Biography for
Akira Kurosawa More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

23 March 1910, Tokyo, Japan

Date of Death

6 September 1998, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan (stroke)

Nickname

The Emperor
Wind Man

Height

6' 0½" (1.84 m)

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 Rashômon (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 jô (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 Dreams (1990), Hachi-gatsu no kyôshikyoku (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).

IMDb Mini Biography By: Michael Brooke

Spouse

Yôko Yaguchi

(21 May 1945 - 1 February 1985) (her death) 2 children

Trade Mark

Frequently uses the "wipe effect" to fade from one scene to another. This effect later became famous due to its usage in the Star Wars trilogy.

Likes to do Shakespearan plays in Feudal Japanese settings.

Often casts Toshirô Mifune , Takashi Shimura, & Tatsuya Nakadai.

Painterly compositions.

Use of weather to heighten mood, most obviously rain

Trivia

His films are frequently copied and remade by American and European filmmakers.

In December 1971, after a period of suffering from mental fatigue and frustrated with a run of unsatisfying and sub par directing work, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrist thirty times with a razor. Fortunately, the wounds were not fatal and he made a full recovery.

Because he could not get film financing for a period of time in his career, he directed and even appeared in Japanese television commercials.

At over 6' feet tall, he was extremely large by Japanese standards, having stood a head taller than any of his colleagues.

Although the Japanese press tried to paint him as a tyrant, almost all of his casts and crews agreed he was a much more cool and detached presence on sets. Many also described him as "intense".

He was voted the 6th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him the only Asian on a list of 50 directors and the highest ranking non-American.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890- 1945". Pages 583-605. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Kurosawa worshipped legendary American director John Ford, his primary influence as a filmmaker. When the two met, Ford was uncommonly pleasant to the younger Japanese filmmaker and after wards Kurosawa dressed in a similar fashion to Ford when on film sets.

Unbeknownst to many people, Kurosawa had always wanted to make a Godzilla film of his own, but the executives at Toho Co., Ltd. (the Japanese studio that produces all the Godzilla films) wouldn't let him because they feared it would cost too much.

According to his family, he rarely thought about anything other than films. Even when at home, he would sit around silently, apparently composing shots in his head.

Although he received an Honorary Award in 1990 "For cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world," Akira Kurosawa was only nominated once for a Best Director Oscar for Ran (1985). Also, his only film to have ever received the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar was for Dersu Uzala (1975)...his only film not done in Japanese (it was in Russian).

He had a son Hisao, and a daughter, Kazuko.

His movie Dodesukaden (1970), Dersu Uzala (1975) and Kagemusha (1980) were Oscar-nominated for "Best Foreign Language Film". Dersu Uzala (1975) won. Rashômon (1950) won an Honorary Award as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.

Ranked #6 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Greatest directors ever!" [2005]

In the 1990s, he referred to the 'Kagemusha' (1980), which some have considered a great film on its own, as a mere "dress rehearsal" for 'Ran' (1985) (both are epics about failing emperors set roughly in same historical era), with the latter film having been his passion for roughly a decade before he made it.

His two favorite actors to work with were apparently Takashi Shimura and, more famously, Toshirô Mifune. Kurosawa made 16 films with Mifune (almost always in a leading role) and 21 films with Shimura (in either a leading or supporting role).

He worked with most of his cast and crew members repeatedly, similarly to the way his idol John Ford used the same people again and again. When Kurosawa was at his working peak, it was widely thought that if he didn't work with an actor or crew member again, the implication was that he did not like them.

He was born the youngest of four children for Isamu and Shima Kurosawa. As a child, he revered his elder brother Heigo. While young Akira was mainly into painting, Heigo was a film-lover and worked as a "benshi", a narrator/ commentator for foreign silent films. Akira's love for film was handed down from his brother. Unfortunately, Heigo suffered from depression and committed suicide. Short thereafter, both Akira's eldest brother and only sister died from illnesses, leaving Akira the only remaining child. His siblings' deaths (particularly that of Heigo) was a traumatic experience for Akira and is thought to have considerably darkened his world view.

He was a fan of the films of Satyajit Ray.

Several of his films have been remade in America as westerns. Shichinin no samurai (1954)(The Seven Samurai) was remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960), and Yojimbo (1961) (The Bodyguard) was remade as Per un pugno di dollari (1964). In addition, Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958) (The Hidden Fortress) was a major inspiration for the Star Wars saga, which takes many inspirations from westerns and is often referred to as a space western. Common story elements include General Makabe, who became Obi-Wan Kenobi; Princess Yuki, who became Princess Leia, and whose trick of disguising herself as a handmaiden would later be used by Queen Amidala; and the farmers from whose viewpoint the film is told, Matashichi and Tahei, whose constant bickering inspired C-3PO and R2-D2.

One his closest friend was Ishirô Honda, the writer-director behind Gojira (1954).

He was infamous for his perfectionism. Among the related tales are his insisting a stream be made to run in the opposite direction in order to get a better visual effect, and having the roof of a house removed, later to be replaced, because he felt the roof's presence to be unattractive in a short sequence filmed from a train. He also required that all the actors in his period films had to wear their costumes for several weeks, daily, before filming so that they would look lived in.

Although his "samurai" films are considered the archetypal samurai films over the rest of the world, they were actually considered atypical in Japan. Most Japanese samurai films had been set in the 18th & 19th centuries, when a peaceful Japan was at the peak of its nationalism, with the largest number of bushido code-adhering samurai. Kurosawa's films typically feature individualistic "ronin" (masterless samurai) rather than true "samurai" and a majority are set in the far more chaotic feudal periods (16th-17th centuries) when the Japanese were engaged in civil war.

His favorite Japanese director was Kenji Mizoguchi.

He named the film that made him want to work in cinema as Abel Gance's film La roue (1923), particularly certain kinetic shots of trains.

He was a fan of the work of Sergei M. Eisenstein, who, like Kurosawa, edited his own films.

He believed his years as an assistant director were invaluable. In Japanese cinema at that time, assistant directors dabbled in virtually every aspect of film production and Kurosawa, among other things, learned all about editing, set-decorating, costume-design and working with actors. Almost all of the assistant directors in Kurosawa's day were aspiring to become full-fledged directors. He felt that it was a shame that, in more modern Japanese cinema and in America, the assistant director doesn't accrue as much experience and usually permanently stays in the assistant director throughout their career and that there would be a great number of excellent directors had they had his training.

Many of the characters in his period films were loosely based on historical figures.

He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.

Is not related to Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Personal Quotes

For me, film-making combines everything. That's the reason I've made cinema my life's work. In films painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.

Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they've been given. I believe you must live honestly and develop your abilities to the full. People who do this are the real heros.

With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can't possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. The script must be something that has the power to do this.

In all my films, there's three or maybe four minutes of real cinema.

So long as my pictures are hits I can afford to be unreasonable. Of course, if they start losing money then I've made some enemies.

It is quite enough if a human being has but one field where he is strong. If a human being were strong in every field it wouldn't be nice for other people, would it?

Good Westerns are liked by everyone. Since humans are weak, they want to see good people and great heroes. Westerns have been done over and over again, and in the process a kind of grammar has evolved. I have learned much from this grammar of the Western.

I like unformed characters. This may be because, no matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.

To have not seen the films of Ray is to have lived in the world without ever having seen the moon and the sun.

Being an artist means not having to avert one's eyes.

[On Mirio Naruse]: Naruse's Method consists of staging one very brief shot after another; but when we look at them placed end-to-end in the finished film, they give the impression of one long single take. The fluidity is so perfect that the cuts are invisible... A flow of shots that looks calm and ordinary at first glance reveals itself to be like a deep river with a quiet surface disguising a fast-raging current.

I believe that what pertains only to myself is not interesting enough to record and leave behind me. More important is my conviction that if I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take 'myself', subtract 'movies', and the result is zero.

Amid the expanse of nauseating redness lay every kind of corpse imaginable. I saw corpses charred black, half-burned corpses, corpses in gutters, corpses floating in rivers, corpses piled up on bridges, corpses blocking off a whole street at an intersection, and every manner of death possible to human beings displayed by corpses. When I involuntarily looked away, my brother scolded me, 'Akira, look carefully now. Looking back on that excursion now, I realize that it must have been horrifying for my brother too. It had been an expedition to conquer fear. - on witnessing the after math of the 1923 Toyko Earthquake & ensuing riots

[on Toshiro Mifune] Mifune had a kind of talent I had never encountered before in the Japanese film world. It was, above all, the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding. The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression; Mifune needed only three. The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express. He put forth everything directly and boldly, and his sense of timing was the keenest I had ever seen in a Japanese actor. And yet with all his quickness, he also had surprisingly fine sensibilities.

[on his discovery of Toshirô Mifune during casting of Drunken Angel (1948)] I am a person who is rarely impressed by actors, but in the case of Mifune, I was completely overwhelmed.

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