Akira Kurosawa

Mini biography
After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, making his directorial debut in 1943. After working in a wide range of genres, he made his breakthrough film _Rashomon (1950)_ in 1950. It won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West. The next few years saw the low-key, touching Ikiru (1952) (Living), the epic Shichinin no samurai (1954) (Seven Samurai) and the barbaric, riveting Shakespeare adaptation _Kumonosu jo (1957)_ (Throne of Blood), the later two showcasing the magnetic personality of Toshirô Mifune, who also starred in the two samurai comedies Yojimbo (1961) and Tsubaki Sanjûrô (1962). After a lean period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, Kurosawa attempted suicide. He survived, and made the Russian co-production Dersu Uzala (1975) and, with the help of admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, the samurai epic Kagemusha (1980), which was in many ways a dry run for Ran (1985), his second Shakespeare adaptation. He continued to work into his eighties with the more personal Yume (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991) and Madadayo (1993). Kurosawa's films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where critics have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors (William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Maxim Gorky and Evan Hunter) with suspicion - but he's revered by American and European film-makers, who remade Shichinin no samurai (1954), as The Magnificent Seven (1960), Yojimbo (1961), as Per un pugno di dollari (1964) and Kakushi toride no san akunin (1958), as Star Wars (1977).
Date of birth (location) 23 March 1910 Omori, Tokyo, Japan
Date of death (details) 6 September 1998 Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan. (stroke)

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Madadayo
... aka Not Yet
(1993) Director, Writer, Editor
Plot Summay: This film tells the story of professor Uehida Hyakken-sama (1889-1971), in Gotemba, around the forties. He was a university professor until an air raid, when he left to become a writer and has to live in a hut. His mood has hardly changed, not by the change nor by time. Every year his students celebrate his birthday, issuing the question "Mahda kai?" (not yet?), just to hear Uehida-san's answer "Madada yo!" (No, not yet!), in a ritual of self affirmation, and desires of lasting forever. It's a very "japanese" film who portrays everyday life and customs in Japan.

Hachi-gatsu no kyôshikyoku
... aka 8-gatsu no rapusodî (Japan: alternative transliteration) , ... aka Hachi-gatsu no rapusodî (Japan: alternative transliteration) , ... aka Rhapsody in August (USA)
(1991) Director, Writer, Editor
Plot Summay: An elderly woman living in Nagasaki Japan takes care of her four grandchildren for their summer vacation. They learn about the atomic bomb that fell in 1945, and how it killed their Grandfather. Richard Gere guest stars as an American nephew of the elderly woman

Yume
... aka Akira Kurosawa's Dreams , ... aka Dreams , ... aka I Saw a Dream Like This , ... aka Konna yume wo mita , ... aka Such Dreams I Have Dreamed (Japan: English title)
(1990) Director, Writer
Plot Summay: This is essentially eight separate short films, though with some overlaps in terms of characters and thematic material - chiefly that of man's relationship with his environment. 'Sunshine Through The Rain': a young boy is told not to go out on the day when both weather conditions occur, because that's when the foxes hold their wedding procession, which could have fatal consequences for those who witness it. 'The Peach Orchard': the same young boy encounters the spirits of the peach trees that have been cut down by heartless humans. 'The Blizzard': a team of mountaineers are saved from a blizzard by spiritual intervention. 'The Tunnel': a man encounters the ghosts of an army platoon, whose deaths he was responsible for. 'Crows': an art student encounters Vincent Van Gogh and enters the world of his paintings. 'Mount Fuji in Red': nuclear meltdown threatens the devastation of Japan. 'The Weeping Demon': a portrait of a post-nuclear world populated by human mutations. 'Village of the Watermills': a sunny portrait of a village whose population is entirely at one with nature.

Ran
... aka Chaos , ... aka Ran (USA)
(1985) Director, Writer, Editor
Plot Summary: This is a Japanese adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear. An aging warlord decides to split his kingdom between his three sons, who will live in three separate castles. The two eldest sons are quite happy, but the youngest thinks his father has gone mad, and predicts that it won't be long until the two older brothers are fighting with each other.
Kagemusha
... aka Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior) , ... aka Kagemusha the Shadow Warrior , ... aka Shadow Warrior , ... aka The Double
(1980), Director, Writer, Producer
Plot Summary: When a powerful warlord in medieval Japan dies, a poor thief recruited to impersonate him finds difficulty living up to his role and clashes with the spirit of the warlord during turbulent times in the kingdom.

Dersu Uzala
... aka Дерсу Узала (Soviet Union: Russian title) , ... aka Derusu Uzara (Japan)
(1975), Director, Writer
Plot Summary: A Russian army explorer who is rescued in Siberia by a rugged Asiatic hunter renews his friendship with the woodsman years later when he returns at the head of a larger expedition. The hunter finds that all his nature lore is of no help when he accompanies the explorer back to civilisation.

Akahige
... aka Red Beard (International: English title: literal title)
, (1965), Director, Producer
Plot Summary: This Akira Kurosawa film tells the tale of young Dr. Yasumoto, a recent medical graduate assigned to a rural clinic for his post-graduate medical training. Yasumoto is condescending and arrogant--he is livid that he, who aspires to join the team of physicians caring for the Japanese Shogunate, should have to train in Dr. Niide's spartan clinic serving the impoverished local population. He finds Dr. Niide, known as 'Red Beard', a demanding taskmaster with a brusque manner and intense devotion to his patients. Niide requires nothing less than a monastic lifestyle of his interns. However, gradually Yasumoto is changed by his exposure to Red Beard. He learns the true meaning of being a doctor, seeing patients as real people who are suffering and as individuals whose lives he can improve and heal with his care.

Tengoku to jigoku
... aka Heaven and Hell (International: English title: literal title) , ... aka High and Low (USA), ... aka The Ransom (UK)
(1963), Director, Producer
Plot Summary: An executive mortgages all he owns to stage a coup and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of incompetent and greedy executives. He needs the same money, though, to pay the ransom that will possibly save a child's life. His resolution of that dilemma -- the certain loss of the company vs. the probable loss of the child -- makes for one distinct drama, and an ensuing elaborate police procedure makes for a second.
At a crucial point in his business life, executive Gondo learns that his son has been kidnapped and that the ransom demanded is near the amount Gondo has raised for a critical business deal. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom - that is, until he learns that the kidnappers have mistakenly abducted not Gondo's son, but the child of Gondo's chauffeur. Now Gondo must decide whether the other man's child is equally worth saving.

Tsubaki Sanjûrô
... aka Sanjuro (USA)
(1962), Director, Writer, Editor
Plot Summary: A group of idealistic young men, determined to clean up the corruption in their town, are aided by a scruffy, cynical samurai who does not at all fit their concept of a noble warrior.

Yojimbo
... aka The Bodyguard (International: English title: literal title) , ... aka Yojimbo the Bodyguard (USA) , ... aka Yojinbo (Japan: modified Hepburn romanization)
(1961), Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: Yojimbo, a wandering samurai enters a rural town in nineteenth century Japan. After learning from the innkeeper that the town is divided between two gangsters, he plays one side off against the other. His efforts are complicated by the arrival of the wily Unosuke, the son of one of the gangsters, who owns a revolver. Unosuke has Yojimbo beaten after he reunites an abducted woman with her husband and son, then massacres his father's opponents. During the slaughter, the samurai escapes with the help of the innkeeper; but while recuperating at a nearby temple, he learns of innkeeper's abduction by Unosuke, and returns to the town to confront him.

Kakushi toride no san akunin
... aka The Hidden Fortress (USA) , ... aka The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress (informal English title) , ... aka Three Bad Men in a Hidden Fortress (International: English title: literal title) , ... aka Three Rascals in the Hidden Fortress (International: English title)
(1958), Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: Princess Yuki Akizuki ("Yukihime" in Japanese) is to be led through enemy territory, where she may rebuild her kingdom with gold that she has in her caravan. She is assisted by her trusted general, Rokurota Makabe, who insists that she masquarades as a mute farmer. Two minions, Tahei and Matashichi help unknowingly, as they believe they will get a piece of the gold if they help the princess attain her goals.
In the Sixteenth Century, in Japan, Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matakishi (Kamatari Fujiwara), two rascals and greedy peasants, are trying to return to the city of Akizuki through Hayakawa, after an unsuccessful attempt of making money with the war between the clans of Yamana and Akizuki. While warming themselves in a fire, they find gold with the symbol MT. Suribachi of the Akizuki hidden in the firewood, and they decide to search for other branches. Tahei and Matakishi meet General Rokurota Makabe (Toshirô Mifune), who is secretly protecting Princess Yukihime (Misa Uehara), and without knowing their identities, they accept to escort and help them in the transportation of the gold through the enemy lines to Akizuki.

Donzoko
... aka The Lower Depths (USA)
(1957), Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: In a slum flophouse, a collection of beggars and thieves bewail their lot in life, and Osugi, the landlady, fights with her sister, Okayo, over the man they both desire, the thief Sutekichi.
Una coppia di gretti usurai gestisce uno squallido dormitorio, nei pressi di una discarica. Una folla di larve e relitti umani affolla il locale: un ex attore alcolizzato; una prostituta; un fabbro che sragiona; disoccupati ed altri ancora. In tutti c'è la ricerca della fuga dalla loro miseranda esistenza, attraverso alcool, gioco, sogni. Arriva un giorno al dormitorio un vecchio e saggio pellegrino, che porta in tutti una nota di speranza con la sua filosofia e la sua umanità. Ma il sogno dura poco : lo sconforto torna ad impadronirsi di tutti, al punto da portare l'ex attore al suicidio e gli altri a ribellarsi ai due gestori. Ispirato ad un dramma di Gorkij, il film parla della parte sconfitta dell'umanità, dei vinti, dei falliti, dei rifiutati dalla società "civile".

Kumonosu jô
... aka Cobweb Castle , ... aka Macbeth (USA) , ... aka Spider Web Castle , ... aka The Castle of the Spider's Web , ... aka Throne of Blood (USA: original subtitled version)
(1957), Director , Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: A transposition of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' to medieval Japan. After a great military victory, Lords Washizu and Miki are lost in the dense Cobweb Forest, where they meet a mysterious old woman who predicts great things for Washizu and even greater things for Miki's descendants. Once out of the forest, Washizu and Miki are immediately promoted by the Emperor. Washizu, encouraged by his ambitious wife, plots to make even more of the prophecy come true, even if it means killing the Emperor...

Shichinin no samurai
... aka Seven Samurai (UK) , ... aka Shichi-nin no samurai (Japan: alternative transliteration) , ... aka The Magnificent Seven , ... aka The Seven Samurai (USA)
(1954), Director , Writer, Editor
Plot Summary: A poor village under attack by bandits recruits seven unemployed samurai to help them defend themselves. A veteran samurai, who has fallen on hard times, answers a village's request for protection from bandits. He gathers 6 other samurai to help him, and they teach the townspeople how to defend themselves, and they supply the samurai with three small meals a day. The film culminates in a giant battle when 40 bandits attack the village. A village is constantly attacked by well armed bandits. One day after an attack they seek the wisdom of an elder who tells them they cannot afford weapons, but they can find men with weapons, samurai, who will fight for them, if they find samurai who are in down on their luck and wondering where their next meal will come from. They find a very experienced samurai with a good heart who agrees to recruit their party for them. He selects five genuine samurai and one who is suspect but the seven return to the village to protect it from the forty plus bandits.

Ikiru
... aka Doomed , ... aka Living (International: English title) , ... aka To Live (International: English title)
(1952), Director , Writer
Plot Summary: Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing. He learns he is dying of cancer and wants to find some meaning in his life. He finds himself unable to talk with his family, and spends a night on the town with a novelist, but that leaves him unfulfilled. He next spends time with a young woman from his office, but finally decides he can make a difference through his job... After Watanabe's death, co-workers at his funeral discuss his behavior over the last several months and debate why he suddenly became assertive in his job to promote a city park, and resolve to be more like Watanabe.

Rashômon
... aka In the Woods , ... aka Rashomon (Japan: alternative transliteration)
(1950), Director, Writer, Editor
Plot Summary: A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view. In ancient Japan, a woman is raped and her husband killed. The film gives us four viewpoints of the incident - one for each defendant - each revealing a little more detail. Which version, if any, is the real truth about what happened ?. In 12th century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked by the notorious bandit Tajomaru, and the samurai ends up dead. Tajomaru is captured shortly afterward and is put on trial, but his story and the wife's are so completely different that a psychic is brought in to allow the murdered man to give his own testimony. He tells yet another completely different story. Finally, a woodcutter who found the body reveals that he saw the whole thing, and his version is again completely different from the others. Rashomon (1950) is a Japanese crime drama, that is produced with both philosophical and psychological overtones. An episode (rape and murder) in a forest is reported by four witnesses, each from their own point of view. - Who is telling the truth? What is truth?

Nora inu
... aka Stray Dog (USA)
(1949), Director , Writer
Plot Summary: Murukami, a young homicide detective, has his pocket picked on a bus and loses his pistol. Frantic and ashamed, he dashes about trying to recover the weapon without success until taken under the wing of an older and wiser detective, Sato. Together they track the culprit.

Pending

Dodesukaden
... aka Clickety-Clack, ... aka Dodes'ka-den (alternative transliteration)
( 1970), Director, Producer
Plot Summary: Episodes from the lives of a group of Tokyo slum-dwellers: Rokkuchan, a retarded boy who brings meaning and routine to his life by driving an imaginary streetcar; children who support their parents by scrounging or by tedious and ill-paying endeavours; schemers who plot or dream of escaping the shackles of poverty.

Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru
... aka The Bad Sleep Well , ... aka The Rose in the Mud , ... aka The Worse You Are, the Better You Sleep
(1960), Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: In Kurosawa's HAMLET-like story of corporate scandal in post-war Japan, a young man attempts to use his position at the heart of a corrupt company to expose the men responsible for his father's death.

Ikimono no kiroku
... aka I Live In Fear: Record of a Living Being (International: English title) , ... aka I Live in Fear (USA) , ... aka Record of a Living Being , ... aka What the Birds Knew
(1955), Director , Writer
Plot Summary: Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is so frightened and obsessed with the idea of nuclear extermination that his family decides to have him ruled incompetent. Nakajima's fervent wish is for his family to join him in escaping from Japan to the relative safety of South America. Harada, a civil volunteer in the case, sympathizes with Nakajima's conviction, but the old man's irrational behaviour prevents the court from taking his fears seriously.

Hakuchi
... aka The Idiot (USA)
(1951), Director, Writer, Editor
Plot Summary: Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved in turn by Akama. When Akama realizes that he will never have Taeko, his thoughts turn to murder, and great tragedy ensues.

Shubun
... aka Scandal , ... aka Shubun - Sukyandaru (Japan)
(1950), Director, Writer

Shizukanaru ketto
... aka A Silent Duel , ... aka The Quiet Duel
(1949), Director, Writer
Plot Summary: Kyoji Fujisaki, a young doctor, contracts syphilis from a patient during wartime surgery. After the war, he returns to his fiancée and rejects her without explanation. His nurse Rui learns the truth, however. When Fujisaki encounters the man who had infected him in the war, the doctor forces the man to take responsibility for himself and for the man's wife, who expects a child.

Yoidore tenshi
... aka Drunken Angel
(1948), Director
Plot Summary: After a battle with rival criminals, a small-time gangster is treated by an alcoholic doctor in post-war Japan. The doctor diagnoses the young gangster's tuberculosis, and convinces him to begin treatment for it. The two enjoy an uneasy friendship until the gangster's former boss is released from prison and seeks to take over his gang once again. The ailing young man loses his status as gang boss and becomes ostracised, and eventually confronts his former boss in a battle to the death.

Subarashiki nichiyobi
... aka One Wonderful Sunday , ... aka Wonderful Sunday
(1947), Director , Writer
Plot Summary: Yuzo and his fiancée Masako spend their Sunday afternoon together, trying to have a good time on just thirty-five yen. They manage to have many small adventures, especially because Masako's optimism and belief in dreams is able to lift Yuzo from his realistic despair.

Waga seishun ni kuinashi
... aka No Regrets for My Youth , ... aka No Regrets for Our Youth
(1946), Director , Writer
Plot Summary: Yukie, the well-bred daughter of a university professor, is shocked when her father is relieved of his post for his political teachings, and even more so when her lover, one of her father's students, is arrested, then executed as a spy. She decides to leave Kyoto to live with the boy's parents in their peasant village. But life still has many lessons for her...

Asu o tsukuru hitobito
... aka Those Who Make Tomorrow
(1946), Director
Plot Summary: Two sisters, one a dancer and the other a script supervisor at a big movie studio, become embroiled in union activities when a strike is called in sympathy with striking railroad workers, one of whom boards with the sisters and their parents. The girls' father argues with them about their strike, but finds his views changing when he himself loses his job.

Zoku Sugata Sanshiro
... aka Judo Saga II , ... aka Judo Story II, ... aka Sanshiro Sugata Part Two, ... aka Sanshiro Sugata Sequel (literal English title)
(1945), Director, Writer
Plot Summary: In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the foreign warrior.

Tora no o wo fumu otokotachi
... aka The Men Who Tread On the Tiger's Tail (USA), ... aka They Who Step on the Tail of the Tiger, ... aka They Who Step on the Tiger's Tail, ... aka Tora no o fumu otokotachi (Japan: alternative transliteration), ... aka Walkers on the Tiger's Tail
(1945), Director, Writer
Plot Summary: A fugitive lord and his bodyguards and followers, all disguised as monks, traverse a forest, where they must avoid capture and outsmart the border guards.

Ichiban utsukushiku
... aka Most Beautifully , ... aka The Most Beautiful
(1944), Director, Writer
Plot Summary: The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their country's cause.

Sugata Sanshiro
... aka Judo Saga, ... aka Judo Store, ... aka Kurosawa's Judo Saga
(1943), Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, comes to the city to apprentice at a jujitsu school. His first night, he sees Yano in action, a master of judo, a more spiritual art, and he begs to be Yano's student. As the youth learns technique, he must also learn "satori," the calm acceptance of Nature's law. If he can balance strength and control, then judo may become the training regimen for the city's police, Sanshiro can gain respect from an old teacher in a jujitsu school, and he can win the hand of Sayo, that teacher's daughter, who is also sought by jujitsu's finest master, the implacable Higaki, who vows to kill Sanshiro in a midnight fight on a windswept mountainside.

Uma
(some scenes) (uncredited) , ... aka Horse
(1941), Director, Writer, Editor, Producer
Plot Summary: Ine Onoda, the eldest daughter of a poor family of farmers, raises a colt from birth and comes to love the horse dearly. When the horse is grown, the government orders it auctioned and sold to the army. Ine struggles to prevent the sale.