists and the wartime government. When Kurosawa turned to screenwriting after spending a year with the second unit on Uma (1941; Horses), his second effort, “Shizuka nari” (all is quiet), won the Nihon Eiga contest for best scenario but was not filmed, nor were his next two scripts, which were “buried forever by the Interior Ministry censorship bureau,” a group Kurosawa viewed as “mentally deranged.” Two of Kurosawa’s lesser scripts, about the aircraft industry and boy aviators, were filmed by others in 1942, but, when he read the story of a rowdy young judo expert, he had an intuition that “This is it.” After convincing the studio to buy rights, he wrote the script for Sugata Sanshirō (1943; Sanshiro Sugata ) in one sitting. The censors regarded his initial effort as a director as too “British-American,” but Yasujiro Ozu argued for its release, and although some critics believed that it was too complicated, the film was a success.

Realizing that he would not be permitted to make any films that did not contribute to the war effort but reluctant to support a government that he despised and alert enough so that, by 1943, it was clear to him that Japan was going to be defeated, Kurosawa wrote a script about a group of women working in a precision optics factory. Ichiban utsukushiku (1944; The Most Beautiful ) was intended to illuminate the beautiful spirit (kokoro) of the young women struggling under trying conditions. This film introduced Takashi Shimura, an outstanding actor who went on to work with Kurosawa in many subsequent films.

Between 1945 and 1950, Kurosawa made nine films. Some of these were clearly apprentice works, but several including Yoidore tenshi (1948; Drunken Angel) and Nora-inu (1949; Stray Dog) show his increasing mastery and retain their interest. Drunken Angel is also notable as the first of many Kurosawa films to feature the great actor Toshiro Mifune. Later in the same year that saw the release of the relatively weak film Shubun (1950; Scandal), which marks the end of this period, Kurosawa completed the film that first brought him international recognition.

Working with a cast and crew he knew and trusted, Kurosawa adapted a story about an incident in a forest in eleventh century Japan, told from four points of view. The theme, according to Kurosawa’s explanation to a somewhat befuddled cast, was that “human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves.” In a rare fusion of superb cinematography, exceptional music, inspired acting, and a perfect location coalescing through a director’s guidance, Rashomon (1950) delighted its participants and won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival, a most prestigious award at the time, as well as the American Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Kurosawa’s next project was Hakuchi (1951; The Idiot ), based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevski. The film was more than four hours long in its original version and was a commercial failure in all of its released forms. Kurosawa clashed frequently with the studio about its production and remarked in retrospect on the film’s failure, “One should be brave enough to risk this kind of ’mistake.’” According to Donald Richie, “Without the trials, disappointments, mistakes and uncertainties of The Idiot,” the films that followed, among them some of the true masterpieces of cinematic art in this century, “might not have appeared at all.”

Beginning with Ikiru (1952), Kurosawa reached his productive prime. Now in the middle years and conscious of his mortality (“Sometimes I think of my death . . . of ceasing to be”), he shows an anonymous clerk a cipher, a brick in a huge wall who is told that he has six months to live. In his remaining time, the clerk becomes intensely aware of the value of life, escaping from the bureaucratic prison that bedevils modern Japan. Ikiru is a compassionate affirmation of existence, still contemporary and tremendously moving decades after its production, and it was both a commercial and critical success, Kurosawa’s first real triumph in Japan. It was followed by an even greater success, Shichinin no samurai (1954; The Seven Samurai ), which Richie calls “perhaps the best Japanese film ever made” a judgment with which many critics have concurred.

The Seven Samurai is a penetrating examination of the old samurai code as well as an epic action-film in the grand style of the American Western. With the insight accumulated from his own experience as the son of a soldier combined with his knowledge of Japanese history, Kurosawa explores the nuances and complexities of self-expression and self-submission embodied in the warrior’s code, rescuing the true samurai spirit from its debasement in numerous Japanese exploitation films. The temporal glory of the warrior is presented in contrast to the eternal grandeur of farmers struggling through the testing cycles of the seasons, and although the film is one of the most dramatically and visually exciting ever made, it is also a marvelous, detailed study of character and society. It was the most expensive production attempted by Tōhō to that time, and it took more than a year to make.

Continuing to alternate between modern and period work, Kurosawa next turned to a theme that had been tormenting Japan since atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear tests of 1954 and the resulting fallout on Japanese islands led to Kurosawa’s Ikimono no kiroku (1955; I Live in Fear ; also known as Record of a Living Being), a film about an industrialist with two separate families by wife and mistress who is being driven insane by nuclear phobia and wants to move all of his dependents to Brazil theoretically out of danger. The film is sprawling and emotional, but Kurosawa put so much into it that he said at its completion, “When the last judgment comes on us, we could stand up and account for our past lives by saying proudly: ’We are the men who made Ikimono no kiroku.’”

Working steadily, Kurosawa then directed Kumonosu-jo (1957; Throne of Blood ), his adaptation of Macbeth (1606) and possibly the best visual correlative to a William Shakespeare play ever filmed. The supernatural elements, the psychology of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, the mood of violence and the extraordinary ending are highlights of a powerful, gripping production. After three more films in rapid succession, Kurosawa made one of his most popular works, the vastly entertaining Yojimbo (1961).

Another homage to the Western, but with a twist, it is the story of a man who cleans up a corrupt town; unlike a typical American lawman, however, he is cynical, amoral, and convulsively funny. Mifune at his best played the wandering, disenfranchised former samurai and then extended the conception in a demonstration of what a real sequel can be in Sanjuro (1962). Here the protagonist is ten years older as well as wider, deeper, broader, and stranger; his singular stylistic gestures now become bizarre expressions of eccentricity. The aging samurai is a man out of place and time who still grudgingly maintains a set of realistic principles that structure his actions.

Returning to the present, Kurosawa directed Tengoku to jigoku (1963; High and Low ), an incisive examination of life in upper- and lower-class sections of modern Yokohama, presented in the form of a detective story. Then, in the culmination of his greatest period of productivity, he worked with Mifune for the last time in Akahige (1965; Red Beard ). Set at the end of the Tokugawa period, it is the story of a young apprentice physician who learns how to become a real doctor (and a real man) through his training in a rural clinic with an experienced older physician known as Red Beard. Embodying the essential core of Kurosawa’s philosophy, Red Beard has a kind of rage for good but is fully realistic about the evil in human nature. His anger helps him to avoid cynicism and inspires the young doctor to become a man worthy of the profession.

After filming Akahige, Kurosawa observed that “a cycle of some sort has concluded,” and he began to work less frequently. He did not make another film until Dodesukaden (1970), a story of slum dwellers in the modern era told in episodic form. The film is a sincere but somewhat diffuse effort, lacking the energy and transcendent vision of Kurosawa’s best work. It was his first color film, but, aside from some striking individual scenes, there is no real sense of a coordinated palate. The commercial failure of Dodesukaden and his problems with the American producers of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), who hired him to work on the Japanese sequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor, drove Kurosawa to despondency and a suicide attempt at the age of sixty-one. In Japanese culture, an artist’s suicide in his sixties is an acknowledgment of declining powers and an homage to his craft, but Kurosawa was probably driven more by personal frustration at the difficulty of getting financing for his work. Consequently, he accepted a Mosfilm project to film Dersu Uzala (1975), set in the Siberian wilderness. The film was almost more of an exploration of landscape than a study of character, but it showed Kurosawa’s increasing facility with color.

The real indication of Kurosawa’s enduring power as a filmmaker was his direction of Kagemusha (1980; Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior ), a film with the epic sweep of his finest period studies, the character penetration of his most compelling work, and a real mastery of color cinematography. The funding for the production was raised by the American directors Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Although the film ends on a bleak, even desolate note, its scenes are alive with passion, and its effect is ultimately of the world of men viewed from the perspective of time and history, neither judgmental nor falsely optimistic. This philosophical position was continued in Ran (1985), a rather loose adaptation of the King Lear legend, replete with violence, strife, treachery, confusion, and death. The clan of rulers is wiped out by the film’s end, but other rulers arrive to replace them; life goes on.

Continuing to work as a filmmaker in his late seventies, Kurosawa concluded the 1980’s with a nine-episode film based on some of the central images of his lifetime, Yume (1990; Dreams , 1990, also known as Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams). The film was financed by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and is a kind of lament for what Kurosawa calls the loss of human goodness. “I am nostalgic for a good environment and good hearts,” he said in describing his motivation. In 1990, Kurosawa was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. He made two more films before dying in 1998.

Significance

Kurosawa introduced the Western world to the full richness of Japanese film and, in turn, to the beginning of an understanding of the range and complexity of Japanese history and culture; at the same time, he introduced the Japanese people to a deeper understanding of their own traditions and heritage. Through his inventive mastery of all the elements of filmmaking, he commented on the central moral issues of modern times and examined the eternal questions of the mystery of existence for all times. “I think of the earth as my home,” he said, and like all great artists, he tried to celebrate the richness of life on that home for all human beings who can appreciate its vast gifts. At the same time, he understood the contradictory forces within human nature that often make that home an uninhabitable hell and tried to dramatize the importance of recognizing reality and overcoming illusion as a crucial step in the process of reconciling human beings to the tragic grandeur of life. Like Shakespeare, one of his own masters, Kurosawa dealt with the largest questions humanity must confront but never forgot that the traditional elements of narrative, character, and language are the fundamental blocks on which any serious artistic statement must be built.

Bibliography

Braudy, Leo, and Morris Dickstein, eds. Great Film Directors: A Critical Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. This volume contains four essays on Kurosawa, including one by Akira Iwasaki that offers a commentary on Kurosawa’s work from the perspective of a Japanese critic.

Desser, David. The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa. Ann Arbor, Mich.: U.M.I. Research Press, 1983. An informative, academic examination of the Japanese cultural history that underlies the samurai film, including a detailed discussion of Kurosawa’s work in this area as well as a consideration of the influence of Kurosawa’s films on both Japanese and American filmmakers.

Erens, Patricia. Akira Kurosawa: A Guide to References and Resources. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979. While the biographical background and survey of Kurosawa’s work are rather pedestrian, the synopses of the films themselves and the list of articles about Kurosawa are thorough and accurate. A useful resource.

Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber & Faber, 2002. A dual biography of the director as well as Toshiro Mifune, a Japanese actor who starred in sixteen of Kurosawa’s films.

Kurosawa, Akira. Something Like an Autobiography. Translated by Audie E. Bock. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. An extremely revealing, candid, and analytical account of the director’s life up to the release of Rashomon in 1950. Ably translated, it is interesting and highly readable and provides much information about the author as well as the Japanese film industry and about Japan in the decades before World War II.

Mellen, Joan. Voices from the Japanese Cinema. New York: Liveright, 1975. Includes an overview of Kurosawa’s work by an expert on Japanese films and a good interview with the director himself.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Waves at Genji’s Door: Japan Through Its Cinema. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976. Covers many of Kurosawa’s important films and includes an essay on “Kurosawa’s women,” examining one of the more controversial aspects of the director’s work.

Nogami, Teruyo. Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa. Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2006. Nogami, who was an assistant to Kurosawa, relates how Kurosawa’s films were made and provides details of his personality.

Richie, Donald, and Joan Mellen. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. 3d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Indispensable for the student of Kurosawa’s work, and one of the finest books ever written about any film artist. Richie provides detailed discussion of each film, combined with extensive background information, many illustrations, and a filmography.