Welcome back to the deep dive. This is where
we sift through, you know, mountains of information,
the whole colossal archive of human knowledge.
And we try to distill it down into pure essential
insight for you. And today we are really stepping
into the realm of the Titans. We really are.
We're not just diving into film history today.
We're talking about an artist whose legacy is
so profound. It feels like it's shaped. Well,
every blockbuster, every psychological drama,
and every sweeping epic that came after him.
We are indeed. The subject today is Akira Kurosawa.
He lived from 1910 to 1998, a name that just
stands alone in the history of cinema. It's synonymous
with this incredible dramatic intensity, unparalleled
technical mastery. And stories that just resonated
everywhere, universally. Right. He directed 30
feature films across six decades. And if you
look at the source material, the consistent thing
you hear from his peers, Lucas, Corsese, Bergman,
Fellini, is that he influenced almost everyone.
And what really defines Kurosawa, what sets him
apart and earns him that title, the emperor of
cinema, is his sheer, singular creative control.
Our sources really highlight that he wasn't just
the director. He was, at the same time, the writer,
the producer, and the editor on his films. I
mean, he was the master builder on set. That
holistic approach. you know, what people call
the auteur theory, it applied perfectly to him.
Exceptionally rare. And it speaks directly to
the command he had over his finished product.
So when you watch a Kurosawa film, you're not
just watching a movie. No. You are experiencing
Kurosawa's vision completely. It's crafted by
him, layer by layer, from the very foundation
of the script all the way to the rhythm of the
final cut. So our mission today is to cut through
this massive, influential body of work and really
understand the essential nuggets, the traumatic
childhood influences, the key technical innovations
that are, believe it or not, still used today,
and the crucial collaborations and, well, the
collapses that forged his global reputation.
So if you want to crash course on why figures
like George Lucas and Ingmar Bergman just revered
him, you're in the right place. We're going to
give you the shortcut to appreciation. Okay,
let's unpack this. So let's start at the very
beginning of this monumental life. Akira Kurosawa
was born on March 23, 1910 in Tokyo. And when
we look at his family background, we immediately
see this fascinating contradiction that seems
to define his whole character. Absolutely. His
father, Isamu, came from a samurai family, which
is a background that implies, you know, discipline,
tradition, formality. The old ways. Exactly.
But Isamu was... remarkably progressive. He was,
in effect, a forward -thinking man in a very
traditional position. This wasn't some rigid
conservative household. Isamu actively believed
in the educational merit of cinema and theater.
It was pretty unusual for the time, right? Oh,
very unusual. And he encouraged young Akira...
to watch films from the incredibly early age
of six. That instilled a love for visual storytelling
and narrative scale right from the get -go. So
he's absorbing narratives, both Eastern and Western,
from the very start. But the truly formative
and, frankly, traumatic influence came from outside
the home. It did. And it's centered on his older
brother, Heigo, and the Great Khanty Earthquake
of 1923. This sounds pivotal. This is a massive
psychological pivot point. I'd argue it's the
single most important moment in shaping his artistic
temperament. When the earthquake and the firestorms
and the subsequent massacre struck Tokyo, Kurosawa
was only 13. The devastation was just widespread.
Unimaginable. The streets were littered with
corpses, both human and animal. And when Akira
tried to turn away from this overwhelming horror,
Hugo, who was working as a silent film narrator,
he forced him to look. He demanded that his younger
brother confront it. That's a brutal, defining
lesson for a kid. Exactly. And the source material
suggests this profound incident instilled in
Kurosawa, a willingness, maybe even a responsibility,
to confront and explore unpleasant truths directly
in his work. No matter how difficult or graphic
they might be for the audience. Right. And we
see this unflinching realism later in films like
Ikiru, which just stares mortality in the face,
and especially in the savage historical violence
he depicts in epics like Ran. He learned early
on that turning away from the horror doesn't
make it disappear. That's it. Before film, though,
Kurosawa was an artist. He planned to be a painter,
he exhibited work, and he even briefly joined
the left -wing proletarian Artists League. But
that pursuit didn't last. No, mostly because
of financial struggle. He just couldn't make
a living. And more importantly, he lost his ideological
enthusiasm for the movement itself. He saw that
brand of art as just putting unfulfilled political
ideals directly onto the canvas. So he felt it
lacked genuine depth. Yeah, or cinematic power.
He needed a medium that engaged with the world
more directly. And then came this immense personal
loss that really precipitated his final career
pivot. A huge loss. The tragic death of his brother,
Heigo, in 1933, who committed suicide. Heigo,
as we mentioned, was a silent film narrator,
a benshi. Can you explain what a benshi was?
It was a really unique profession. Oh, totally
unique. The benshi was a performer who would
stand right next to the screen during a silent
film and provide live narration. All the voices,
all the emotion. They basically created the entire
auditory experience for the audience. A beautiful
art form, but one that was professionally doomed.
Precisely. The rise of synchronized sound, you
know, the talkies, it meant the rapid professional
collapse of the entire benshi class. So Haigo's
professional tragedy was all wrapped up in his
personal despair. And that wasn't the only loss.
No. Just four months later, Kurosawa lost his
eldest brother as well. That left the 23 -year
-old Akira as the sole surviving brother, carrying
this tremendous unarticulated sense of loss that
must have just pushed him to find a stable, viable,
and deeply expressive path forward in the medium
that had, in a way, taken his brother's profession
from him. And that stable path opened up in 1935
when Kurosawa applied for an assistant director
position at Photochemical Laboratories, PCL.
Which later merged into the giant studio Toho.
Right. And the story of his application essay
is, well, it's legendary. It's pure Kurosawa
confidence. It really is. Yeah. He was asked
to discuss the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese
film and proposed fixes. And Kurosawa's response
was just so... blunt, almost mocking. He basically
said that if the deficiencies were truly fundamental,
there was no way for him to fix them. That's
audacious. Incredibly. But that audacious honesty
and his confident analysis really impressed the
director, Kajiri Yamamoto, who immediately insisted
Curacao be hired. despite the cheekiness. And
Yamamoto quickly became this huge figure in Kurosawa's
development, his primary professional mentor.
For five absolutely crucial years, Kurosawa worked
on 17 films under Yamamoto. He was promoted fast
to chief assistant director, and his duties were
incredibly extensive. This wasn't just, you know,
fetching coffee. Right. He was location scatting,
polishing scripts, managing lighting and construction,
editing. He was even doing second unit directing
on films like Horse in 1941. He was getting a
master... class in every single facet of filmmaking
and the source material is very clear about the
core lesson Yamamoto drilled into him that a
good director must first master screenwriting
and that advice just defined Kurosawa's entire
career it did he took it to heart he recognized
that control starts with the narrative blueprint
not only did he write or co -write all of his
own films but writing screenplays for other directors
became a lucrative sideline that continued long
after he was famous He understood that mastering
the words gave him command over the eventual
image. All of this practical experience finally
culminates in his directorial debut, which arrives
right at the height of the Pacific War. Sanchiro
Sugata, 1943. Kurosawa secured the project after
just devouring the source novel and insisted
that Toho buy the rights for him. It was a critical
and commercial success right out of the gate.
But even that success came with the heavy hand
of wartime censorship. Oh, yeah. The Japanese
authorities cut 18 minutes of what they decided
was British American content. His next film,
The Most Beautiful, from 1944, reveals his dedication
to realism and his, well, his unconventional
methods, even when making what was essentially
a propaganda film about female factory workers.
He shot it in a semi -documentary style, but
his directing technique was totally immersive.
To get genuine performances, he had the actresses
live in a real factory for weeks during the shoot.
He had them eat the factory food, call each other
by their character names. Exactly. He was demanding
a method approach, a truly lived -in performance.
And that deep immersion became a hallmark of
his career. It also had a lasting personal effect.
Right. He married the film's lead actress, Yuko
Yaguchi, in May of 45. And they stayed together
until her death 40 years later. So his professional
methods literally cemented his personal life.
But then we have The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's
Tail from 1945, which was completed just as Japan
surrendered. And this one has a truly farcical
censorship history. It's the ultimate example
of being caught between two rigid worlds. The
film was based on a famous kabuki play, and it
starred the popular comedian Inokin. During production,
the Japanese wartime censors just savaged it.
Right. They called it too Western and democratic.
They specifically hated Enochin's comic porter
character, who brought this kind of irreverence
to a serious historical tale. But then the war
ends, the U .S. occupation begins, and the American
censors step in. only to ban it for the exact
opposite reason. Exactly. The American occupation
censors found it too futile. They disliked the
traditional historical setting and its reverence
for certain samurai codes. So it was simultaneously
too progressive for the wartime Japanese regime
and too traditional for the American occupiers.
It was stuck, stuck in this bureaucratic and
political limbo, and it was only finally released
seven years later in 1952. It's such a powerful
metaphor for Kurosawa's entire career, constantly
having to bridge... or fall between the divides
of East and West. Moving into the post -war era,
Japan was fundamentally changing, and Kurosawa
sought to realign his work with the democratic
ideals of the occupation, focusing his narrative
squarely on the individual. This is the era of
No Regrets for Our Youth from 1946, which is
a film that directly criticized Japan's pre -war
political regime and its oppressive conformity.
It centers on this heroic female protagonist,
Yuki. And she's questioning her own comfortable
upper middle class values. Right. During a political
crisis. It was a controversial but popular hit.
Variations of the title actually became a post
-war catchphrase signaling this new spirit of
inquiry in Japan. And then in 1947, a pivotal
moment happens that would define the next two
decades of his filmmaking. The discovery of Toshiro
Mifune. Mifune's initial audition story is just
fantastic. He showed up and was described as
polarizing. I mean, he was raw, intense, aggressive.
He had a physical vitality that casting agents
just didn't know what to do with. Exactly. Kurosawa
and his mentor, Yamamoto, had to directly intervene
and persuade Toho to sign this intense young
actor because they recognized immediately that
this wasn't just talent, this was volcanic energy
waiting to be unleashed. And that volcanic energy
quickly erupted in Drunken Angel in 1948. Many
critics consider this his first major work where
he truly found his voice. And Kurosawa himself
felt this was the first film where he could truly
express himself freely despite the constant pressure
of American censorship rewrites. It was a gritty
story set in the post -war black market. About
a doctor trying to save a volatile young gangster.
Right. The doctor was played by the marvelous
Takeshi Shimura, who was in over 20 Kurosawa
films. But the gangster... And Shimura was the
title character, the doctor, but our sources
stress that it was Mifune's explosive performance
that just overshadowed the entire film. It electrified
audiences immediately. Mifune was defiant, rebellious,
fiercely physical, and critics quickly compared
his impact to that of Marlon Brando arriving
on the American scene just a few years later.
This was the start of a unique professional symbiosis.
And they would go on to make 16 films together.
A partnership built on mutual respect and often
very intense conflict. Following that was Stray
Dog in 1949, which used a police procedural framework
to explore the mood of Japan's painful recovery.
It's a key post -war film, co -written with Ryozo
Kikushima. It follows Mifune as a detective searching
for his stolen pistol. But what is so technically
audacious about it is this stunning, virtually
wordless eight -minute sequence. Where the detective
is searching the war -ravaged streets of Tokyo
disguised as a veteran? Right. And that sequence
used actual documentary footage, shot by none
other than Ishiro Honda, the future director
of Godzilla, creating this raw, visceral look
at the psychological landscape of defeat. It
proved Kurosawa could turn genre fiction into
profound social commentary. So if Drunken Angel
was his major Japanese breakthrough, then Rashomon
from 1950 was the seismic, defining event that
launched Kurosawa and Japanese cinema itself
onto the global stage. Rashomon is the ultimate
game changer. It was co -written with Shinobu
Hashimoto, and it's based on a story that recounts
a murder and a rape from these dramatically different,
conflicting points of view. But when it premiered
in Tokyo, the reception was... Lukewarm. Puzzled.
Yeah, even indifferent. Yeah. Critics didn't
know what to make of its unique structure, its
thematic ambiguity. Japanese audiences who are
accustomed to more linear narratives, they just
found the fractured subjective viewpoint confusing.
They were asking, so what's the truth? But then
it gets entered into the 1951 Venice Film Festival.
Without Kurosawa's knowledge initially. And it
wins the Golden Lion. Which shocked the entire
international film world. Absolutely. The West
was largely unaware of Japan's deep, sophisticated
cinematic tradition. And its subsequent commercial
success in the U .S. RKO bought the distribution
rights. And it earned an almost unheard of $35
,000 in its first three weeks at a single New
York theater. That created a global vogue for
Japanese cinema throughout the 1950s. It did.
Kurosawa didn't just achieve fame for himself.
He smashed the cultural barrier for other masters
like Kenji Mizuguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. They finally
gained international recognition because Kurosawa
proved Japanese films were viable export material.
That is a colossal legacy, opening up an entire
national cinema to the world. And immediately
after that, he returns to Toho and delivers a
modern day masterpiece, Ikiru. Ikiru, which means
to live, is profoundly moving. It starred Takashi
Shimura as Kanji Watanabe. a monotonous, cancer
-ridden bureaucrat who's seeking meaning in his
final months. And he adapted it from Tolstoy's
The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Right, which cemented
his ability to synthesize Western literary tragedy
with a modern Japanese setting. The subject matter
is grim, but the film is often discussed for
its sharp satirical style. It is. He co -wrote
this with Hashimoto and Hideo Guni, who would
become another longtime collaborator. And despite
the, you know, imminent death theme, they use
satire, which was compared favorably to Bertolt
Brecht, aimed squarely at the hero's stifling
bureaucracy and the rising tide of American cultural
colonization. You see that with the ubiquitous
presence of American pop songs on the soundtrack.
And it was wildly successful. It earned Kurosawa
his second Kinema Jempo Best Film Award and became
the most acclaimed of all his films set in the
modern era. So after addressing post -war mortality
and bureaucracy, Kurosawa returns to the period
epic, culminating in what many consider the definitive
action film in history. Seven Samurai. 1954.
This project was just monumental. It was. Kurosawa
took a simple premise. A poor farming village
hires masterless samurai to defend them against
40 bandits. And he gave it a three and a half
hour epic treatment. The investment required
was staggering. 148 days of shooting spread over
almost an entire year. They endured a freezing
winter shoot. And it was, at the time, the most
expensive Japanese film ever made. It blew past
its budget and schedule significantly. But the
reputation of the film today speaks for itself.
It was a huge hit internationally, even with
the heavy edits made by U .S. distributors. Its
critical standing has only grown, culminating
in it being voted the best Japanese film ever
made by critics in 1999. And in the 2022 BFI
site and sound poll, it placed 20th among critics
and tied for 14th among directors globally. It
just confirms its status as this timeless template
for action and character study. Incredible to
think about the pressure following that. Shifting
back to contemporary issues, he followed it up
with I Live in Fear in 1955, conceived during
a time of intense nuclear anxiety in Japan. That
anxiety was very real. In 1954, you had radioactive
rainstorms in Japan and the disastrous Fukui
Maru fishing boat incident. This fear of annihilation
was palpable. And the film focuses on an elderly
factory owner, played by Ms. Hune. Right, who
is so convinced a nuclear attack is coming. That
he becomes obsessed with moving his entire extended
family to Brazil for safety. It sounds incredibly
topical, yet it was his first film to actually
lose money during its original theatrical run.
It was. It was just out of step with the mood.
Japan was focused on high -speed economic growth
and recovery. They didn't want to contemplate
nuclear dread. Today, though, it's rightfully
regarded as one of the finest psychological explorations
of the global nuclear stalemate. It also marked
a sad professional transition. It did. Kurosawa's
longtime composer Fumio Hayasaka died during
the shoot, and the score had to be finished by
his student, Masaru Sato, who then became Kurosawa's
primary composer for the next eight films. Kurosawa's
ability to merge global literary classics with
Japanese history yielded some of his most famous
period pieces, particularly his Shakespeare adaptations.
Throne of Blood, from 1957, is an ambitious,
masterful adaptation of Macbeth, set in the Sengoku
era. and Kurosawa specifically directed his cast
to strip away any residual Western theatricality.
The acting style, particularly Isuzu Yamada's
chilling performance as Lady Macbeth, drew heavily
on the stylized, highly controlled movements
of traditional Japanese no -theater techniques.
It remains highly celebrated among Shakespeare
adaptations globally, precisely because it finds
a new, authentic visual language for the old
story. After tackling two huge epics, he needed
a commercial hit. And that arrived with The Hidden
Fortress in 1958. A very conscious choice to
make a lighter, more purely entertaining action
-adventure comedy -drama to counter the pessimism
of his preceding films. and it became an enormous
box office success. It was also his first film
using the new Toascope widescreen format, which
really enhanced the epic visual sweep. But the
real nugget here is its massive direct influence
on American cinema. Absolutely. The Hidden Fortress,
which chronicles a princess. for General Mifune,
of course, and two bumbling peasants traversing
enemy lines. It became the main structural and
thematic blueprint for George Lucas' Star Wars.
It did. Lucas famously borrowed the entire concept
of telling a high -stakes adventure story primarily
through the eyes of two low -status, bumbling
characters, which, of course, became C -3PO and
R2 -D2. Okay, so here's where the Mifune era
hits its absolute peak. The 1960s, starting with
Yojimbo in 1961, featuring the masterless samurai
Senjuro. Yojimbo is a monumental film. It basically
wrote the rules for the spaghetti Western genre
a full three years before Sergio Leone hit the
scene. He played explicitly with Western genre
conventions, the nameless, wandering, morally
ambiguous hero. And it offered an unprecedentedly
graphic portrayal of violence for the Japanese
screen at the time. It was a massive commercial
and critical success. It earned more than any
previous Kurosawa film. And its success led directly
to an international scandal and a lawsuit. Precisely.
Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars from 1964
was an unauthorized virtual scene -by -scene
remake. He'd just transposed the action to the
American West. So Toho, Kurosawa's producer,
filed a lawsuit. And won a significant out -of
-court settlement. This financial and legal victory
was a defining moment. It illustrated just how
powerful Kurosawa's intellectual property had
become on the global stage. He then broke his
own box office record again in 1963 with the
intense modern suspense film High and Low. Based
on the American novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain,
Kurosawa intended it as a scathing condemnation
of kidnapping, focusing on the moral cost of
wealth. It was hugely successful, breaking his
box office record for the third time in a row.
But there's a deeply unsettling irony here. Oh
yeah. The film was widely blamed for a wave of
real -life kidnappings in Japan, and Kurosawa
himself received threats targeting his young
daughter, Kazuko. The success he sought was having
these real -world, terrifying consequences. Finally,
we reach the end of this epoch with Red Beard
in 1965. This film, set in a mid -19th century
clinic for the poor, exploring humanist themes
of service and humility, is an exhausting process.
It was Kurosawa's longest shoot, taking well
over a year. And it focuses on the conflict between
a cynical young doctor and the stern, wise Dr.
Nide Redbeard, played by Mifune. Right. And it
was a huge financial success, the highest grossing
Japanese production of the year. But critically,
it marked the end of the legendary Kurosawa -Mifune
partnership. A profound and lasting professional
split. It was. Kurosawa himself noted at the
time that filming felt like a cycle had ended,
suggesting his relationship with Mifune was creatively
exhausted. For reasons never publicly explained,
Red Beard was the last film they made together.
And that break, coupled with the collapse of
the Japanese studio system due to television,
it set the stage for the enormous professional
turbulence of the late 1960s. Before we jump
into those turbulent, almost devastating years,
we absolutely have to pause and examine how Kurosawa
worked, because his singular style is what makes
his films so timeless. We talked about his multiple
roles, director, writer, editor, producer, all
wrapped up in the famous Kurosawa Gumi. The Kurosawa
Gumi, or Kurosawa Group, was his dedicated, loyal
team of frequent collaborators. This was essential
for maintaining his quality control and his hands
-on approach. It included key technical people
like cinematographer Asakazu Nakai. Actors like
Takashi Shimura and invaluable support staff
like production assistant Teruyo Nogami. What
specifically did this group enable him to do
that other directors just couldn't? They allowed
him to achieve total command. For instance, he
considered a high -quality script the firm foundation
of a good film. So he worked incredibly closely
with his co -writers, like Shinobu Hashimoto
and Hideo Guni, right from the film's initial
development. And he meticulously pre -visualized
everything. His famous, detailed concept drawings,
his storyboards, were often works of art themselves.
They effectively served as the finished film's
blueprint before a single camera even rolled.
This level of consistency and high standard was
only achievable through the deep trust inherent
to the Kurosawa Gumi. Let's get granular on his
technical style. When you watch his mature work,
certain editing choices just leap out immediately,
especially the optical effect known as the wipe.
The wipe became his signature transitional device.
It's a form of cinematic punctuation. It's an
optical printer effect where a line or a bar
appears to sweep across the screen, cleanly wiping
away one scene and instantly revealing the next.
It's sharp, decisive, dynamic. Why did he favor
this over, say, a smooth dissolve or a simple
straight cut? Well, it creates this forceful
narrative stop. It's almost like closing one
chapter and opening another with a crisp motion.
It's been suggested that Kurosawa may have been,
consciously or unconsciously, nodding to the
traditions of silent film and even kabuki theater,
where clear physical and dramatic transitions
are essential. So he was making the act of transition
part of the drama rather than hiding it. Exactly.
He also utilized the axial cut frequently, particularly
in his 1940s and 1950s films. This is a highly
effective, if sometimes jarring, technique. It
is. It's a series of matched jump cuts where
the camera suddenly shifts dramatically, moving
either much closer to or farther away from the
subject, but without using a smooth tracking
shot. It creates an almost dizzying sense of
immediacy and focus. Pulling the viewer right
into the character's emotional space. Right.
Often used when revealing an intense reaction
or a moment of crisis. It breaks convention.
to heightened dramatic effect. And the simple
concept of cut on motion became foundational
to how he directed and edited action. Absolutely.
This is the technique that defines the kinetic
energy of his battle scenes. Instead of capturing
a complex motion, like a man drawing a sword,
in one uninterrupted shot. He breaks it down
across two or more shots. Right. The audience
sees the start of the draw in one shot and the
finish action in the next. This creates a highly
dynamic, energetic flow, accelerating the movement
and amplifying the visceral impact of the action
sequence. Modern action choreography owes a massive
debt to Kurosawa's use of the cut on motion.
We also need to talk about sound, which he used
with profound intelligence. He was a master of
the soundtrack, often favoring what's sown as
sound -image counterpoint. Most directors use
music to emphasize the emotion of the image -sad
music for a sad scene. Kurosawa, however, frequently
used music or sound effects that would comment
ironically on the image. Or introduce a subtle
tension. Yes. For example, playing cheerful American
pop music during a scene of deep social decay
in Ikiru. This forces the audience to process
two slightly conflicting messages simultaneously,
adding immense nuance and depth to the emotional
landscape of the film. Looking across his entire
filmography, distinct philosophical and structural
themes emerge again and again. One of the most
important is the mentor -decycle relationship.
This is a consistent narrative framework, isn't
it? Often featuring an older master and one or
more novices, think of the relationship between
Mifune's wild samurai and the village recruits
and seven samurai, or Shimura's red -beard doctor
training the young Dr. Yasumoto. And it's not
just about passing on technical skills? No, it's
always centered on achieving spiritual mastery
and self -control. It speaks to Kurosawa's own
lifelong pursuit of craft and inner perfection.
And tied into that idea of mastery is the notion
of the heroic champion, the exceptional individual.
He was fascinated by the person who rises above
the crowd, whether it's a doctor, a detective,
or a masterless samurai, to right a wrong or
produce something significant. This links directly
back to that strong sense of individual responsibility
that defined his post -war filmmaking. He also
famously used extremes of weather as a dramatic
device. Oh, constantly. Think about the final
muddy battle in Seven Samurai or the harsh Siberian
winter in Dersu Uzala. He used rain, wind, snow,
and fog as both a potent visual dramatic device
and a deep symbolic expression of human passion
or internal turmoil. It heightens the stakes
while mirroring the emotional chaos of the situation.
Exactly. And speaking of chaos, his later epics
depict truly savage cyclical violence. Film scholar
Stephen Prince notes that this theme, which often
shows the futility of human conflict, began prominently
with Throne of Blood and returned with immense
bloody force in his 1980s epics like Kajimusha
and Ran. Now, this focus on the heroic champion,
often a samurai, led to a persistent charge of
elitism from within Japan. It did. Some Japanese
critics and filmmakers, including the influential
Nagisa Shima, argued that Kurosawa was catering
to Western tastes by focusing too heavily on
these exceptional warrior figures, rather than
depicting the masses, the peasantry. They saw
his focus as too westernized. And insufficiently
reflective of Japanese common life. But Kurosawa
himself offered a powerful rebuttal to this charge,
didn't he? He did, specifically in defense of
Seven Samurai. He said, I wanted to say that
after everything, the peasants were the stronger,
closely clinging to the earth. It was the samurai
who were weak because they were being blown by
the winds of time. That's a powerful statement.
It explains his philosophy. The samurai's weakness
ultimately served to highlight the enduring,
silent strength and persistence of the common
people. It was a sophisticated defense against
a simplistic critique. So by the mid -1960s,
Kurosawa is 56. The Japanese film industry is
troubled. Costs are high. His collaboration with
Mishun is over. He begins looking abroad for
funding, leading to one of the darkest and most
professionally devastating periods of his life.
The shift was almost immediately difficult. After
his contract with Toho ended in 1966, his first
foreign project, the action thriller Runaway
Train for Embassy Pictures, it just fell apart.
Completely. due to logistical nightmares. It
was supposed to be his first film in color and
his first in English, but it was plagued by language
barriers, repeated delays due to needing snow
that never arrived. It was a mess. And the film
eventually got made two decades later, but his
original vision just collapsed. Frustrating,
yes, but nothing compared to the disaster that
followed. The Tora Tora Tora debacle in 1968
was an almost unmitigated tragedy, as Kurosawa's
biographer called it. This was a massive co -production
with 20th Century Fox intended to show the Pearl
Harbor attack from both the U .S. and Japanese
viewpoints. Kurosawa was set to helm the Japanese
segment. It sounds like a clash of two cinematic
planets. It was immediate and intense. Kurosawa
struggled significantly with the unfamiliar committee
-driven Hollywood crew and system. He was a singular
artist, used to commanding every detail. Hollywood
was a bureaucracy. And his script for the Japanese
segment was over four hours long. But he was
only allocated 90 minutes of screen time. This
led to numerous forced revisions that frustrated
him immensely. The outcome was a professional
betrayal that almost ended his career. After
only three weeks of shooting, the American producers
concluded that Kurosawa must be mentally ill.
He was medically examined and diagnosed with
neurasthenia, a 20th century catch -all term
for chronic fatigue, severe anxiety, and manic
excitement. So basically a profound case of burnout
and nervous exhaustion. Right. So rather than
addressing the creative or logistical conflict,
the studio used a medical diagnosis to dismiss
him. On Christmas Eve 1968, he was effectively
fired due to fatigue. And he had his name removed
from the credits, even though the final Japanese
script retained elements of his work. It was
a humiliating public failure orchestrated by
the very system he had hoped would sustain him.
The fallout was just devastating. He became estranged
from his longtime collaborator, Ryuzo Kikushima.
It had exposed corruption in his own company,
and it led the entire industry, both foreign
and domestic, to severely doubt his viability.
He had spent years preparing for this grand return
that just ended in failure and public disgrace.
To prove he wasn't finished, Kurosawa forms the
Club of the Four Knights in 1969 with fellow
directors Kisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi,
and Kon Ichikawa. This collective was a deliberate
effort to prove Kurosawa could still complete
a film. And the result was Dota Sakaden, in 1970,
his first work in color, shot quickly in nine
weeks on a limited budget. It was a defiant act
of artistic expression. And the visual style
was a massive, almost surreal departure from
his previous work. Incredibly bold. The film
used an almost psychedelic palette of primary
colors, vivid blues, shocking reds and oranges,
to highlight the toxic environment where the
poor and destitute characters lived. But it lost
money. It lost money, was met with audience indifference,
and the club of the four nights dissolved almost
immediately. And this professional and financial
despair culminated in the darkest moment of his
personal life. Yes. Unable to secure further
funding, publicly humiliated, and struggling
profoundly with his health, Kurosawa attempted
suicide on December 22, 1971. He survived. He
survived and retreated into domestic life, unsure
if he would ever direct again. This was his professional
and personal nadir, a crisis brought on by a
complete artistic collapse. But his international
reputation held strong, and in 1973, a lifeline
came from the Soviet Union. Soviet studio Mosfilm
approached him with an offer he couldn't refuse.
Kurosawa accepted immediately, proposing an adaptation
of an explorer's autobiographical work, Dursu
Uzala, a story of a goldie hunter living in harmony
with nature, which Kurosawa had wanted to film
since the 1930s. Directing for a major foreign
power involved a grueling two -year stay in the
Soviet Union. The Siberian shoot was extremely
difficult, forcing Kurosawa and his crew to work
in exceedingly harsh, remote natural conditions.
But the film was completed. premiered in 1975
and achieved international success. It won the
Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film
Festival. And an Academy Award for Best Foreign
Language Film? Crucially, yes. It was external
validation that proved, against all the doubts
of the Japanese and Hollywood studios, that Kurosawa
was still a creative force. And this brings us
to one of the most heartwarming and dramatically
ironic stories in film history, the Lucas Intervention.
George Lucas. His 1977 film Star Wars was heavily
influenced by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress,
and he discovered that his hero, this foundational
genius, was still struggling desperately to fund
a new project, despite the success of Dersu Zala.
So Lucas leveraged his immense new influence
in Hollywood. He used that power to secure funding
for Kurosawa's next epic, Kajimusha. And imagine
the dramatic irony of this moment. He essentially
coerced 20th Century Fox. The very same studio
that had fired Kurosawa a decade earlier and
labeled him mentally ill. To produce his new
film. And to ensure stability, Lucas then recruited
Francis Ford Coppola as co -producer, providing
the institutional backing and creative support
Kurosawa absolutely needed to avoid another catastrophic
Hollywood interference. Kaijamusha the Shadow
Warrior was the story of a thief hired as the
double of a medieval lord. It was a beautiful,
monumental film. And despite production issues,
Kurosawa fired his original lead actor, Shintaro
Katsu. After Katsu insisted on videotaping his
own performance, the film was a massive hit in
Japan and abroad. It won the prestigious Palme
d 'Or at Cannes in 1980. This film also highlighted
Kurosawa's famous process of intense visual preparation.
He was celebrated for his detailed, highly chromatic
concept drawings, his storyboards. He exhibited
these drawings as art while promoting Kajimusha,
effectively showing the public the meticulous
blueprint he had used to visualize every single
frame of the film long before shooting began.
It showed his command was fully restored. The
success of Kajimusha set the stage for perhaps
his final undisputed masterpiece, Ran. 1985.
Ran, meaning chaos, is monumental cinema. It's
another epic, loosely based on Shakespeare's
King Lear, depicting a ruthless, bloodthirsty
warlord betrayed by his three sons. It required
massive international financing. Primarily from
the French producer Serge Soberman, because Japanese
studios remained too wary of the immense cost.
And the production was halted and marked by deep
personal tragedy. Yes, filming was temporarily
halted when his beloved wife Yuko fell ill and
then died in February 1985. Kurosawa, grief -stricken,
returned to finish the film, and it premiered
to huge critical acclaim. A visual and narrative
triumph. And despite its reception, it was involved
in a major controversy surrounding the Academy
Awards. Japan controversially passed over Ran
as its official entry for the Best Foreign Film
Oscar due to confusing classification rules.
Was it a Japanese or a French film, given the
financing? So director Sidney Lumet, a huge admirer,
successfully campaigned for Kurosawa to receive
a Best Director nomination instead. A tremendous
show of international respect in the face of
the snub by his home country. It was. Crucially,
after Ran, Kurosawa finally changed his typical
answer about which of his films was his best.
For decades, whenever he was asked which of his
films was his greatest, he always replied, my
next one. Right. It reflected his constant ambition,
the belief that he hadn't yet achieved perfection.
But after Ran, he quietly cited it as his best
film. It was the culmination of a lifetime of
artistic and thematic vision. Kurosawa continued
working well into his 80s, focusing on films
that were incredibly personal and reflective.
Dreams from 1990 was unique because it was entirely
based on the director's own literal dreams. It
was his first deeply personal project and the
first time in over 40 years that he wrote the
screenplay completely alone without his usual
co -writing team. And once again, external American
support was key. Steven Spielberg. Spielberg
convinced Warner Bros. to buy the international
rights, ensuring the film should be produced
despite its non -commercial episodic structure.
1990 was also the year he received the ultimate
validation from Hollywood, the Academy Award
for Lifetime Achievement. And this is where we
get that famously humbling quote that has inspired
generations of filmmakers. Accepting the award,
the man who defined modern cinema said, I'm a
little worried because I don't feel that I understand
cinema yet. The greatest living master at age
80 expressing profound humility about his craft.
Amazing. His next film, Rhapsody in August from
91, was his first film fully produced in Japan
in two decades and was perhaps his most politically
contentious, exploring the scars of the Nagasaki
nuclear bombing. His intentions were to depict
the human cost and the generational gap in dealing
with that trauma. But it received unexpected
negative reaction, especially in the U .S., where
Curacao was accused of promulgating anti -American
sentiments, an accusation he publicly and vigorously
rejected. He was just trying to document a national
wound. His final completed film was Matadayo
in 1993, which translates to Not Yet. Based on
the life of a beloved Japanese professor of German,
the narrative centers on his yearly birthday
celebration with his former students, during
which he declares, in a defiant toast, his unwillingness
to die yet. For the 81 -year -old Kurosawa, who
still had screenplays waiting, this was a poignant
and profoundly relevant theme about the creative
will to survive and continue working. And though
he continued to write, his hopes of directing
again were tragically cut short. He wrote The
Sea is Watching and After the Rain in the mid
-1990s, but while working on the latter in 1995,
he suffered a slip that broke the base of his
spine. This forced him into a wheelchair for
the rest of his life, ending his directing career
and, tragically, ending his long -held wish to
die on set while shooting a film. He died of
a stroke on September 6, 1998. at the age of
88 in tokyo the mark kurosawa left on global
cinema is just it's hard to calculate he's consistently
cited as one of the greatest directors of all
time and in 1999 he was named asian of the century
in the arts literature and culture category by
asian week magazine and cnn His reputation among
fellow filmmakers is the ultimate testament to
his influence. It's a phenomena almost unmatched
in cinema. The admiration he garnered from his
peers across generations and continents is staggering.
It demonstrates that his cinematic power truly
crossed all cultural boundaries. Let's run through
some of these admirers, starting with Ingmar
Bergman. another titan of world cinema who dealt
heavily in psychological drama, openly called
his own film The Virgin Spring a lousy imitation
of Kurosawa, admitting he was trying to channel
the Japanese master's style. That's a remarkable
admission of awe from one genius to another.
It is. Meanwhile, Federico Fellini offered perhaps
the ultimate compliment to Kurosawa's holistic
approach. He considered him the greatest living
example of all that an author of the cinema should
be. Recognizing his complete mastery over every
single aspect of production. Exactly. And Satyajit
Ray described the effect of seeing Rashomon as
electric, praising its sustained and dazzling
proof of a director's command. And of course,
the Hollywood contingent, which eventually saved
his career in the 80s. George Lucas didn't just
cite The Hidden Fortress as inspiration for Star
Wars. He said that Kurosawa's films were one
of his strongest sources of creative inspiration
because the emotions they conveyed were so potent
that cultural barriers just... ceased to exist.
Steven Spielberg cited Kurosawa's vision as shaping
his own, and Sidney Lumet elevated him to another
level, calling Kurosawa the Beethoven of movie
directors. Even Stanley Kubrick, known for his
relentless pursuit of technical perfection, consistently
spoke of Kurosawa admiringly, viewing him as
one of the very few directors worthy of the title
great. The consistency of praise across such
diverse, stylistic voices just confirms his universal
mastery. We should circle back to some of the
critiques, particularly the charge from some
circles that Kurosawa was too westernized. Yes.
Critics of the French New Wave, notably Jacques
Rivette, often favored Kenji Mizuguchi over Kurosawa.
Viewing Kurosawa as too heavily influenced by
Western literary classics, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy, and European genre films. So the very
thing that made him globally accessible and revolutionary.
He was sometimes held against him by purists
seeking a more authentically Japanese cinema.
And domestically, that charge of elitism persisted,
the idea that he catered to Western tastes by
focusing on heroic samurai figures. However,
as we discussed, Kurosawa's films consistently
showed the failure of the samurai class and the
enduring strength of the peasants, suggesting
this critique often missed the political subtlety
beneath the spectacle. Absolutely. And although
he couldn't achieve his wish to die on set, his
creative life continued posthumously through
his unfilmed screenplays. Following his death,
several were brought to the screen by protégés.
After the Rain in 99 and The Sea is Watching
in 2002 were both produced. Furthermore, the
script he originally wrote for the doomed Club
of the Four Knights, Doroheda, was finally filmed
and released in 2000 by the only surviving member
of the club, Kanichikawa. His narratives kept
going, even when his body could not. His legacy
isn't just cinematic, it's an entire institution.
The Kurosawa Production Company, established
way back in 1959, is still running today, now
headed by his son, Hisao. And that company works
closely with the Akira Kurosawa Foundation, organizing
projects that maintain his legacy and protect
his intellectual property. This institutional
structure is crucial for maintaining control
over his artistic heritage. The demand for his
stories is so high that in 2011, the remake rights
to most of his films and unproduced screenplays
were assigned to an L .A.-based company called
Splendent. Which is a huge confirmation of the
power of his narrative scaffolding. The stated
aim is explicitly to help contemporary filmmakers
introduce a new generation of moviegoers to these
unforgettable stories. This acknowledges that
his foundational stories are so robust and universal
that they can be continually retold and recontextualized.
And finally, Kurosawa was a massive figure in
Japan. He was the first filmmaker to receive
Japan's Order of Culture in 1985, confirming
his status as a cultural giant both at home and
abroad. Two film awards are named in his honor,
ensuring that future generations of filmmakers
striving for excellence will always have his
name attached to their highest aspirations. To
synthesize Kurosawa's six decades, we've seen
him navigate an incredible, almost impossible
arc. He moved from being a frustrated painter
surviving profound personal tragedy and loss
to becoming a defining figure of post -war cinema.
He navigated intense censorship, weathered the
devastating collapse of his Hollywood detours,
enduring professional betrayal and personal collapse.
Only to return triumphantly to cinema through
the unwavering faith of a new generation of American
patrons. And what ultimately makes him an emperor
is his ability to create a truly global cinematic
language, a mastery of synthesis. Absolutely.
He brilliantly blended Western literary classics,
Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and popular genre tropes
like the Western. and the police procedural,
integrating them seamlessly with traditional
Japanese staging like no theater and deep philosophical
exploration into universal human themes. The
result is work that transcends national boundaries,
giving us foundational cinematic texts like Rashomon
and Seven Samurai. And the power of persistence
is the overwhelming takeaway from his life. That
ability to return from professional and personal
collapse, that period between his firing in 1968
and his suicide attempt in 1971, and then deliver
two monumental internationally produced epics,
Kajimusha and Ran, in his 70s. It's a profound
case study in artistic resilience. It shows that
even when the world rejects you, an artist's
vision can still find patronage. Which brings
us back full circle to the quote he gave in 1990
while accepting his Lifetime Achievement Oscar.
Kurosawa, who possessed the technical mastery
to design, write, direct and edit every element
of his films, famously said, I'm a little worried
because I don't feel that I understand cinema
yet. That phrase, spoken by the man we call the
emperor of cinema, is the perfect closing thought.
If a director of Kurosawa's technical mastery
and vast influence, who mastered everything from
the axial cut to the emotional texture of his
sound design, still didn't feel he fully understood
cinema at the age of 80, what deeper, more elusive
element of the craft was he still striving for?
Was he seeking a narrative truth that always
remained just out of reach, or does true mastery
in any art form simply lead to a profound realization
of how much more there is left to learn? We'll
leave you to mull on that.