Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker whose career spanned six decades and included 30 feature films. His work was known for a bold, dynamic style that drew heavily from Western cinema while remaining distinctly its own, and he is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors in film history. He took a hands-on approach to filmmaking, involving himself in directing, writing, producing, and editing.

Before entering film, Kurosawa briefly worked as a painter. He joined the Japanese film industry in 1936, spending years as an assistant director and screenwriter before making his directorial debut at age 33 with the popular action film *Sanshiro Sugata* (1943), released during World War II. After the war, he solidified his reputation as a major young talent in Japan with the critically praised *Drunken Angel* (1948), which featured actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role; the two would go on to collaborate on 15 more films.

*Rashomon* (1950) premiered in Tokyo and unexpectedly won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. Its commercial and critical success opened Western markets to Japanese films for the first time, leading to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed roughly one film per year, including many highly regarded and frequently adapted works such as *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 far less prolific, but his later films—including two of his final works, *Kagemusha* (1980) and *Ran* (1985)—continued to earn critical acclaim.

In 1990, Kurosawa received an Academy Honorary Award. After his death, *AsianWeek* magazine and CNN named him "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category, citing him as one of five people who most significantly contributed to Asia's improvement in the 20th century. His career has been honored through numerous releases across various media, as well as retrospectives, critical studies, and biographies in print and video.

**Life and career**

**Childhood to war years (1910–1945)**

**Childhood and youth (1910–1935)**

Kurosawa was born on March 23, 1910, in Omori, Tokyo (now part of Shinagawa ward), though he once claimed he was born in Akita and moved to Tokyo as an infant. His mother, Shima (1870–1952), came from a merchant family in Osaka; his father, Isamu (1864–1948), was from a samurai family in Akita Prefecture and worked as the director of the Army's Physical Education Institute's lower secondary school. Akira was the youngest of eight children in a moderately wealthy family; two siblings were already grown when he was born, one had died, and he grew up with three sisters and a brother.

Isamu promoted physical exercise and was open to Western traditions, believing theatre and film had educational value. He encouraged his children to watch movies, and Kurosawa saw his first film at age six. In elementary school, he became close friends with Keinosuke Uekusa. A key influence was his teacher, Mr. Tachikawa, whose progressive methods first sparked his love of drawing and later his interest in education. During this time, he also studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship.

Another major childhood influence was his older brother by four years, Heigo (1906–1933). After the Great Kantō earthquake and the subsequent Kantō Massacre of 1923, Heigo took 13-year-old Kurosawa to see the devastation. When Kurosawa wanted to look away from the scattered human and animal corpses, Heigo forbade him, urging him to face his fears directly. Some commentators believe this incident shaped his later artistic willingness to confront unpleasant truths. Heigo was academically gifted but, after failing to get into Tokyo's top high school, grew distant from the family and focused on foreign literature. In the late 1920s, he became a well-known benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films. Kurosawa, then planning to be a painter, moved in with Heigo, and the two became inseparable.

With Heigo's guidance, Kurosawa avidly watched films, theater, and circus performances, while also exhibiting his paintings and working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. He could not make a living from his art, however, and lost enthusiasm for painting partly because he felt the proletarian movement often amounted to "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas." As talking pictures became more common in the early 1930s, narrators like Heigo lost work, and Kurosawa moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo died by suicide. Kurosawa later wrote of the lasting sense of loss, titling the chapter describing it in his autobiography—written nearly 50 years later—"A Story I Don't Want to Tell." Just four months after Heigo's death, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving 23-year-old Kurosawa as the only surviving brother among his three sisters.

**Director in training (1935–1941)**

In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories (P.C.L., later the major studio Toho) advertised for assistant directors. Though he had shown no prior interest in film as a career, Kurosawa submitted the required essay, which asked applicants to discuss the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese cinema.