Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998), Japanese film director. Kurosawa was born in Tokyo. Intending to become a painter, he briefly attended the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts. In 1936 he became an assistant director and screenwriter at the Toho film studios in Tokyo. The first film he directed, in the mid-1940s, Sugata Sanshiro (Judo Saga), was a two-part film about a young judo master. His first international success was Rashomon (1950), one of the many films in which Kurosawa directed the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. It took the grand prize at the 1951 Venice Film Festival—the first time a Japanese film had won an international award. Critics have characterized his productions of Ikiru (1952; To Live), and Shichinin no Samurai (1954; The Seven Samurai) as masterpieces.

Although Kurosawa’s adaptation of traditional Oriental techniques gave his films a peculiarly Japanese sensibility, their visual beauty and dramatic strength appeal to Western audiences. Among his later films are Tengoku to Jigoku (1963; High and Low), Akahige (1965; Red Beard), Kagemusha (1980; The Shadow Warrior), Yume (1990; Dreams), Hachigatsu no Kyoshikyoku (1990; Rhapsody in August), and Madadayo (1993); his adaptations from Shakespeare include Kumonosu Jo (1957; Throne of Blood), from Macbeth, and Ran (1985; Chaos), from King Lear. His Dersu Uzala won an Academy Award (Oscar) as Best Foreign Film in 1975, and in 1989 Kurosawa was presented with an honorary Academy Award. He died in his native Tokyo on September 6, 1998, a great loss to world cinema as well as to the Japanese film industry he had dominated for over four decades.