Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
name	Seven Samurai
director	Akira Kurosawa
producer	Sojiro Motoki
writer	Akira KurosawaShinobu HashimotoHideo Oguni
starring	Takashi ShimuraToshirō Mifune
music	Fumio Hayasaka
cinematography	Asakazu Nakai
editing	Akira Kurosawa
distributor	Toho Columbia Pictures
released
runtime	''See below''
country
language	Japanese
budget	$500,000 }}

is a 1954 Japanese adventure drama film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film takes place in 1587 during the Warring States Period of Japan. It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (''ronin'') to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.

''Seven Samurai'' is described as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, and is one of a select few Japanese films to become widely known in the West for an extended period of time. It is the subject of both popular and critical acclaim; it was voted onto ''Sight & Sound's'' list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1982, and to the directors' top ten films in the 1992 and 2002 polls.

Plot

A gang of marauding bandits approaches a mountain village. The bandit chief recognizes they have ransacked this village before, and decides it is best that they spare it until the harvest in several months. A villager happens to overhear the discussion. The news leaves the villagers divided about whether to surrender their harvest or fight back against the bandits. They go to the village elder, who declares that they should fight, by hiring samurai to help defend the village. Some of the villagers are troubled by this suggestion, thinking that samurai are expensive to enlist and believed to lust after young farm women, but realize they have no choice. Since villagers have nothing to offer any prospective samurai except food, the village elder tells them to "find hungry samurai."

The men go into the city, but initially are unsuccessful, being turned away by every samurai they ask — sometimes rudely. Just as all seems lost, they happen to witness a samurai, Kambei, rescuing a young boy taken hostage by a thief. As Kambei walks towards town, a young samurai, Katsushirō, asks to become his disciple. Kambei insists that he walk with him as a friend. Then the farmers ask Kambei to help defend their village; to their great joy, he accepts. Kambei, with Katsushirō's assistance, then recruits four more masterless samurai (rōnin), each with distinctive skills and personality traits: Gorobei Katayama, clever and good natured; Heihachi, a good humored Samurai with mediocre sword skills; Shichirōji, an old friend of Kambei's; and Kyūzō, a taciturn master swordsman. Although Kambei had initially decided that seven samurai would be necessary, he plans to leave for the village with only the four that he has chosen because time is running short. The villagers beg him to take Katsushirō also and, with some prodding by the others, he agrees. A clownish man named Kikuchiyo, whom Kambei had rejected for the mission, follows them to the village at a distance, ignoring their protestations and attempts to drive him away.

When the samurai arrive the villagers cower in their homes in fear, hoping to protect their daughters and themselves from these supposedly dangerous warriors. The samurai are insulted not to be greeted warmly and seek an explanation from the village elder. Suddenly, an alarm is raised; the villagers, fearing that the bandits have returned, rush from their hiding places begging to be defended by the newly-arrived samurai. It turns out that Kikuchiyo has raised a false alarm. He rebukes the panicked villagers for running to the samurai for aid after first failing to welcome them to the village. It is here that Kikuchiyo demonstrates that there exists a certain intelligence behind his boorish demeanour. The six samurai symbolically accept him as belonging with them, truly completing the group of wanderers as the "seven samurai." The villagers feed white rice to the samurai, which is precious to them as they only have millet for themselves.

As they prepare for the siege, the villagers and their hired warriors slowly come to trust each other. However, when the samurai discover that the villagers have murdered and robbed fleeing samurai in the past, they are shocked and angry, and Kyūzō even comments that he would like to kill everyone in the village. Kikuchiyo passionately castigates the other samurai for ignoring the hardships that the farmers face in order to survive and make a living despite the intimidation and harassment from the warrior class. This reveals his origins as a farmer's son to Kambei. "But who made them like this?" he asks. "You did!" The anger the samurai had felt turns to shame, and when the village elder, alerted by the clamor that this revelation instigates, asks if anything is the matter, Kambei humbly responds that there is not.

The preparations for the defense of the village continue apace, including the construction of fortifications and the training of the farmers for battle. Katsushirō, the youngest samurai, begins a relationship with Shino, the daughter of one of the villagers. Shino had been forced to masquerade as a boy by her father who hoped the deception would protect her from the supposedly lustful samurai warriors.

As the time for the raid approaches, two bandit scouts are killed, and one is captured and reveals the location of the bandit camp. Three of the samurai, along with Rikichi, a guide from the village, decide to carry out a pre-emptive strike. Many bandits are killed, but one of the samurai, Heihachi, is slain by gunfire. The bandits' house is set on fire and as a woman emerges, she sees Rikichi and runs back inside to perish in the flames. Rikichi reveals that this was his wife, who had been kidnapped and defiled.

When the bandits arrive in force, they are confounded by the fortifications put in place by the samurai, and several are killed attempting to scale the barricades or cross moats. However, the bandits possess three muskets, and are able to hold their own. Kyūzō decides to conduct a raid on his own to retrieve one of the muskets and returns with one several hours later. Kikuchiyo, jealous of the praise and respect Kyūzō earns, particularly from Katsushirō, later abandons his post to retrieve another musket, leaving his contingent of farmers in charge. Although he succeeds, the bandits attack the post, overwhelming and killing some of the farmers. Kambei is forced to provide reinforcements from the main post to drive the bandits out, leaving it undermanned when the bandit leader charges this position. Although they are driven off, Gorobei is shot and killed and it is revealed that Yohei, Kikuchiyo's friend, was killed at his post.

Apart from defense, the initial strategy of the samurai is to allow the bandits to enter a gap in the fortifications one at a time through the use of a closing "wall" of spears, and to then kill the lone enemy. This is repeated several times with success. On the second night, Kambei instructs them to prepare for a final, decisive battle. During the night, Katsushirō's affair is revealed, and after an initial uproar, his amorous adventures provide comic relief to the embattled militia.

When morning breaks and the bandits make their attack, Kambei orders his forces to allow the remaining bandits in at once. In the ensuing confrontation, most of the bandits are killed, but the leader takes refuge in a hut unseen. In what is portrayed as dishonorable act, he shoots Kyūzō from the safety of the hut, killing him. A despondent Katsushirō seeks to avenge his hero, but an enraged Kikuchiyo charges ahead of him, only to be shot himself. Although mortally wounded, Kikuchiyo kills the bandit chief before dying. Dazed and exhausted, Kambei and Shichirōji sadly observe "we've survived once again," while Katsushirō wails over his fallen comrades. The battle is ultimately won for the villagers.

The three surviving samurai are left to observe the villagers happily planting the next crop. The samurai reflect on the relationship between the warrior and farming classes: though they have won the battle for the farmers, they have lost their friends with little to show for it. "Again we are defeated," Kambei muses. "The farmers have won. Not us." The last shot of the film is a shot of the graveyard on a hill overlooking the village. It is in this graveyard that the four slain samurai have been laid to rest.

Cast of characters

Seven Samurai

(Takashi Shimura) — The leader of the group and the first "recruited" by the villagers, he is a wise but war-weary soldier. (Isao Kimura) — A young untested warrior. He comes from an aristocratic family and wants to be Kambei's disciple. (Yoshio Inaba) — He is recruited by Kambei and is a skilled archer, he acts as the second in command and helps create the master plan for the village's defense.

Shichirōji (七郎次) (Daisuke Katō) — He was once Kambei's lieutenant. Kambei meets him by chance in the town and he resumes this role.

(Minoru Chiaki) — Recruited by Gorōbei. An amiable though less-skilled fighter. His charm and wit maintain his comrades' good cheer in the face of adversity.

Kyūzō (久蔵) (Seiji Miyaguchi) — He initially declined an offer by Kambei to join the group, though he later changes his mind. A serious, stone-faced samurai and a supremely skilled swordsman; Katsushirō is in awe of him.

Kikuchiyo (菊千代) (Toshirō Mifune) — A would-be samurai (right down to the false noble birth certificate) who eventually proves his worth. He is mercurial and temperamental. He identifies with the villagers and their plight.

Villagers

Gisaku 儀作 (Kokuten Kodo) — The miller and village patriarch, referred to as "Grandad," who tells the villagers to hire samurai to protect themselves.

Yohei 与平 (Bokuzen Hidari) — A very timid old man who shares some memorable comic scenes with Kikuchiyo.

Manzō 万造 (Kamatari Fujiwara) — A farmer who fears for his daughter's purity when surrounded by the dashing samurai.

Shino 志乃 (Keiko Tsushima) — Manzō's daughter who falls in love with Katsushirō.

Rikichi 利吉 (Yoshio Tsuchiya) — Hotheaded and relatively young, he has a painful secret concerning his wife.

Rikichi's Wife (Yukiko Shimazaki) — Unseen in the early part of the film, the secret of her whereabouts will lead to tragedy.

Mosuke 茂助 (Yoshio Kosugi) — His house is one of the three outlying buildings that will have to be abandoned in order to save the twenty in the main hamlet.

Bandits

The Bandit Chief (Shinpei Takagi) — The leader of the bandits.

Bandit Second-In-Command (Shin Ōtomo)

Musket Bandit (Toshio Takahara)

Roof Bandit (Masanobu Ōkubo)

Production

The film was the first 'samurai picture' Akira Kurosawa had ever directed. He had originally wanted to direct a film about a single day in the life of a samurai but discovered a story about samurai defending farmers in his research. According to actor Toshirō Mifune, the film was originally going to be called 'Six Samurai' with Mifune playing the role of Kyuzo, but during the six-week scriptwriting process Kurosawa and his screenwriters realized that "six sober samurai were a bore--they needed a character that was more off-the-wall." Kurosawa recast Mifune as Kikuchiyo and gave him creative license to improvise actions in his performance. After three months of preproduction, the film had 148 shooting days spread out over a year—four times the span covered in the original budget, which eventually came to almost half a million dollars. Toho Studios closed down production at least twice, but each time Kurosawa would calmly go fishing, reasoning that the studio had already heavily invested in the production and would have to allow him to complete the picture. The film's final battle, originally scheduled to be shot at the end of summer, was shot in February in near-freezing temperatures. Mifune would recall later that he had never been so cold in his life.

Kurosawa refused to shoot the peasant village at Toho Studios and had a complete set constructed on the Izu Peninsula. Although the studio protested the increased production costs, Kurosawa was adamant that "the quality of the set influences the quality of the actors' performances...For this reason, I have the sets made exactly like the real thing. It restricts the shooting but encourages that feeling of authenticity." He also began using multiple cameras to shoot his scenes in order to capture action sequences from various angles, a practice he would continue to utilize for the rest of his career.

Structural innovations

According to Michael Jeck's DVD commentary, ''Seven Samurai'' was among the first films to use the now-common plot element of the recruiting and gathering of heroes into a team to accomplish a specific goal, a device used in later films such as ''The Guns of Navarone'', ''Ocean's Eleven'', ''The Dirty Dozen'', and the western remake ''The Magnificent Seven''. Film critic Roger Ebert speculates in his review that the sequence introducing the leader Kambei (in which the samurai shaves off his topknot, a sign of honor among samurai, in order to pose as a monk to rescue a boy from a kidnapper) could be the origin of the practice, now common in action movies, of introducing the main hero with an undertaking unrelated to the main plot. Other plot devices such as the reluctant hero, romance between a local woman and the youngest hero, and the nervousness of the common citizenry had appeared in other films before this but were combined in this film.

Legacy

The single largest undertaking by a Japanese filmmaker at the time, ''Seven Samurai'' was a technical and creative watershed that became Japan's highest-grossing movie and set a new standard for the industry. Its influence can be most strongly felt in the western ''The Magnificent Seven'' (1960), a film specifically adapted from ''Seven Samurai''. Director John Sturges took ''Seven Samurai'' and adapted it to the Old West, with the Samurai replaced by gunslingers. Many of ''The Magnificent Seven'''s scenes mirror those of ''Seven Samurai''. The film spawned several sequels and there was also a short-lived 1998 television series.

Ranked #1 in ''Empire'' magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.

Edited versions and DVD releases

At three hours, twenty-seven minutes (207 minutes), ''Seven Samurai'' would be the longest picture of Kurosawa's career.

Toho Studios originally cut fifty minutes off the film when screening it for American distributors for fear that no American audience would be willing to sit through the entire picture.

A re-release version of 190 minutes was shown in the UK in 1991 and a near-complete 203 minute version was re-released in the U.S. in 2002. A Criterion Collection DVD version of the film is currently available containing the complete original version of the film (207 minutes) on one disc, and a second, more expansive Criterion DVD released in 2006 also contains the digitally-remastered, complete film on two discs, as well as an additional disc of extra material. A region 4 DVD of the full 207 minute cut was released in 2004 by Madman Entertainment under its Eastern Eye label. A Blu-ray edition of the full length edition was released by the Criterion Collection on October 19, 2010.

Awards and nominations

;Venice Film Festival (1954)

Winner - Silver Lion - Akira Kurosawa

Nominated - Golden Lion - Akira Kurosawa

;Mainichi Film Award (1955)

Winner - Best Supporting Actor - Seiji Miyaguchi

;British Academy Film Awards (1956)

Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Film

Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor - Toshirō Mifune

Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor - Takashi Shimura

;Academy Awards (1957)

Nominated - Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White - So Matsuyama

Nominated - Best Costume Design, Black-and-White - Kôhei Ezaki

;Jussi Awards (1959)

Winner - Best Foreign Director - Akira Kurosawa

Winner - Best Foreign Actor - Takashi Shimura

See also

Films considered the greatest ever

List of historical drama films of Asia

References

External links

Roger Ebert on ''Seven Samurai''

Criterion Collection essay by Philip Kemp

Criterion Collection essay by Kenneth Turan

Criterion Collection essay by Peggy Chiao

Criterion Collection essay by David Ehrenstein

''Seven Samurai'' at the Japanese Movie Database

''Seven Samurai'' at DVD Verdict

Category:1954 films Category:Epic films Category:Fictional samurai Category:Fictional mercenaries Category:Films directed by Akira Kurosawa Category:Japanese films Category:Japanese-language films Category:Jidaigeki films 7 Category:Samurai films Category:Sengoku-jidai Category:Seven Samurai Category:Toho films Category:Films set in the 16th century ar:الساموراي السبعة az:Yeddi samuray (film, 1954) bg:Седемте самураи ca:Els set samurais cs:Sedm samurajů de:Die sieben Samurai es:Los siete samuráis eo:Shichinin no samurai / 七人の侍 eu:Shichinin no samurai fa:هفت سامورایی fr:Les Sept Samouraïs hy:Յոթ սամուրայներ hr:Sedam samuraja id:Seven Samurai it:I sette samurai he:שבעת הסמוראים ka:შვიდი სამურაი la:Shichinin no samurai hu:A hét szamuráj nl:De zeven samoerai ja:七人の侍 no:De 7 samurajer pl:Siedmiu samurajów pt:Os Sete Samurais ru:Семь самураев simple:The Seven Samurai sk:Sedem samurajov sr:Седам самураја fi:Seitsemän samuraita sv:De sju samurajerna tr:Yedi Samuray uk:Сім самураїв zh:七武士 (电影)

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
name	Akira Kurosawa黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明
birth date	March 23, 1910
birth place	Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan
death date	September 06, 1998
death place	Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
occupation	Director, producer, screenwriter, editor
years active	1936–1993
spouse	Yōko Yaguchi (1945–1985) (her death); two children }}

was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.

Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II with the popular action film ''Sanshiro Sugata'' (a.k.a. ''Judo Saga''). After the war, the critically acclaimed ''Drunken Angel'' (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshirō Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films.

''Rashomon'', which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese film artists. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly regarded films such as ''Ikiru'' (1952), ''Seven Samurai'' (1954) and ''Yojimbo'' (1961). After the mid-1960s, he became much less prolific, but his later work—including his final two epics, ''Kagemusha'' (1980) and ''Ran'' (1985)—continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or for ''Kagemusha'', though more often abroad than in Japan.

In 1990, he accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by ''AsianWeek'' magazine and CNN, cited as "one of the [five] people who contributed most to the betterment of Asia in the past 100 years".

Life and career

Childhood and youth (1910–1935)

Kurosawa was born on 23 March 1910 in Ōimachi in the Ōmori district of Tokyo. His father Isamu, a member of a former samurai family from the Akita Prefecture, worked as the director of the Army's Physical Education Institute's lower secondary school, while his mother Shima came from a merchant's family living in Osaka. Akira was the eighth and youngest child of the moderately wealthy family, with two of his siblings already grown up at the time of his birth and one deceased, leaving Kurosawa to grow up with three sisters and a brother.

In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa was open to western traditions and saw theater and motion pictures as educationally valuable. He encouraged his children to watch films; young Akira viewed his first movies at the age of six. An important formative influence was his elementary school teacher Mr Tachikawa, whose progressive educational practices ignited in his young pupil first a love of drawing and then an interest in education in general. During this time, the boy also studied calligraphy and Kendo swordsmanship.

Another major childhood influence was Heigo Kurosawa, Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, which devastated Tokyo, Heigo took the 13-year-old Akira to view the devastation. When the younger brother wanted to look away from the human corpses and animal carcasses scattered everywhere, Heigo forbade him to do so, instead encouraging Akira to face his fears by confronting them directly. Some commentators have suggested that this incident would influence Kurosawa's later artistic career, as the director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant truths in his work.

Heigo was academically gifted, but soon after failing to secure a place in Tokyo's foremost high school, he began to detach himself from the rest of the family, preferring to concentrate on his interest in foreign literature. In the late 1920s, Heigo became a benshi (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films, and quickly made a name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a painter, moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable. Through Heigo, Akira devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances, while exhibiting his paintings and working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. However, he was never able to make a living with his art, and, as he began to perceive most of the proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas," he lost his enthusiasm for painting.

With the increasing production of talking pictures in the early 1930s, film narrators like Heigo began to lose work, and Akira moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo committed suicide. Kurosawa has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death and the chapter of his autobiography that describes it—written nearly half a century after the event—is titled, "A Story I Don't Want to Tell." Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his three surviving sisters.

Director in training (1935–1941)

In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L. (which later became the major studio, Toho), advertised for assistant directors. Although he had demonstrated no previous interest in film as a profession, Kurosawa submitted the required essay, which asked applicants to discuss the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese films and find ways to overcome them. His half-mocking view was that if the deficiencies were fundamental, there was no way to correct them. Kurosawa's essay earned him a call to take the follow-up exams, and director Kajirō Yamamoto, who was among the examiners, took a liking to Kurosawa and insisted that the studio hire him. The 25-year-old Kurosawa joined P.C.L. in February 1936.

During his five years as an assistant director, Kurosawa worked under numerous directors, but by far the most important figure in his development was Kajiro Yamamoto. Of his 24 films as A.D., he worked on 17 under Yamamoto, many of them comedies featuring the popular actor Kenichi Enomoto, known as "Enoken." Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director to chief assistant director after a year. Kurosawa's responsibilities increased, and he worked at tasks ranging from stage construction and film development to location scouting, script polishing, rehearsals, lighting, dubbing, editing and second-unit directing. In the last of Kurosawa's films as an assistant director, ''Horse'' (''Uma'', 1941), Kurosawa took over most of the production, as Yamamoto was occupied with the shooting of another film.

One important piece of advice Yamamoto gave Kurosawa was that a good director needed to master screenwriting. Kurosawa soon realized that the potential earnings from his scripts were much higher than what he was paid as an assistant director. Kurosawa would later write or co-write all of his own films. He also frequently wrote screenplays for other directors. This outside scriptwriting would serve Kurosawa as a lucrative sideline lasting well into the 1960s, long after he became world-famous.

Wartime films and marriage (1942–1945)

In the two years following the release of ''Horse'' in 1941, Kurosawa searched for a story he could use to launch his directing career. Towards the end of 1942, about a year after the beginning of Japan's war with the United States, novelist Tsuneo Tomita published his Musashi Miyamoto inspired judo novel, ''Sanshiro Sugata'', the advertisements for which intrigued Kurosawa. He bought the book on its publication day, devoured it in one sitting, and immediately asked Toho to secure the film rights. Kurosawa's initial instinct proved correct as, within a few days, three other major Japanese studios also offered to buy the rights. Toho prevailed, and Kurosawa began pre-production on his debut work as director.

Shooting of ''Sanshiro Sugata'' began on location in Yokohama in December 1942. Production proceeded smoothly, but getting the completed film past the censors was an entirely different matter. The censorship considered the work too "British-American" (an accusation tantamount, at that time, to a charge of treason), and it was only through the intervention of director Yasujiro Ozu, who championed the film, that ''Sanshiro Sugata'' was finally accepted for release on March 25, 1943. (Kurosawa had just turned 33.) The movie became both a critical and commercial success. Nevertheless, the censorship office would later decide to cut out some 18 minutes of footage, much of which is now considered lost.

He next turned to the subject of wartime female factory workers in ''The Most Beautiful'', a propaganda film which he shot in a semi-documentary style in early 1944. In order to coax realistic performances from his actresses, the director had them live in a real factory during the shoot, eat the factory food and call each other by their character names. He would use similar methods with his performers throughout his career.

During production, the actress playing the leader of the factory workers, Yōko Yaguchi, was chosen by her colleagues to present their demands to the director. She and Kurosawa were constantly at loggerheads, and it was through these arguments that the two, paradoxically, became close. They married on May 21, 1945, with Yaguchi two months pregnant (she never resumed her acting career), and the couple would remain together until her death in 1985. They would have two children: a son, Hisao, born December 20, 1945, who would serve as producer on some of his father's last projects, and Kazuko, born April 29, 1954, who would become a costume designer.

Shortly before his marriage, Kurosawa was pressured by the studio against his will to direct a sequel to his debut film. The often blatantly propagandistic ''Sanshiro Sugata Part II'', which premiered in May 1945, is generally considered one of his very weakest pictures.

Kurosawa decided to write the script for a film that would be both censor-friendly and less expensive to produce. ''The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail'', based on the Kabuki play ''Kanjinchō'' and starring the comedian Enoken, with whom Kurosawa had often worked during his assistant director days, was completed in September 1945. By this time, Japan had surrendered and the occupation of Japan had begun. The new American censors interpreted the values allegedly promoted in the picture as overly "feudal" and banned the work. (It would not be released until 1952, the year another Kurosawa film, ''Ikiru'', was also released.) Ironically, while in production, the film had already been savaged by Japanese wartime censors as too Western and "democratic" (they particularly disliked the comic porter played by Enoken), so the movie most probably would not have seen the light of day even if the war had continued beyond its completion.

First postwar works (1946–1950)

The war now ended, Kurosawa, absorbing the democratic ideals of the Occupation, sought to make films that would establish a new respect towards the individual and the self. The first such film, ''No Regrets for Our Youth'' (1946), inspired by both the 1933 Takigawa incident and the Hotsumi Ozaki wartime spy case, criticized Japan's prewar regime for its political oppression. Atypically for the director, the heroic central character is a woman, Yukie (Setsuko Hara), born into upper-middle-class privilege, who comes to question her values in a time of political crisis. The original script had to be extensively rewritten and, because of its controversial theme (and because the protagonist was a woman), the completed work divided critics, but it nevertheless managed to win the approval of audiences, who turned variations on the film's title ("No regrets for...") into something of a postwar catchphrase.

His next film, ''One Wonderful Sunday'' premiered in July 1947 to mixed reviews. It is a relatively uncomplicated and sentimental love story dealing with an impoverished postwar couple trying to enjoy, within the devastation of postwar Tokyo, their one weekly day off. The movie bears the influence of Frank Capra, D. W. Griffith and F. W. Murnau. Another film released in 1947 with Kurosawa's involvement was the action-adventure thriller, ''Snow Trail'', directed by Senkichi Taniguchi from Kurosawa's screenplay. It marked the debut of the intense young actor Toshirō Mifune. It was Kurosawa who, with his mentor Yamamoto, had intervened to persuade Toho to sign Mifune, during an audition in which the young man greatly impressed Kurosawa, but managed to alienate most of the other judges.

''Drunken Angel'' is often considered the director's first major work. Although the script, like all of Kurosawa's occupation-era works, had to go through forced rewrites due to American censorship, Kurosawa felt that this was the first film in which he was able to express himself freely. A grittily realistic story of a doctor who tries to save a gangster (yakuza) with tuberculosis, it was also the director's first film with Toshirō Mifune, who would proceed to play either the main or a major characters in all but one (''Ikiru'') of the director's next 16 films. While Mifune was not cast as the protagonist in ''Drunken Angel'', his explosive performance as the gangster so dominates the drama that he shifted the focus from the title character, the alcoholic doctor played by Takashi Shimura, who had already appeared in several Kurosawa movies. However, Kurosawa did not want to smother the young actor's immense vitality, and Mifune's rebellious character electrified audiences in much the way that Marlon Brando's defiant stance would startle American film audiences a few years later. The film premiered in Tokyo in April 1948 to rave reviews and was chosen by the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics poll as the best film of its year, the first of three Kurosawa movies to be so honored.

Kurosawa, with producer Sōjirō Motoki and fellow directors and friends Kajiro Yamamoto, Mikio Naruse and Senkichi Taniguchi, formed a new independent production unit called Film Art Association (Eiga Geijutsu Kyōkai). For this organization's debut work, and first film for Daiei studios, Kurosawa turned to a contemporary play by Kazuo Kikuta and, together with Taniguchi, adapted it for the screen. ''The Quiet Duel'' starred Toshirō Mifune as an idealistic young doctor struggling with syphilis, a deliberate attempt by Kurosawa to break the actor away from being typecast as gangsters. Released in March 1949, it was a box office success, but is generally considered one of the director's lesser achievements.

His second film of 1949, also produced by Film Art Association and released by Shintōhō, was ''Stray Dog''. The most celebrated of Kurosawa's works from this period, it is a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in that genre) that explores the mood of Japan during its painful postwar recovery through the story of a young detective, played by Mifune, and his obsession over his handgun, stolen by a penniless young man who proceeds to use it to rob and murder. Adapted from an unpublished novel by Kurosawa in the style of a favorite writer of his, Georges Simenon, it was the director's first collaboration with screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima, who would later help to script eight other Kurosawa films. A famous, virtually wordless sequence, lasting over eight minutes, shows the detective, disguised as an impoverished veteran, wandering the streets in search of the gun thief; it employed actual documentary footage of war-ravaged Tokyo neighborhoods shot by Kurosawa's friend, Ishirō Honda, the future director of ''Gojira'' (aka, ''Godzilla'').

''Scandal'', released by Shochiku in April 1950, was inspired by the director's personal experiences with, and anger towards, Japanese yellow journalism. The work is an ambitious mixture of courtroom drama and social problem film about free speech and personal responsibility, but even Kurosawa regarded the finished product as dramatically unfocused and unsatisfactory, and almost all critics agree.

However, it would be Kurosawa's ''second'' film of 1950, ''Rashomon'', that would ultimately win him a whole new audience.

International recognition (1950–1958)

After finishing ''Scandal'', Kurosawa was approached by Daiei studios, which asked the director to make another film for them. Kurosawa picked a script by an aspiring young screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto. (They would eventually write nine films together.) It was based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's experimental short story ''In a Grove'', which recounts the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife from various different and conflicting points-of-view. Kurosawa saw potential in the script, and with Hashimoto's help, polished and expanded it and then pitched it to Daiei, who were happy to accept the project due to its low budget.

Shooting of ''Rashomon'' began on July 7, 1950 and, after extensive location work in the primeval forest of Nara, wrapped on August 17. Just one week was spent in hurried post-production, hampered by a studio fire, and the finished film premiered at Tokyo's Imperial Theatre on August 25, expanding nationwide the following day. The movie was met by lukewarm reviews, with many critics puzzled by its unique theme and treatment, but it was nevertheless a moderate financial success for Daiei.

Kurosawa's next film, for Shochiku, was ''The Idiot'', an adaptation of the novel by the director's favorite writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The filmmaker relocated the story from Russia to Hokkaido, but it is otherwise very faithful to the original, a fact seen by many critics as detrimental to the work. A studio-mandated edit shortened it from Kurosawa's original cut of 265 minutes (nearly four-and-a-half hours) to just 166 minutes, making the resulting narrative exceedingly difficult to follow. It is widely considered today to be one of the director's least successful works. Contemporary reviews were very negative, but the film was a moderate success at the box office, largely because of the popularity of one of its stars, Setsuko Hara.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kurosawa, ''Rashomon'' had been entered in the prestigious Venice Film Festival, due to the efforts of Giuliana Stramigioli, a Japan-based representative of an Italian film company, who had seen and admired the movie and convinced Daiei to submit it. On September 10, 1951, ''Rashomon'' was awarded the festival's highest prize, the Golden Lion, shocking not only Daiei but the international film world, which at the time was largely unaware of Japan's decades-old cinematic tradition.

After Daiei very briefly exhibited a subtitled print of the film in Los Angeles, RKO purchased distribution rights to ''Rashomon'' in the United States. The company was taking a considerable gamble. It had put out only one prior subtitled film in the American market, and the only previous Japanese talkie commercially released in New York had been Mikio Naruse's comedy, ''Wife! Be Like a Rose'', in 1937: a critical and box-office flop. However, ''Rashomon'''s commercial run, greatly helped by strong reviews from critics and even the columnist Ed Sullivan, was very successful. (It earned $35,000 in its first three weeks at a single New York theater, an almost unheard-of sum at the time.) This success in turn led to a vogue in America for Japanese movies throughout the 1950s, replacing the enthusiasm for Italian neorealist cinema. (The film was also released, by other distributors, in France, West Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.) Among the Japanese filmmakers whose work, as a result, began to win festival prizes and commercial release in the West were Kenji Mizoguchi (''The Life of Oharu'', ''Ugetsu'', ''Sansho the Bailiff'') and, somewhat later, Yasujiro Ozu (''Tokyo Story'', ''An Autumn Afternoon'')—artists highly respected in Japan but, prior to this period, almost totally unknown in the West. Later generations of Japanese filmmakers who would find acclaim outside Japan—from Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura to Juzo Itami, Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike—were able to pass through the door that Kurosawa was the very first to open.

His career boosted by his sudden international fame, Kurosawa, now reunited with his original film studio, Toho (which would go on to produce his next 11 films), set to work on his next project, ''Ikiru''. The movie stars Takashi Shimura as a cancer-ridden Tokyo bureaucrat, Watanabe, on a final quest for meaning before his death. For the screenplay, Kurosawa brought in Hashimoto as well as writer Hideo Oguni, who would go on to co-write 12 Kurosawa films. Despite the work's grim subject matter, the screenwriters took a satirical approach, which some have compared to the work of Brecht, to both the bureaucratic world of its hero and the U.S. cultural colonization of Japan. (American pop songs figure prominently in the film.) Because of this strategy, the filmmakers are usually credited with saving the picture from the kind of sentimentality common to dramas about characters with terminal illnesses. ''Ikiru'' opened in October 1952 to rave reviews—it won Kurosawa his second Kinema Junpo "Best Film" award—and enormous box office success. It remains the most acclaimed of all the artist's films set in the modern era.

In December 1952, Kurosawa took his ''Ikiru'' screenwriters, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, for a forty-five day secluded residence at an inn to create the screenplay for his next movie, ''Seven Samurai''. The ensemble work was Kurosawa's first proper samurai film, the genre for which he would become most famous. The simple story, about a poor farming village in Sengoku period Japan that hires a group of samurai to defend it against an impending attack by bandits, was given a full epic treatment, with a huge cast (largely consisting of veterans of previous Kurosawa productions) and meticulously detailed action, stretching out to almost three-and-a-half hours of screen time.

Three months were spent in pre-production and a month in rehearsals. Shooting took up 148 days spread over almost a year, interrupted by production and financing troubles and Kurosawa's health problems. The film finally opened in April 1954, half a year behind its original release date and about three times over budget, making it at the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made. (However, by Hollywood standards, it was a quite modestly budgeted production, even for that time). The film received positive critical reaction and became a big hit, quickly making back the money invested in it and providing the studio with a product that they could, and did, market internationally—though with extensive edits. Over time—and with the theatrical and home video releases of the uncut version—its reputation has steadily grown. It is now regarded by some commentators as the greatest Japanese film ever made, and in 1979, a poll of Japanese film critics also voted it the best Japanese film ever made.

In 1954, nuclear tests in the Pacific were causing radioactive rainstorms in Japan (the only country ever to have been the victim of an atomic bombing), and one particular incident in March had exposed a Japanese fishing boat to nuclear fallout, with disastrous results. It is in this anxious atmosphere that Kurosawa's next film, ''Record of a Living Being'', was conceived. The story concerned an elderly factory owner (Toshirō Mifune) so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that he becomes determined to move his entire extended family (both legal and extra-marital) to what he imagines is the safety of a farm in Brazil. Production went much more smoothly than the director's previous film, but a few days before shooting ended, Kurosawa's composer, collaborator and close friend Fumio Hayasaka passed away (of tuberculosis) at the age of only 41. The film's score was finished by Hayasaka's student, Masaru Satō, who would go on to score all of Kurosawa's next eight films. ''Record of a Living Being'' opened in November 1955 to mixed reviews and muted audience reaction, becoming the first Kurosawa film to lose money during its original theatrical run. Today, it is considered by many to be among the finest films dealing with the psychological effects of the global nuclear stalemate.

Kurosawa's next project, ''Throne of Blood'', a lavishly produced adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Macbeth''—set, like ''Seven Samurai'', in the Sengoku Era—represented an ambitious transposition of the English work into an Asian context. Kurosawa instructed his leading actress, Isuzu Yamada, to regard the work as if it were a cinematic version of a ''Japanese'' rather than a European literary classic. Appropriately, the acting of the players, particularly Yamada, draws heavily on the stylized techniques of the Noh theater. It was filmed in 1956 and released in January 1957 to a slightly less negative domestic response than had been the case with the director's previous film. Abroad, ''Throne of Blood'', regardless of the liberties it takes with its source material, quickly earned a place among the most celebrated Shakespeare adaptations.

Another adaptation of a classic European theatrical work followed almost immediately, with production of ''The Lower Depths'', based on a play by Maxim Gorky, taking place in May and June 1957. In contrast to the gigantic scope and sweep of ''Throne of Blood'', ''The Lower Depths'' was shot on only two confined sets, the better to emphasize the restricted nature of the characters' lives. Though faithful to the play, this adaptation of Russian material to a completely Japanese setting—in this case, the late Edo period—unlike his earlier ''The Idiot'', was regarded as artistically successful. The film premiered in September 1957, receiving a mixed response similar to that of ''Throne of Blood''. However, some critics rank it among the director's most underrated works.

Kurosawa's three consecutive movies after ''Seven Samurai'' had not managed to capture Japanese audiences in the way that that film had. The mood of the director's work had been growing increasingly pessimistic and dark, with the possibility of redemption through personal responsibility now very much questioned, particularly in ''Throne of Blood'' and ''The Lower Depths''. He recognized this, and deliberately aimed for a more light-hearted and entertaining film for his next production, while switching to the new widescreen format that had been gaining popularity in Japan. The resulting film, ''The Hidden Fortress'', is an action-adventure comedy-drama about a medieval princess, her loyal general and two peasants who all need to travel through enemy lines in order to reach their home region. Released in December 1958, ''The Hidden Fortress'' became an enormous box office success in Japan and was warmly received by critics. Today, the film is considered one of Kurosawa's most lightweight efforts, though it remains popular, not least because it is one of several major influences (as George Lucas himself has conceded) on Lucas' hugely popular 1977 space opera, ''Star Wars''.

Birth of a company and the end of an era (1959–1965)

Starting with ''Rashomon'', Kurosawa's productions had become increasingly large in scope and so had the director's budgets. Toho, concerned about this development, suggested that he might help finance his own works, therefore making the studio's potential losses smaller, while in turn allowing himself more artistic freedom as co-producer. Kurosawa agreed, and Kurosawa Production Company was established in April 1959, with Toho as majority shareholder.

Despite now risking his own money, Kurosawa chose a story more directly critical of the Japanese business and political elites than any of his previous works. ''The Bad Sleep Well'', based on a script by Kurosawa's nephew Mike Inoue, is a revenge drama about a young man who climbs the hierarchy of a corrupt Japanese company with the intention of exposing the men responsible for his father's death. Its theme proved topical: while the film was in production, mass demonstrations were held against the new U.S.-Japan Security treaty, which was seen by many Japanese, particularly the young, as threatening the country's democracy by giving too much power to corporations and politicians. The film opened in September 1960 to positive critical reaction and modest box office success. The 25-minute opening sequence, depicting a corporate wedding reception interrupted by reporters and police (who arrest an executive for corruption), is widely regarded as one of Kurosawa's most skillfully executed set pieces, but the remainder of the film is often perceived as disappointing by comparison. The movie has also been criticized for employing the conventional Kurosawan hero to combat a social evil that cannot be resolved through the actions of individuals, however courageous or cunning.

''Yojimbo'' (''The Bodyguard''), Kurosawa Production's second film, centers on a masterless samurai, Sanjuro, who strolls into a 19th Century town ruled by two opposing violent factions and provokes them into destroying each other. The director used this work to play with many genre conventions, particularly the Western, while at the same time offering an unprecedentedly (for the Japanese screen) graphic portrayal of violence. Some commentators have seen the Sanjuro character in this film as a fantasy figure who magically reverses the historical triumph of the corrupt merchant class over the samurai class. Featuring Tatsuya Nakadai in his first major role in a Kurosawa movie, and with innovative photography by Kazuo Miyagawa (who shot ''Rashomon'') and Takao Saito, the film premiered in April 1961 and was an immense success at the box office, earning more than any previous Kurosawa film. Critical reaction was equally positive, and the film proved a major influence on its genre in Japan, ushering in a new era of ultra-violent samurai films, known as "cruel films" (''zankoku eiga''). The movie and its black comic tone were also widely imitated abroad—Sergio Leone's ''A Fistful of Dollars'' was a virtual (unauthorized) scene-by-scene remake—but most agree that Kurosawa's original was superior to the imitations.

Following the success of ''Yojimbo'', Kurosawa found himself under pressure from Toho to create a sequel. Kurosawa turned to a script he had written before ''Yojimbo'', reworking it to include the hero of his previous film. ''Sanjuro'' was the first of three Kurosawa films to be adapted from the work of the writer Shūgorō Yamamoto (the others would be ''Red Beard'' and ''Dodeskaden''). It is lighter in tone and closer to a conventional period film than ''Yojimbo'', though its story of a power struggle within a samurai clan is portrayed with strongly comic undertones. The film opened on January 1, 1962, quickly surpassing ''Yojimbo'''s box office success and garnering positive reviews.

Kurosawa had meanwhile instructed Toho to purchase the film rights to ''King's Ransom'', a novel about a kidnapping written by American author and screenwriter Evan Hunter, under his pseudonym of Ed McBain, as one of his 87th Precinct series of crime books. The director intended to create a work condemning kidnapping, which he considered one of the very worst crimes. The suspense film, titled ''High and Low'', was shot during the latter half of 1962 and released in March 1963. It broke Kurosawa's box office record (the third film in a row to do so), became the highest grossing Japanese film of the year and won glowing reviews. However, his triumph was somewhat tarnished when, ironically, the film was blamed for a wave of kidnappings which occurred in Japan about this time (he himself received kidnapping threats directed at his young daughter, Kazuko). Though not very well known today, ''High and Low'' is nevertheless considered by many commentators to be among the director's strongest works.

Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, ''Red Beard''. Based on a short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto and incorporating elements from Dostoyevsky's novel ''The Insulted and Injured'', it is a period film, set in a mid-19th century clinic for the poor, in which Kurosawa's humanist themes receive perhaps their fullest statement. A conceited and materialistic, foreign-trained young doctor, Yasumoto, is forced to become an intern at the clinic under the stern tutelage of Doctor Niide, known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), played by Mifune. Although he resists Red Beard initially, Yasumoto comes to admire his wisdom and courage, and to perceive the patients at the clinic, whom he at first despised, as worthy of compassion and dignity.

Yūzō Kayama, who plays Yasumoto, was an extremely popular film and music star at the time, particularly for his "Young Guy" (''Wakadaishō'') series of musical comedies, so signing him to appear in the film virtually guaranteed Kurosawa strong box-office. The shoot, the filmmaker's longest ever, lasted well over a year (after five months of pre-production), and wrapped in spring 1965, leaving the director, his crew and his actors exhausted. ''Red Beard'' premiered in April 1965, becoming the year's highest-grossing Japanese production and the third (and last) Kurosawa film to top the prestigious Kinema Jumpo yearly critics poll. It remains one of Kurosawa's best-known and most-loved works in his native country. Outside Japan, critics have been much more divided. Most commentators concede its technical merits and some praise it as among Kurosawa's best, while others insist that it lacks complexity and genuine narrative power, with still others claiming that it represents a retreat from the artist's previous commitment to social and political change.

The film marked something of an end of an era for its creator. The director himself recognized this at the time of its release, telling critic Donald Richie that a cycle of some kind had just come to an end and that his future films and production methods would be different. His prediction proved quite accurate. Beginning in the late 1950s, television began increasingly to dominate the leisure time of the formerly large and loyal Japanese cinema audience. And as film company revenues dropped, so did their appetite for risk—particularly the risk represented by Kurosawa's costly production methods.

''Red Beard'' also marked the midway point, chronologically, in the artist's career. During his previous twenty-nine years in the film industry (which includes his five years as assistant director), he had directed twenty-three films, while during the remaining twenty-eight years, for many and complex reasons, he would complete only seven more. Also, for reasons never adequately explained, ''Red Beard'' would be his final film starring Toshirō Mifune. Yu Fujiki, an actor who worked on ''The Lower Depths'', observed, regarding the closeness of the two men on the set, "Mr. Kurosawa's heart was in Mr. Mifune's body." Donald Richie has described the rapport between them as a unique "symbiosis." Virtually all critics agree that the strongest period of Kurosawa's career was the one between 1950 and 1965—bookended by ''Rashomon'' and ''Red Beard''—and that it is not a coincidence that this phase corresponds almost exactly to the time that he and Mifune worked together.

Hollywood detour (1966–1968)

When Kurosawa's exclusive contract with Toho came to an end in 1966, the 56-year-old director was seriously contemplating change. Observing the troubled state of the domestic film industry, and having already received dozens of offers from abroad, the idea of working outside Japan appealed to him as never before.

For his first foreign project, Kurosawa chose a story based on a Life magazine article. The Embassy Pictures action thriller, to be filmed in English and called simply ''Runaway Train'', would have been his first in color. But the language barrier proved a major problem, and the English version of the screenplay was not even finished by the time filming was to begin in autumn 1966. The shoot, which required snow, was moved to autumn 1967, then canceled in 1968. Almost twenty years later, another foreigner working in Hollywood, Andrei Konchalovsky, would finally make ''Runaway Train'', though from a script totally different from Kurosawa's.

The director meanwhile had become involved in a much more ambitious Hollywood project. ''Tora! Tora! Tora!'', produced by 20th Century Fox and Kurosawa Production, would be a portrayal of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor from both the American and the Japanese points-of-view, with Kurosawa helming the Japanese half and an English-speaking filmmaker directing the American half. He spent several months working on the script with Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, but very soon the project began to unravel. The director chosen to film the American sequences turned out not to be the prestigious English filmmaker David Lean, as the producers had led Kurosawa to believe, but the much less celebrated special effects expert, Richard Fleischer. The budget was also cut, and the screen time allocated for the Japanese segment would now be no longer than 90 minutes—a major problem, considering that Kurosawa's script ran over four hours. After numerous revisions, a more or less finalized cut screenplay was agreed upon in May 1968. Shooting began in early December, but Kurosawa would last only a little over three weeks as director. He struggled to work with an unfamiliar crew and the requirements of a Hollywood production, while his working methods puzzled his American producers, who ultimately concluded that the director must be mentally ill. On Christmas Eve 1968, the Americans announced that Kurosawa had left the production due to "fatigue," effectively firing him. (He was ultimately replaced, for the film's Japanese sequences, with two directors, Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda.)

''Tora! Tora! Tora!'', finally released to unenthusiastic reviews in September 1970, was, as Donald Richie put it, an "almost unmitigated tragedy" in Kurosawa's career. He had spent years of his life on a logistically nightmarish project to which he ultimately did not contribute a foot of film shot by himself. (He had his name removed from the credits, though the script used for the Japanese half was still his and his co-writers'.) He became estranged from his longtime collaborator, writer Ryuzo Kikushima, and never worked with him again. The project had inadvertently exposed corruption in his own production company (a situation reminiscent of his own movie, ''The Bad Sleep Well''). His very sanity had been called into question. Worst of all, the Japanese film industry—and perhaps the man himself—began to suspect that he would never make another film.

A difficult decade (1969–1977)

Knowing that his reputation was at stake following the much publicised ''Tora! Tora! Tora!'' debacle, Kurosawa moved quickly to a new project to prove he was still viable. To his aid came friends and famed directors Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi and Kon Ichikawa, who together with Kurosawa established in July 1969 a production company called the Club of the Four Knights (Yonki no kai). Although the plan was for the four directors to create a film each, it has been suggested that the real motivation for the other three directors was to make it easier for Kurosawa to successfully complete a film, and therefore find his way back into the business.

The first project proposed and worked on was a period film to be called ''Dora-Heita'', but when this was deemed too expensive, attention shifted to ''Dodesukaden'', an adaptation of yet another Shūgorō Yamamoto work, again about the poor and destitute. The film was shot quickly (by Kurosawa's standards) in about nine weeks, with Kurosawa determined to show he was still capable of working quickly and efficiently within a limited budget. For his first work in color, the dynamic editing and complex compositions of his earlier pictures were set aside, with the artist focusing on the creation of a bold, almost surreal palette of primary colors, in order to reveal the toxic environment in which the characters live. It was released in Japan in October 1970, but though a minor critical success, it was greeted with audience indifference. The picture lost money and caused the Club of the Four Knights to dissolve. Initial reception abroad was somewhat more favorable, but ''Dodesukaden'' has since been typically considered an interesting experiment not comparable to the director's best work.

Unable to secure funding for further work and allegedly suffering from health problems, Kurosawa apparently reached the breaking point: on December 22, 1971, he slit his wrists and throat multiple times. The suicide attempt proved unsuccessful and the director's health recovered fairly quickly, with Kurosawa now taking refuge in domestic life, uncertain if he would ever direct another film.

In early 1973, the Soviet studio Mosfilm approached the filmmaker to ask if he would be interested in working with them. Kurosawa proposed an adaptation of Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev's autobiographical work ''Dersu Uzala''. The book, about a Goldi hunter who lives in harmony with nature until destroyed by encroaching civilization, was one that he had wanted to make since the 1930s. In December 1973, the 63-year-old Kurosawa set off for the Soviet Union with four of his closest aides, beginning a year-and-a-half stay in the country. Shooting began in May 1974 in Siberia, with filming in exceedingly harsh natural conditions proving very difficult and demanding. The picture wrapped in April 1975, with a thoroughly exhausted and homesick Kurosawa returning to Japan and his family in June. ''Dersu Uzala'' had its world premiere in Japan on August 2, 1975, and did well at the box office. While critical reception in Japan was muted, the film was better reviewed abroad, winning the Moscow International Film Festival's Golden Prize, as well as an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Today, critics remain divided over the film: some see it as an example of Kurosawa's alleged artistic decline, while others count it among his finest works.

Although proposals for television projects were submitted to him, he had no interest in working outside the film world. Nevertheless, the hard-drinking director did agree to appear in a series of television ads for Suntory whiskey, which aired in 1976. While fearing that he might never be able to make another film, the director nevertheless continued working on various projects, writing scripts and creating detailed illustrations, intending to leave behind a visual record of his plans in case he would never be able to film his stories.

Two epics (1978–1986)

In 1977, American director George Lucas had released ''Star Wars'', a wildly successful science fiction film influenced by Kurosawa's ''The Hidden Fortress'', among other works. Lucas, like many other New Hollywood directors, revered Kurosawa and considered him a role model, and was shocked to discover that the Japanese filmmaker was unable to secure financing for any new work. The two met in San Francisco in July 1978 to discuss the project Kurosawa considered most financially viable: ''Kagemusha'', the epic story of a thief hired as the double of a medieval Japanese lord of a great clan. Lucas, enthralled by the screenplay and Kurosawa's illustrations, leveraged his influence over 20th Century Fox to coerce the studio that had fired Kurosawa just ten years earlier to produce ''Kagemusha'', then recruited fellow fan Francis Ford Coppola as co-producer.

Production began the following April, with Kurosawa in high spirits. Shooting lasted from June 1979 through March 1980 and was plagued with problems, not the least of which was the firing of the original lead actor, Shintaro Katsu—creator of the very popular Zatoichi character—due to an incident in which the actor insisted, against the director's wishes, on videotaping his own performance. (He was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai, in his first of two consecutive leading roles in a Kurosawa movie.) The film was completed only a few weeks behind schedule and opened in Tokyo in April 1980. It quickly became a massive hit in Japan. The film was also a critical and box office success abroad, winning the coveted Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival in May, though some critics, then and now, have faulted the film for its alleged coldness. Kurosawa spent much of the rest of the year in Europe and America promoting ''Kagemusha'', collecting awards and accolades, and exhibiting as art the drawings he had made to serve as storyboards for the film.

The international success of ''Kagemusha'' allowed Kurosawa to proceed with his next project, ''Ran'', another epic in a similar vein. The script, partly based on William Shakespeare's ''King Lear'', depicted a ruthless, bloodthirsty daimyo (warlord), played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who, after foolishly banishing his one loyal son, surrenders his kingdom to his other two sons, who then betray him, thus plunging the entire kingdom into war. As Japanese studios still felt wary about producing another film that would rank among the most expensive ever made in the country, international help was again needed. This time it came from French producer Serge Silberman, who had produced Luis Buñuel's final movies. Filming did not begin until December 1983 and lasted more than a year.

In January 1985, production of ''Ran'' was halted as Kurosawa's 64-year-old wife Yōko fell ill. She died on February 1. Kurosawa returned to finish his film and ''Ran'' premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival on May 31, with a wide release the next day. The film was a moderate financial success in Japan, but a larger one abroad and, as he had done with ''Kagemusha'', Kurosawa embarked on a trip to Europe and America, where he attended the film's premieres in September and October.

''Ran'' won several awards in Japan, but was not quite as honored there as many of the director's best films of the 1950s and 1960s had been. The film world was shocked, however, when Japan passed over the film in favor of another as its official entry to compete for an Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Film category. Both the producer and Kurosawa himself attributed this to a misunderstanding: because of the Academy's arcane rules, no one was sure whether ''Ran'' qualified as a ''Japanese'' film, a ''French'' film (due to its financing), or both, so it was not submitted at all. In response to what at least appeared to be a blatant snub by his own countrymen, the director Sidney Lumet led a successful campaign to have Kurosawa receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director that year (Sydney Pollack ultimately won the award for directing Out of Africa). ''Ran'''s costume designer, Emi Wada, won the movie's only Oscar.

''Kagemusha'' and ''Ran'', particularly the latter, are often considered to be among Kurosawa's finest works. After ''Ran'''s release, Kurosawa would point to it as his best film, a major change of attitude for the director who, when asked which of his works was his best, had always previously answered "my next one."

Final works and last years (1987–1998)

For his next movie, Kurosawa chose a subject very different from any that he had ever filmed before. While some of his previous pictures (for example, ''Drunken Angel'' and ''Kagemusha'') had included brief dream sequences, ''Dreams'' was to be entirely based upon the director's own dreams. Significantly, for the first time in over forty years, Kurosawa, for this deeply personal project, wrote the screenplay alone. Although its estimated budget was lower than the films immediately preceding it, Japanese studios were still unwilling to back one of his productions, so Kurosawa turned to another famous American fan, Steven Spielberg, who convinced Warner Bros. to buy the international rights to the completed film. This made it easier for Kurosawa's son, Hisao, as co-producer and soon-to-be head of Kurosawa Production, to negotiate a loan in Japan that would cover the film's production costs. Shooting took more than eight months to complete, and ''Dreams'' premiered at Cannes in May 1990 to a polite but muted reception, similar to the reaction the picture would generate elsewhere in the world.

Kurosawa now turned to a more conventional story with ''Rhapsody in August''—the director's first film fully produced in Japan since ''Dodeskaden'' over twenty years before—which explored the scars of the nuclear bombing which destroyed Nagasaki at the very end of World War II. It was adapted from a Kiyoko Murata novel, but the film's references to the Nagasaki bombing came from the director rather than from the book. This was his only movie to include a role for an American movie star: Richard Gere, who plays a small role as the nephew of the elderly heroine. Shooting took place in early 1991, with the film opening on May 25 that year to a largely negative critical reaction, especially in the United States, where the director was accused of promulgating naïvely anti-American sentiments.

Kurosawa wasted no time moving onto his next project: ''Madadayo'', or ''Not Yet''. Based on autobiographical essays by Hyakken Uchida, the film follows the life of a Japanese professor of German through the Second World War and beyond. The narrative centers on yearly birthday celebrations with his former students, during which the protagonist declares his unwillingness to die just yet—a theme that was becoming increasingly relevant for the film's 81-year-old creator. Filming began in February 1992 and wrapped by the end of September. Its release on April 17, 1993, was greeted by an even more disappointed reaction than had been the case with his two preceding works.

Kurosawa nevertheless continued to work. He wrote the original screenplays ''The Sea is Watching'' in 1993 and ''After the Rain'' in 1995. While putting finishing touches on the latter work in 1995, Kurosawa slipped and broke the base of his spine. Following the accident, he would use a wheelchair for the rest of his life, putting an end to any hopes of him directing another film. His longtime wish—to die on the set while shooting a movie—was never to be fulfilled.

Death and posthumous works

Following his accident in 1995, Kurosawa's health began to deteriorate. While his mind remained sharp and lively, his body was giving up, and for the last half year of his life, the director was largely confined to bed, listening to music and watching television at home. On September 6, 1998, Kurosawa died of a stroke in Setagaya, Tokyo, at the age of 88.

Following Kurosawa's death, several posthumous works based on his unfilmed screenplays have been produced. ''After the Rain'', directed by Takashi Koizumi, was released in 1998, and ''The Sea is Watching'', directed by Kei Kumai, premiered in 2002. A script created by the Yonki no Kai ("Club of the Four Knights") (Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa), around the time that ''Dodeskaden'' was made, finally was filmed and released (in 2000) as ''Dora-Heita'', by the only surviving founding member of the club, Kon Ichikawa.

Working methods, style and themes

Working methods

All biographical sources, as well as the filmmaker’s own comments, confirm that Kurosawa was a completely “hands-on” director, passionately involved in every aspect of the filmmaking process. As one interviewer summarized, “he (co-)writes his scripts, oversees the design, rehearses the actors, sets up all the shots and then does the editing.” His active participation extended from the initial concept to the editing and scoring of the final product.

Script

Kurosawa emphasized time and again that the screenplay was the absolute foundation of a successful film and that, though a mediocre director can sometimes make a passable film out of a ''good'' script, even an excellent director can never make a good film out of a ''bad'' script. During the postwar period, he began the practice of collaborating with a rotating group of five screenwriters: Eijirō Hisaita, Ryuzo Kikushima, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni, and Masato Ide. Whichever members of this group happened to be working on a particular film would gather around a table, often at a hot-springs resort, where they would not be distracted by the outside world. (''Seven Samurai'', for example, was written in this fashion.) Often they all (except Oguni, who acted as “referee”) would work on exactly the same pages of the script, and Kurosawa would choose the best-written version from the different drafts of each particular scene. This method was adopted "so that each contributor might function as a kind of foil, checking the dominance of any one person’s point-of-view."

In addition to the actual script, Kurosawa at this stage often produced extensive, fantastically detailed notes to elaborate his vision. For example, for ''Seven Samurai'', he created six notebooks in which he created (among many other things) detailed biographies of the samurai, including what they wore and ate, how they walked, talked and behaved when greeted, and even how each tied his shoes. For the 101 peasant characters in the film, he created a registry consisting of 23 families and instructed the performers playing these roles to live and work as these “families” for the duration of shooting.

Shooting

For his early films, although they were consistently well photographed, Kurosawa generally used standard lenses and deep-focus photography. Beginning with ''Seven Samurai'' (1954), however, Kurosawa's cinematic technique changed drastically, through his extensive use in that film of long lens and multiple cameras. The director claimed that he used these lenses and several cameras rolling at once to help the actors—allowing them to be photographed at some distance from the lens, and without any knowledge of which particular camera's image would be utilized in the final cut—making their performances much more natural. (In fact, Tatsuya Nakadai agreed that the multiple cameras greatly helped his performances with the director.) But these changes had a powerful effect as well on the look of the action scenes in that film, particularly the final battle in the rain. Says Stephen Prince: "He can use the telephoto lenses to get under the horses, in between their hooves, to plunge us into the chaos of that battle in a visual way that is really quite unprecedented, both in Kurosawa’s own work and in the samurai genre as a whole."

With ''The Hidden Fortress'', Kurosawa began to utilize the widescreen (anamorphic) process for the first time in his work. These three techniques—long lenses, multiple cameras and widescreen—were in later works fully exploited, even in sequences with little or no overt action, such as the early scenes of ''High and Low'' that take place in the central character's home, in which they are employed to dramatize tensions and power relationships between the characters within a highly confined space.

For all his films, but particularly for his ''jidaigeki'', Kurosawa insisted on absolute authenticity of sets, costumes and props. Numerous instances of his fanatical devotion to detail have been recorded, of which the following are only a few examples.

For ''Throne of Blood'', in the scene where Washizu (Mifune) is attacked with arrows by his own men, the director had archers shoot real arrows, hollowed out and running along wires, toward Toshirō Mifune from a distance of about ten feet, with the actor carefully following chalk marks on the ground to avoid being hit. (Some of the arrows missed him by an inch; the actor, who admitted that he was not merely ''acting'' terrified in the film, suffered nightmares afterward).

For ''Red Beard'', to construct the gate for the clinic set, Kurosawa had his assistants dismantle rotten wood from old sets and then create the prop from scratch with this old wood, so the gate would look properly ravaged by time. For the same film, for teacups that appeared in the movie, he ordered his crew to pour fifty years’ worth of tea into the cups so they would appear appropriately stained.

For ''Ran'', art director Yoshirō Muraki, constructing the "third castle" set under the director’s supervision, created the "stones" of that castle by having photographs taken of actual stones from a celebrated castle, then painting Styrofoam blocks to exactly resemble those stones and gluing them to the castle “wall” through a process known as “rough-stone piling,” which required months of work. Later, before shooting the famous scene in which the castle is attacked and set on fire, in order to prevent the Styrofoam “stones” from melting in the heat, the art department coated the surface with four layers of cement, then painted the colors of the ancient stones onto the cement.

Editing

Kurosawa often remarked that he shot a film simply in order to have material to edit, because the editing of a picture was the most important and creatively interesting part of the process for him. Kurosawa’s creative team believed that the director’s skill with editing was his greatest talent. Said Hiroshi Nezu, a longtime production supervisor on his films, “Among ourselves, we think that he is Toho’s best director, that he is Japan’s best scenarist, and that he is the best editor in the world. He is most concerned with the flowing quality which a film must have... The Kurosawa film flows ''over'' the cut, as it were.”

The director’s frequent crew member Teruyo Nogami confirms this view. “Akira Kurosawa’s editing was exceptional, the inimitable work of a genius... No one was a match for him.” She claimed that Kurosawa carried in his head all the information about all shots filmed, and if, in the editing room, he asked for a piece of film and she handed him the wrong one, he would immediately recognize the error, though she had taken detailed notes on each shot and he had not. She compared his mind to a computer, which could do with edited segments of film what computers do today.

Kurosawa’s habitual method—at variance with the standard Hollywood practice of editing a film only after all footage has been shot—was to edit a film daily, bit by bit, during production. This helped particularly when he started using multiple cameras, which resulted in a large amount of film to assemble. “I always edit in the evening if we have a fair amount of footage in the can. After watching the rushes, I usually go to the editing room and work.” Because of this practice of editing as he went along, the post-production period for a Kurosawa film could be startlingly brief: ''Yojimbo'' had its Japanese premiere on April 20, 1961, ''four days'' after shooting concluded on April 16.

The "Kurosawa-gumi"

Throughout his career, Kurosawa worked constantly with people drawn from the same pool of creative technicians, crew members and actors, popularly known as the "Kurosawa-gumi" (Kurosawa group). The following is a partial list of this group, divided by profession. This information is derived from the IMDB pages for Kurosawa’s films and Stuart Galbraith’s IV’s filmography:

Composers: Fumio Hayasaka (''Drunken Angel'', ''Stray Dog'', ''Scandal'', ''Rashomon'', ''The Idiot'', ''Ikiru'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''Record of a Living Being''); Masaru Satō (''Throne of Blood'', ''The Lower Depths'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''The Bad Sleep Well'', ''Yojimbo'', ''Sanjuro'', ''High and Low'', ''Red Beard''); Tōru Takemitsu (''Dodeskaden'', ''Ran''); Shin-ichirō Ikebe (''Kagemusha'', ''Dreams'', ''Rhapsody in August'', ''Madadayo'').

Cinematographers: Asakazu Nakai (''No Regrets for Our Youth'', ''One Wonderful Sunday'', ''Stray Dog'', ''Ikiru'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''Record of a Living Being'', ''Throne of Blood'', ''High and Low'', ''Red Beard'', ''Dersu Uzala'', ''Ran''); Kazuo Miyagawa (''Rashomon'', ''Yojimbo''); Takao Saitō (''Sanjuro'', ''High and Low'', ''Red Beard'', ''Dodeskaden'', ''Kagemusha'', ''Ran'', ''Dreams'', ''Rhapsody in August'', ''Madadayo'').

Art Department: Yoshirō Muraki served as either assistant art director, art director or production designer for all Kurosawa’s films (except for ''Dersu Uzala'') from ''Drunken Angel'' until the end of the director’s career.

Production Crew: Teruyo Nogami served as script supervisor, production manager, associate director or assistant to the producer on all Kurosawa’s films from ''Rashomon'' to the end of the director’s career. Hiroshi Nezu was production supervisor or unit production manager on all the films from ''Seven Samurai'' to ''Dodeskaden'', except ''Sanjuro''.

Actors: ''Leading actors'': Takashi Shimura (21 films); Toshirō Mifune (16 films), Susumu Fujita (8 films), Tatsuya Nakadai (6 films) and Masayuki Mori (5 films). ''Supporting performers'' (in alphabetical order): Minoru Chiaki, Kamatari Fujiwara, Bokuzen Hidari, Fumiko Homma, Hisashi Igawa, Yunosuke Ito, Kyoko Kagawa, Daisuke Kato, Isao Kimura, Kokuten Kodo, Akitake Kono, Yoshio Kosugi, Koji Mitsui, Seiji Miyaguchi, Eiko Miyoshi, Nobuo Nakamura, Akemi Negishi, Denjiro Okochi, Noriko Sengoku, Gen Shimizu, Ichiro Sugai, Haruo Tanaka, Akira Terao, Eijiro Tono, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kichijiro Ueda, Atsushi Watanabe, Isuzu Yamada, Tsutomu Yamazaki and Yoshitaka Zushi.

Style

Virtually all commentators have noted Kurosawa’s bold, dynamic style, which many have compared to the traditional Hollywood style of narrative moviemaking, one that emphasizes, in the words of one such scholar, "chronological, causal, linear and historical thinking." But it has also been claimed that, from his very first film, the director displayed a technique quite distinct from the seamless style of classic Hollywood. This technique involved a disruptive depiction of screen space through the use of numerous unrepeated camera setups, a disregard for the traditional 180-degree axis of action around which Hollywood scenes have usually been constructed, and an approach in which “narrative time becomes spatialized,” with fluid camera movement often replacing conventional editing. The following are some idiosyncratic aspects of the artist’s style.

The axial cut

In his films of the 1940s and 1950s, Kurosawa frequently employs the "axial cut," in which the camera moves closer to, or further away from, the subject, not through the use of tracking shots or dissolves, but through a series of matched jump cuts. For example, in ''Sanshiro Sugata II'', the hero takes leave of the woman he loves, but then, after walking away a short distance, turns and bows to her, and then, after walking further, turns and bows once more. This sequence of shots is illustrated on film scholar David Bordwell's blog. The three shots are not connected in the film by camera movements or dissolves, but by a series of two jump cuts. The effect is to stress the duration of Sanshiro's departure.

In the opening sequence of ''Seven Samurai'' in the peasant village, the axial cut is used twice. When the villagers are outdoors, gathered in a circle, weeping and lamenting the imminent arrival of the bandits, they are glimpsed from above in extreme long shot, then, after the cut, in a much closer shot, then in an even closer shot at ground level as the dialogue begins. A few minutes later, when the villagers go to the mill to ask the village elder's advice, there is a long shot of the mill, with a slowly turning wheel in the river, then a closer shot of this wheel, and then a still closer shot of it. (As the mill is where the elder lives, these shots forge a mental association in the viewer's mind between that character and the mill.)

Cutting on motion

A number of scholars have pointed out Kurosawa’s tendency to “cut on motion”: that is, to edit a sequence of a character or characters in motion so that an action is depicted in two or more separate shots, rather than one uninterrupted shot. One scholar, as an example, describes a tense scene in ''Seven Samurai'' in which the samurai Shichirôji, who is standing, wishes to console the peasant Manzo, who is sitting on the ground, and he gets down on one knee to talk to him. Kurosawa chooses to film this simple action in two shots rather than one (cutting between the two only ''after'' the action of kneeling has begun) to fully convey Shichirôji’s humility. Numerous other instances of this device are evident in the movie. “Kurosawa [frequently] breaks up the action, fragments it, in order to create an emotional effect.”

The wipe

A form of cinematic punctuation very strongly identified with Kurosawa is the wipe. This is an effect created through an optical printer, in which, when a scene ends, a line or bar appears to move across the screen, “wiping” away the image while simultaneously revealing the first image of the subsequent scene. As a transitional device, it is used as a substitute for the straight cut or the dissolve (though Kurosawa, of course, often used both of those devices as well). In his mature work, Kurosawa employed the wipe so frequently that it became a kind of signature. For example, one blogger has counted no less than 12 instances of the wipe in ''Drunken Angel''.

There are a number of theories concerning the purpose of this device, which, as James Goodwin notes, was common in silent cinema but became considerably rarer in the more “realistic” sound cinema. Goodwin claims that the wipes in ''Rashomon'', for instance, fulfill one of three purposes: emphasizing motion in traveling shots, marking narrative shifts in the courtyard scenes and marking temporal ellipses between actions (e.g., between the end of one character’s testimony and the beginning of another’s). He also points out that in ''The Lower Depths'', in which Kurosawa completely avoided the use of wipes, the director cleverly manipulated people and props “in order to slide new visual images in and out of view much as a wipe cut does.”

An instance of the wipe used as a satirical device can be seen in ''Ikiru''. A group of women visit the local government office to petition the bureaucrats to turn a waste area into a children’s playground. The viewer is then shown a series of point of view shots of various bureaucrats, connected by wipe transitions, each of whom refers the group to another department. Nora Tennessen comments in her blog (which shows one example) that “the wipe technique makes [the sequence] funnier—images of bureaucrats are stacked like cards, each more punctilious than the last.”

Image-sound counterpoint

Kurosawa by all accounts always gave great attention to the soundtracks of his films (Teruyo Nogami’s memoir gives many such examples). In the late 1940s, he began to employ music for what he called "counterpoint" to the emotional content of a scene, rather than merely to reinforce the emotion, as Hollywood traditionally did (and still does). The inspiration for this innovation came from a family tragedy. When news reached Kurosawa of his father's death in 1948, he wandered aimlessly through the streets of Tokyo. His sorrow was magnified rather than diminished when he suddenly heard the cheerful, vapid song "The Cuckoo Waltz", and he hurried to escape from this "awful music." He then told his composer, Fumio Hayasaka, with whom he was working on ''Drunken Angel'', to use "The Cuckoo Waltz" as ironic accompaniment to the scene in which the dying gangster, Matsunaga, sinks to his lowest point in the narrative.

This ironic approach to music can also be found in ''Stray Dog'', a film released a year after ''Drunken Angel''. In the climactic scene, the detective Murakami is fighting furiously with the murderer Yusa in a muddy field. The sound of a Mozart piece is suddenly heard, played on the piano by a woman in a nearby house. As one commentator notes, "In contrast to this scene of primitive violence, the serenity of the Mozart is, literally, other-worldly" and "the power of this elemental encounter is heightened by the music." Nor was Kurosawa’s "ironic" use of the soundtrack limited to music. One critic observes that, in ''Seven Samurai'', "During episodes of murder and mayhem, birds chirp in the background, as they do in the first scene when the farmers lament their seemingly hopeless fate."

Recurring themes

The master–disciple relationship

Many commentators have noted the frequent occurrence in Kurosawa’s work of the complex relationship between an older and a younger man, who serve each other as master and disciple, respectively. This theme was clearly an expression of the director's life experience. "Kurosawa revered his teachers, in particular Kajiro Yamamoto, his mentor at Toho," according to Joan Mellen. "The salutary image of an older person instructing the young evokes always in Kurosawa’s films high moments of pathos." The critic Tadao Sato considers the recurring character of the "master" to be a type of surrogate father, whose role it is to witness the young protagonist’s moral growth and approve of it.

In his very first film, ''Sanshiro Sugata'', after the Judo master Yano becomes the title character’s teacher and spiritual guide, "the narrative [is] cast in the form of a chronicle studying the stages of the hero’s growing mastery and maturity." The master-pupil relationship in the films of the postwar era—as depicted in such works as ''Drunken Angel'', ''Stray Dog'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''Red Beard'' and ''Dersu Uzala''—involves very little direct instruction, but much learning through experience and example; Stephen Prince relates this tendency to the private and nonverbal nature of the concept of Zen enlightenment.

By the time of ''Kagemusha'', however, according to Prince, the meaning of this relationship has changed. A thief chosen to act as the double of a great lord continues his impersonation even after his master’s death: "the relationship has become spectral and is generated from beyond the grave with the master maintaining a ghostly presence. Its end is death, not the renewal of commitment to the living that typified its outcome in earlier films." However, according to the director's biographer, in his final film, ''Madadayo''—which deals with a teacher and his relationship with an entire group of ex-pupils—a sunnier vision of the theme emerges. "The students hold an annual party for their professor, attended by dozens of former students, now adults of varying age... This extended sequence... expresses, as only Kurosawa can, the simple joys of student-teacher relationships, of kinship, of being alive."

The heroic champion

Kurosawa’s is a ''heroic'' cinema, a series of dramas (mostly) concerned with the deeds and fates of larger-than-life heroes. Stephen Prince has identified the emergence of the unique Kurosawa protagonist with the immediate post-World War II period. The goal of the American Occupation to replace Japanese feudalism with individualism coincided with the director’s artistic and social agenda: "Kurosawa welcomed the changed political climate and sought to fashion his own mature cinematic voice." The Japanese critic Tadao Sato concurs: "With defeat in World War II, many Japanese... were dumbfounded to find that the government had lied to them and was neither just nor dependable. During this uncertain time Akira Kurosawa, in a series of first-rate films, sustained the people by his consistent assertion that the meaning of life is not dictated by the nation but something each individual should discover for himself through suffering." The filmmaker himself remarked that, during this period, "I felt that without the establishment of the self as a positive value there could be no freedom and no democracy."

The first such postwar hero was, atypically for the artist, a heroine—Yukie, played by Setsuko Hara, in ''No Regrets for Our Youth''. According to Prince, her "desertion of family and class background to assist a poor village, her perseverance in the face of enormous obstacles, her assumption of responsibility for her own life and for the well-being of others, and her existential loneliness... are essential to Kurosawan heroism and make of Yukie the first coherent... example." This "existential loneliness" is also exemplified by Dr. Sanada (Takashi Shimura) in ''Drunken Angel'': "Kurosawa insists that his heroes take their stand, alone, against tradition and battle for a better world, even if the path there is not clear. Separation from a corrupt social system in order to alleviate human suffering, as Sanada does, is the only honorable course."

Many commentators regard ''Seven Samurai'' as the ultimate expression of the artist’s heroic ideal. Joan Mellen’s comments are typical of this view: "Seven Samurai is above all a homage to the samurai class at its most noble... Samurai for Kurosawa represent the best of Japanese tradition and integrity." Ironically, it is because of, not in spite of, the chaotic times of civil war depicted in the film that the seven rise to greatness. "Kurosawa locates the unexpected benefits no less than the tragedy of this historical moment. The upheaval forces samurai to channel the selflessness of their credo of loyal service into working for peasants." However, this heroism is futile because "there was already rising... a merchant class which would supplant the warrior aristocracy." So the courage and supreme skill of the central characters will not prevent the ultimate destruction of themselves or their class.

As Kurosawa’s career progressed he seemed to find it increasingly difficult to sustain the heroic ideal. As Prince notes, "Kurosawa’s is an essentially tragic vision of life, and this sensibility... impedes his efforts to realize a socially committed mode of filmmaking." Furthermore, the director’s ideal of heroism is subverted by history itself: "When history is articulated as it is in ''Throne of Blood'', as a blind force... heroism ceases to be a problem or a reality." According to Prince, the filmmaker’s vision eventually became so bleak that he would come to view history merely as eternally recurring patterns of violence, within which the individual is depicted as not only unheroic, but utterly helpless (see "Cycles of violence" below).

Nature and weather

Nature is a crucial element in Kurosawa’s films. According to Stephen Prince, "Kurosawa’s sensibility, like that of many Japanese artists, is keenly sensitive to the subtleties and beauties of season and scenery." He has never hesitated to exploit climate and weather as plot elements, to the point where they become "active participants in the drama... The oppressive heat in ''Stray Dog'' and ''Record of a Living Being'' is omnipresent and becomes thematized as a signifier of a world disjointed by economic collapse and the atomic threat." The director himself once said, "I like hot summers, cold winters, heavy rains and snows, and I think most of my pictures show this. I like extremes because I find them most alive."

Wind is also a powerful symbol: "The persistent metaphor of Kurosawa’s work is that of wind, the winds of change, of fortune and adversity." "The visually flamboyant [final] battle [of ''Yojimbo''] takes place in the main street, as huge clouds of dust swirl around the combatants... The winds that stir the dust... have brought firearms to the town along with the culture of the West, which will end the warrior tradition."

It is also difficult not to notice the importance of rain to Kurosawa: "Rain in Kurosawa’s films is never treated neutrally. When it occurs... it is never a drizzle or a light mist but always a frenzied downpour, a driving storm." "The final battle [in ''Seven Samurai''] is a supreme spiritual and physical struggle, and it is fought in a blinding rainstorm, which enables Kurosawa to visualize an ultimate fusion of social groups... but this climactic vision of classlessness, with typical Kurosawan ambivalence, has become a vision of horror. The battle is a vortex of swirling rain and mud... The ultimate fusion of social identity emerges as an expression of hellish chaos."

Cycles of violence

Beginning with ''Throne of Blood'' (1957), an obsession with historical cycles of inexorable savage violence—what Stephen Prince calls "the countertradition to the committed, heroic mode of Kurosawa’s cinema"—first appears. According to Donald Richie, within the world of that film, "Cause and effect is the only law. Freedom does not exist." and Prince claims that its events "are inscribed in a cycle of time that infinitely repeats." (He uses as evidence the fact that Washizu’s lord, unlike the kindly King Duncan of Shakespeare’s play, had murdered his own lord years before to seize power, and is then murdered in turn by Washizu (the Macbeth character) for the same reason.) "The fated quality to the action of Macbeth... was transposed by Kurosawa with a sharpened emphasis upon predetermined action and the crushing of human freedom beneath the laws of karma."

Prince claims that Kurosawa’s last epics, ''Kagemusha'' and particularly ''Ran'', mark a major turning point in the director’s vision of the world. In ''Kagemusha'', "where once [in the world of his films] the individual [hero] could grasp events tightly and demand that they conform to his or her impulses, now the self is but the epiphenomenon of a ruthless and bloody temporal process, ground to dust beneath the weight and force of history." The following epic, ''Ran'', is “a relentless chronicle of base lust for power, betrayal of the father by his sons, and pervasive wars and murders." The historical setting of the film is used as "a commentary on what Kurosawa now perceives as the timelessness of human impulses toward violence and self-destruction." "History has given way to a perception of life as a wheel of endless suffering, ever turning, ever repeating," which is compared in many instances in the screenplay with hell. "Kurosawa has found hell to be both the inevitable outcome of human behavior and the appropriate visualization of his own bitterness and disappointment."

Criticisms

Despite the extraordinary acclaim that Kurosawa’s work has received in Japan and abroad, his films, as well as Kurosawa as an individual, have also been subject to considerable criticism, much of it harsh. Below are summarized some of the more common criticisms of the director, both those made generally and those that are primarily voiced in Japan.

In general

In the early to mid-1950s, a number of critics belonging to the French New Wave championed the films of the older Japanese master, Kenji Mizoguchi, at the expense of Kurosawa’s work. New Wave critic-filmmaker Jacques Rivette, said: "You can compare only what is comparable and that which aims high enough... [Mizoguchi] seems to be the only Japanese director who is completely Japanese and yet is also the only one that achieves a true universality, that of an individual." According to such French commentators, Mizoguchi seemed, of the two artists, the more authentically Japanese. But at least one film scholar has questioned the validity of this dichotomy between “Japanese” Mizoguchi and “Western” Kurosawa by pointing out that "Mizo" had been as influenced by Western cinema and Western culture in general as Kurosawa, and that this is reflected in his work.

A criticism frequently directed at Kurosawa’s films is that the director’s preoccupation with ethical and moral themes led him at times to create what some commentators regard as sentimental or naïve work. Speaking of the postwar “slice of life” drama ''One Wonderful Sunday'', for example, film scholar (and future politician) Audie Bock claimed that not even Kurosawa’s celebrated prowess as an editor could save one particular scene from bathos: “The last sequence... is an excruciating twelve minutes of the boy conducting an imaginary orchestra in an empty amphitheater while his girlfriend appeals directly to the camera for the viewer to join in. Angles and focal lengths change, details of leaves scattering in the wind are intercut, but nothing makes the scene go any faster."

Some controversy exists about the extent to which Kurosawa's films of the Second World War period could be considered fascist propaganda. The cultural historian Peter B. High sees Kurosawa’s wartime cinema as part of the propagandistic trend of Japan at war and as an example of many of these wartime conventions. High refers to his second film, ''The Most Beautiful'', as a "dark and gloomy rendition of the standard formulas of the [home front] genre." Another controversy centers on his alleged refusal to acknowledge Japan's wartime guilt. In one of Kurosawa’s last films, ''Rhapsody in August'', an elderly survivor of the atomic attack on Nagasaki is visited by her half-Japanese, half-American nephew, Clark (Richard Gere), who appears (at least to some viewers) to apologize, as an American, for the city’s wartime destruction. The ''New York Times'' critic Vincent Canby wrote about this film: "A lot of people at Cannes were outraged that the film makes no mention of Pearl Harbor and Japan's atrocities in China... If Clark can apologize for bombing Nagasaki, why can't Granny apologize for the raid on Pearl Harbor?"

A number of critics have reacted negatively to the female characters in Kurosawa’s movies. Joan Mellen, in her examination of this subject, has maintained that, by the time of ''Red Beard'' (1965), "women in Kurosawa have become not only unreal and incapable of kindness, but totally bereft of autonomy, whether physical, intellectual, or emotional... Women at their best may only imitate the truths men discover." Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince concurs with Mellen's view, though less censoriously: "Unlike a male-oriented director like Sam Peckinpah, Kurosawa is not hostile to women, but his general lack of interest in them should be regarded as a major limitation of his work."

In Japan

In Japan, both critics and other filmmakers have sometimes accused his work of elitism, because of his focus on exceptional, heroic individuals and groups of men. In her commentary on the deluxe DVD edition of ''Seven Samurai'', Joan Mellen maintains that certain shots of the samurai characters Kambei and Kyuzo, which to her reveal Kurosawa "privileging" these samurai, "support the argument voiced by several Japanese critics that Kurosawa was an elitist... Kurosawa was hardly a progressive director, they argued, since his peasants could not discover among their own ranks leaders who might rescue the village. Instead, justifying the inequitable class structure of their society and ours, the peasants must rely on the aristocracy, the upper class, and in particular samurai, to ensure their survival... Kurosawa defended himself against this charge in his interview with me. '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.'"

Because of Kurosawa’s popularity with European and American audiences from the early 1950s onward, he has not escaped the charge of deliberately catering to the tastes of Westerners to achieve or maintain that popularity. Joan Mellen, recording the violently negative reaction (in the 1970s) of the left-wing director Nagisa Oshima to Kurosawa and his work, states: "That Kurosawa had brought Japanese film to a Western audience meant [to Oshima] that he must be pandering to Western values and politics." Kurosawa always strongly denied pandering to Western tastes: “He has never catered to a foreign audience” writes Audie Bock, “and has condemned those who do.”

Kurosawa was often criticized by his countrymen for perceived "arrogant" behavior. It was in Japan that the (initially) disparaging nickname "Kurosawa Tennō"—"The Emperor Kurosawa"—was coined. "Like tennō," Yoshimoto claimed, "Kurosawa is said to cloister himself in his own small world, which is completely cut off from the everyday reality of the majority of Japanese. The nickname tennō is used in this sense to create an image of Kurosawa as a director who abuses his power solely for the purpose of self-indulgence."

Worldwide impact

Reputation among filmmakers

Many celebrated directors have been influenced by Kurosawa and/or have expressed admiration for his work. The filmmakers cited below are grouped according to three categories: a) those who, like Kurosawa himself, established international critical reputations in the 1950s and early 1960s; b) the so-called "New Hollywood" directors, that is, American moviemakers who, for the most part, established their reputations in the early to mid-1970s; and c) other Asian directors.

Ingmar Bergman called his own film ''The Virgin Spring'' "touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa," and added, "At that time my admiration for the Japanese cinema was at its height. I was almost a samurai myself!" Federico Fellini in an interview declared the director "the greatest living example of all that an author of the cinema should be"—despite admitting to having seen only one of his films, ''Seven Samurai''. Roman Polanski in 1965 cited Kurosawa as one of his three favorite filmmakers (with Fellini and Orson Welles), singling out ''Seven Samurai'', ''Throne of Blood'' and ''The Hidden Fortress'' for praise. Bernardo Bertolucci considered the Japanese master's influence to be seminal: "Kurosawa's movies and ''La Dolce Vita'' of Fellini are the things that pushed me, sucked me into being a film director."

Kurosawa's "New Hollywood" admirers have included Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and John Milius. Robert Altman, when he first saw ''Rashomon'' (during the period when he worked regularly in television rather than feature films), was so impressed by its cinematographer's achievement of shooting several shots with the camera aimed directly at the sun—allegedly it was the first film in which this was done successfully—that he claims he was inspired the very next day to begin incorporating shots of the sun into his television work. It was Coppola who said of Kurosawa, "One thing that distinguishes [him] is that he didn't make one masterpiece or two masterpieces. He made, you know, ''eight'' masterpieces." Both Spielberg and Scorsese have praised the older man's role as teacher and role model—as a ''sensei'', to use the Japanese term. Spielberg has declared, "I have learned more from him than from almost any other filmmaker on the face of the earth", while Scorsese remarked, "Let me say it simply: Akira Kurosawa was my master, and... the master of so many other filmmakers over the years." As already noted above, several of these moviemakers were also instrumental in helping Kurosawa obtain financing for his late films: Lucas and Coppola served as co-producers on ''Kagemusha'', while the Spielberg name, lent to the 1990 production, ''Dreams'', helped bring that picture to fruition.

As the first Asian filmmaker to achieve international prominence, Kurosawa has naturally served as an inspiration for other Asian ''auteurs''. Of ''Rashomon'', the most famous director of India, Satyajit Ray, said: "The effect of the film on me [upon first seeing it in Calcutta in 1952] was electric. I saw it three times on consecutive days, and wondered each time if there was another film anywhere which gave such sustained and dazzling proof of a director's command over every aspect of film making." Other Asian admirers include the Japanese actor and director Takeshi Kitano, Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo and mainland Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who called Kurosawa "the quintessential Asian director."

Remakes

Awards and honors

Legacy

Kurosawa Production Co., established in 1959, continues to oversee much of Kurosawa's legacy. The director's son, Hisao Kurosawa, is the current head of the company. Its American subsidiary, Kurosawa Enterprises, is located in Los Angeles. Rights to Kurosawa's works are held by Kurosawa Production and the film studios under which he worked, most notably Toho. Kurosawa Production works closely with the Akira Kurosawa Foundation, established in December 2003 and also run by Hisao Kurosawa. The foundation organizes an annual short film competition and spearheads Kurosawa-related projects, including a recently shelved one to build a memorial museum for the director.

In 1981, the Kurosawa Film Studio was opened in Yokohama; two additional locations have since been launched in Japan. A large collection of archive material, including scanned screenplays, photos and news articles, has been made available through the Akira Kurosawa Digital Archive, a Japanese website maintained by Ryukoku University Digital Archives Research Center in collaboration with Kurosawa Production. Anaheim University's Akira Kurosawa School of Film] was launched in spring 2009 with the backing of Kurosawa Production. It offers online programs in digital film making, with headquarters in Anaheim and a learning center in Tokyo.

Two film awards have also been named in Kurosawa's honor. The Akira Kurosawa Award for Lifetime Achievement in Film Directing is awarded during the San Francisco International Film Festival, while the Akira Kurosawa Award is given during the Tokyo International Film Festival. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa's birth in 2010, a project called AK100 was launched in 2008. The AK100 Project aims to "expose young people who are the representatives of the next generation, and all people everywhere, to the light and spirit of Akira Kurosawa and the wonderful world he created."

Filmography

On home video

All thirty films directed by Kurosawa are available on DVD worldwide, most of them from more than one distributor and in more than one region code. His films have begun to be released on Blu-ray.

See also

Gendai-geki

List of Japanese actors

List of Japanese actresses

List of Japanese film directors

Samurai cinema

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

Further reading

Buchanan, Judith (2005). ''Shakespeare on Film''. Pearson Longman. ISBN 0582437164.

Burch, Nöel (1979). ''To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema''. University of California Press. ISBN 0520036050. Available online at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan

Cowie, Peter (2010). ''Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema''. Rizzoli Publications. ISBN 0847833194.

Davies, Anthony (1990). ''Filming Shakespeare's Plays : The Adaptions of Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Peter Brook and Akira Kurosawa''. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521399130.

Desser, David (1983). ''The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa (Studies in Cinema No. 23)''. UMI Research Press. ISBN 0835719243.

Kurosawa, Akira (1999). ''Complete Drawings'' (Japanese Text). Shogakukan. ISBN 4096996114.

Leonard, Kendra Preston (2009). ''Shakespeare, Madness, and Music: Scoring Insanity in Cinematic Adaptations''. Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810869462.

Sorensen, Lars-Martin (2009). ''Censorship of Japanese Films During the U.S. Occupation of Japan: The Cases of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa''. Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0773446737.

External links

Akira Kurosawa at the Criterion Collection

Akira Kurosawa: News, Information and Discussion

Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database

Great Performances: Kurosawa (PBS)

CineFiles: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Kurosawa search)

Akira Kurosawa at Japanese celebrity's grave guide

Category:Silver Bear for Best Director recipients Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:Légion d'honneur recipients Category:BAFTA winners (people) Category:César Award winners Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in Japan Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Japanese film producers Category:Japanese film directors Category:Japanese screenwriters Category:People from Tokyo Category:1910 births Category:1998 deaths Category:Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize winners Category:Recipients of the Order of Culture Category:Ramon Magsaysay Award winners

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Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
name	Toshirō Mifune
birth name	三船 敏郎
birth date	April 01, 1920
birth place	Qingdao, China
death date	December 24, 1997
death place	Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan
other names	Sanchuan Minlang
occupation	Actor
years active	1947–1995
spouse	Sachiko Yoshimine(1950–1995)
website	http://www.MifuneProductions.co.jp }}

Toshirō Mifune ( ''Mifune Toshirō'' ; April 1, 1920 – December 24, 1997) was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, from 1948 to 1965, in works such as ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''Throne of Blood'', and ''Yojimbo''. He is also popular for portraying Musashi Miyamoto in Hiroshi Inagaki's ''Samurai Trilogy''.

Early life

Toshirō Mifune was born in Qingdao, China, to Japanese Methodist parents, and grew up in the Chinese city of Dalian with his parents and two siblings. In his youth, Mifune worked in the photography shop of his father Tokuzo, a commercial photographer and importer who had emigrated from northern Japan. After spending the first 19 years of his life in China, during which there is evidence that he worked as a Methodist missionary, as a Japanese citizen he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army Aviation, where he served in the Aerial Photography (Ko-type) unit during World War II. He repatriated to Japan in 1946.

Early work

In 1947, one of Mifune's friends who worked for the Photography Department of Toho Productions suggested Mifune try out for the Photography Department. He was accepted for a position as an assistant cameraman. However, the union was affiliated with the Communist party, which made Mifune, a religiously conservative man, very uncomfortable.

At this time, a large number of Toho actors, after a prolonged strike, had left to form their own company, Shin Toho. Toho then organized a "new faces" contest to find new talent. Mifune's friends submitted an application and photo, without his knowledge. He was accepted, along with 48 others (out of roughly 4000 applicants), and allowed to take a screen test for Kajiro Yamamoto. Instructed to mime anger, he drew from his wartime experiences. Yamamoto took a liking to Mifune, recommending him to director Senkichi Taniguchi. This led to Mifune's first feature role, in ''Shin Baka Jidai''.

Marriage

One of Mifune's fellow performers, one of the 32 women chosen during the new faces contest, was Sachiko Yoshimine. Eight years Mifune's junior, she came from a respected Tokyo family. They fell in love and Mifune soon proposed marriage.

Yoshimine's parents were strongly opposed to the union. Mifune was doubly an outsider, being a non-Buddhist as well as a native Manchurian. His choice of profession also made him suspect, as actors were generally assumed to be irresponsible and financially incapable of supporting a family.

Director Senkichi Taniguchi, with the help of Akira Kurosawa, convinced the Yoshimine family to allow the marriage. It took place in February 1950. In November of the same year, their first son, Shirō was born. In 1955, they had a second son, Takeshi. Mifune's daughter Mika was born to his mistress, actress Mika Kitagawa, in 1982.

Period of prosperity

His imposing bearing, acting range, facility with foreign languages and lengthy partnership with acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa made him the most famous Japanese actor of his time, and easily the best known to Western audiences. He often portrayed a samurai or ronin, who was usually coarse and gruff (Kurosawa once explained that the only weakness he could find with Mifune and his acting ability was his "rough" voice), inverting the popular stereotype of the genteel, clean-cut samurai. In such films as ''Seven Samurai'' and ''Yojimbo'', he played characters who were often comically lacking in manners, but replete with practical wisdom and experience, understated nobility, and, in the case of ''Yojimbo'', unmatched fighting prowess. ''Sanjuro'' in particular contrasts this earthy warrior spirit with the useless, sheltered propriety of the court samurai. Kurosawa highly valued Mifune for his effortless portrayal of unvarnished emotion, once commenting that he could convey in only three feet of film an emotion for which the average Japanese actor would require ten feet. Mifune's portrayal of Musashi Miyamoto in Hiroshi Inagaki's ''Samurai Trilogy'' is deliberately made to become the epitome of samurai honour and manners.

Mifune was famous for his self-deprecating sense of humor, which often found its way into his film roles. He was renowned for the effort he put into his performances. To prepare for ''Seven Samurai'' and ''Rashomon'', Mifune reportedly studied footage of lions in the wild; for ''Ánimas Trujano'', he studied tapes of Mexican actors speaking, so he could recite all his lines in Spanish. In his earliest film roles in English like ''Grand Prix'', made in 1966, he learned his lines phonetically. This met with limited success and his voice was often dubbed by Paul Frees. By the time he made ''Red Sun'' in 1971 he had become somewhat more proficient in the language and his voice is heard throughout this multinational western. He was always disappointed that he did not have a larger career in the West. His most prominent English-language role was probably playing Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in ''Midway'' (for which he was again dubbed by Frees).

Mifune has been credited as originating the "roving warrior" archetype, which he perfected during his collaboration with Kurosawa. Clint Eastwood was among the first of many American actors to adopt this persona, which he used to great effect in his Western roles, especially the Spaghetti Westerns made with Sergio Leone, where he played a similar "Man with No Name" character like Mifune did in ''Yojimbo''. Mifune may also be credited with originating the Yakuza archetype, with his performance as a mobster in Kurosawa's ''Drunken Angel'' (1948), the first Yakuza film.

Most of the sixteen Kurosawa–Mifune films are considered cinema classics. These include ''Drunken Angel'', ''Stray Dog'', ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''High and Low'', ''Throne of Blood'' (an adaptation of Shakespeare's ''Macbeth''), ''Yojimbo'', and ''Sanjuro''. (See filmography, below)

Mifune and Kurosawa finally parted ways after ''Red Beard''. Several factors contributed to the rift that ended this career-spanning collaboration. Most of Mifune's contemporaries acted in several different movies throughout the year. Since ''Red Beard'' required Mifune to grow a natural beard — one he had to keep for the entirety of the film's two years of shooting — he was unable to act in any other films during the production. This put Mifune and his financially strapped production company deeply into debt, creating friction between him and Kurosawa. Although ''Red Beard'' played to packed houses in Japan and Europe, which helped Mifune recoup some of his losses, the ensuing years held varying outcomes for both Mifune and Kurosawa. After the film's release, the careers of each man took different arcs: Mifune continued to enjoy success with a range of samurai and war-themed films (''Rebellion'', ''Samurai Assassin'', ''The Emperor and a General'', among others). In contrast, Kurosawa's output of films dwindled and drew mixed responses. During this time, Kurosawa apparently attempted suicide. In 1980, Mifune experienced popularity with mainstream American audiences through his role as Lord Toranaga in the television miniseries ''Shogun''. Yet Kurosawa did not rejoice in his estranged friend's success, and publicly made derisive remarks about ''Shogun''.

Later life and death

Early in the 1980s, Mifune founded an acting school, Mifune Geijutsu Gakuin (). The school failed after only three years, due to mismanaged finances.

Mifune received wider audience acclaim in the West than he ever had after playing Toranaga in the 1980 TV miniseries ''Shogun''. However, the series' blunt portrayal of the Japanese shogunate and the greatly abridged version shown in Japan meant that it was not as well received in his homeland. It deepened the rift with Kurosawa, virtually ensuring that they would not work together again.

The relationship between the two men remained ambivalent. While Kurosawa made some very uncharitable comments about Mifune's acting, he also admitted in an interview in ''Interview'' magazine that "All the films that I made with Mifune, without him, they would not exist". He also presented Mifune with the Kawashita award which he himself had won two years prior. They finally made something of a reconciliation in 1993 at the funeral of their friend Ishirō Honda. After making tenuous eye contact, they tearfully embraced one another, ending nearly three decades of mutual avoidance. They never collaborated again, nor did they have a chance to restore their friendship fully. Both died within a year of the other.

In 1992, Mifune began suffering from a serious unknown health problem. It has been variously suggested that he destroyed his health with overwork, suffered a heart attack, or experienced a stroke. For whatever reason, he abruptly retreated from public life and remained largely confined to his home, cared for by his estranged wife Sachiko. When she succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1995, Mifune's physical and mental state began to decline rapidly.

In 1997, he died in Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan, of multiple organ failure at the age of 77.

Honors

Mifune was awarded the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 1986 and the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government in 1993.

Personal quotations

Of Akira Kurosawa, Mifune said, "I am proud of nothing I have done other than with him".

Akira Kurosawa meeting Toshiro Mifune

Kurosawa first encountered Mifune when Toho Studios, the largest film production company in Japan, was conducting a massive talent search, during which hundreds of aspiring actors auditioned before a team of judges. Kurosawa was originally going to skip the event, but showed up when an actress he knew told him of one actor who seemed especially promising. Kurosawa later wrote that he entered the audition to see "a young man reeling around the room in a violent frenzy...it was as frightening as watching a wounded beast trying to break loose. I was transfixed." When an exhausted Mifune finished his scene, he sat down and gave the judges an ominous stare. He promptly lost the competition. Kurosawa, however, had found his muse. "I am a person rarely impressed by actors," he later said. "But in the case of Mifune I was completely overwhelmed."

Filmography

Due to variations in translation from the Japanese and other factors, there are multiple titles to many of Mifune's films (see IMDB link). The titles shown here are the most common titles used in the United States.

1947 ''Snow Trail'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1947 ''These Foolish Times'' - Parts 1 & 2 - directed by Kajiro Yamamoto

1948 ''Drunken Angel'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1949 ''The Quiet Duel'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1949 ''Jakoman and Tetsu'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1949 ''Stray Dog'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1950 ''Escape at Dawn'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1950 ''Conduct Report on Professor Ishinaka'' - Directed by Mikio Naruse

1950 ''Scandal'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1950 ''Engagement Ring'' - directed by Keisuke Kinoshita

1950 ''Rashomon'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1951 ''Beyond Love and Hate'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1951 ''Elegy'' - directed by Kajiro Yamamoto

1951 ''The Idiot'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1951 ''Pirates'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1951 ''Meeting of the Ghost Après-Guerre'' - directed by Kiyoshi Saeki

1951 ''Conclusion of Kojiro Sasaki-Duel at Ganryu Island'' directed by Hiroshi Inagaki - This was the first, but not the last, time that Mifune played Musashi Miyamoto

1951 ''The Life of a Horsetrader'' - directed by Keigo Kimura

1951 ''Who Knows a Woman's Heart'' - directed by Kajiro Yamamoto

1952 ''Vendetta for a Samurai'' - directed by Kazuo Mori

1952 ''Foghorn'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1952 ''The Life of Oharu'' - directed by Kenji Mizoguchi

1952 ''Jewels in our Hearts'' - directed by Yasuke Chiba

1952 ''Swift Current'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1952 ''The Man Who Came to Port'' - directed by Ishirō Honda

1953 ''My Wonderful Yellow Car'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1953 ''The Last Embrace'' - directed by Masahiro Makino

1953 ''Love in a Teacup'' - directed by Yasuke Chiba

1953 ''The Eagle of the Pacific'' - directed by Ishiro Honda

1954 ''Seven Samurai'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1954-56 ''Samurai Trilogy'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

*1954 ''Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto''

*1955 ''Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple''

*1956 ''Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island''

1954 ''The Sound of Waves'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1954 ''The Black Fury'' - directed by Toshio Sugie

1955 ''A Man Among Men'' - directed by Kajiro Yamamoto

1955 ''All Is Well'' - Part 1 & 2 - directed by Toshio Sugie

1955 ''No Time for Tears'' - directed by Seiji Maruyama

1955 ''Record of a Living Being'' aka ''I Live in Fear'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1956 ''Rainy Night Duel'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1956 ''The Underworld'' - directed by Kajiro Yamamoto

1956 ''Settlement of Love'' - directed by Shin Saburi

1956 ''A Wife's Heart'' - directed by Mikio Naruse

1956 ''Scoundrel'' - directed by Nabuo Aoyagi

1956 ''Rebels on the High Seas'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1957 ''Throne of Blood'' aka ''Spider Web Castle'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1957 ''A Man in the Storm'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1957 ''Be Happy, These Two Lovers'' - directed by Ishiro Honda

1957 ''Yagyu Secret Scrolls'' - part 1 - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1957 ''A Dangerous Hero'' - directed by Hideo Suzuki

1957 ''The Lower Depths'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1957 ''Downtown'' - directed by Yasuki Chiba

1958 ''Yagyu Secret Scrolls'' - part 2 - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1958 ''Tokyo Holiday'' - directed by Kajiro Yamamoto

1958 ''Muhomatsu, The Rikshaw Man'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1958 ''The Happy Pilgrimage'' - directed by Yasuki Chiba

1958 ''All About Marriage'' - uncredited cameo - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1958 ''Theater of Life'' - directed by Toshio Sugie

1958 ''The Hidden Fortress'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1959 ''Boss of the Underworld'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1959 ''Samurai Saga'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1959 ''The Saga of the Vagabonds'' - directed by Toshio Sugie

1959 ''Desperado Outpost'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1959 ''The Birth of Japan'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1960 ''The Last Gunfight'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1960 ''The Gambling Samurai'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1960 ''Storm Over the Pacific'' - directed by Shūe Matsubayashi

1960 ''Man Against Man'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1960 ''The Bad Sleep Well'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1960 ''The Masterless 47'' - part 1 - directed by Toshio Sugie

1961 ''The Story of Osaka Castle'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1961 ''The Masterless 47'' - part 2 - directed by Toshio Sugie

1961 ''Yojimbo'' aka ''The Bodyguard'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1961 ''The Youth and his Amulet'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1962 ''Ánimas Trujano'' aka ''The Important Man'' - directed by Ismael Rodríguez

1962 ''Sanjuro'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1962 ''Tatsu'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1962 ''Chushingura: Hana no Maki, Yuki no Maki'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1963 ''Wings over the Pacific'' - directed by Shūe Matsubayashi

1963 ''High and Low'' aka ''Heaven and Hell'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1963 ''Legacy of the 500,000'' - directed by Toshiro Mifune

1963 ''The Great Thief'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1964 ''Whirlwind'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1965 ''Samurai Assassin'' aka ''Samurai'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1965 ''Red Beard'' - directed by Akira Kurosawa

1965 ''Sanshiro Sugata'' - directed by Seiichiro Uchikiro - this is a remake of Kurosawa's films Sanshiro Sugata and Sanshiro Sugata part 2

1965 ''Retreat from Kiska'' - directed by Seiji Maruyama

1965 ''Fort Graveyard'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1966 ''Wild Goemon'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1966 ''The Sword of Doom'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1966 ''The Adventure of Kigan Castle'' - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi

1966 ''The Mad Atlantic'' - directed by Jun Fukuda

1966 ''Grand Prix'' - directed by John Frankenheimer - This was Mifune's first English language film - He was learning English phonetically - It is reported that his voice was used at the premiere - All versions of the film after that are dubbed by Paul Frees, except for the scenes where he is speaking Japanese where his voice is used.

1967 ''Samurai Rebellion'' - directed by Masaki Kobayashi

1967 ''The Longest Day of Japan'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1968 ''The Sands of Kurobe'' - directed by Kei Kumai

1968 ''Admiral Yamamoto'' - directed by Seiji Maruyama

1968 ''Gion Festival'' - directed by Daisuke Itō and Tetsuya Yamanouchi

1968 ''Hell in the Pacific'' - directed by John Boorman - This was filmed with different endings for the U.S. and Japanese releases. Both are available on current video releases.

1969 ''Samurai Banners'' - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki

1969 ''5,000 Kilometers to Glory'' - directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara

1969 ''Battle of the Japan Sea'' - directed by Seiji Maruyama

1969 ''Red Lion'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1969 ''Shinsengumi'' - directed by Tadashi Sawashima

1970 ''Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo'' - directed by Kihachi Okamoto

1970 ''The Ambitious'' - directed by Daisuke Ito

1970 ''Incident at Blood Pass'' - directed by Hiroshi Inigaki

1970 ''The Walking Majo'' - directed by Koji Senno, Nobuaki Shirai and Keith Eric Burt

1970 ''The Militarists'' - directed by Hiromichi Horikawa

1971 ''Red Sun'' - directed by Terence Young - not released in the U.S. until 1972

1975 ''Paper Tiger'' - directed by Ken Annakin

1975 ''Midway'' - directed by Jack Smight

1977 ''Proof of the Man'' - directed by Junya Sato

1977 ''Japanese Godfather: Ambition'' - directed by Sadao Nakajima

1977 ''Shogun's Samurai'' - directed by Kinji Fukasaku

1978 ''Dog Flute'' - directed by Sadao Nakajima

1978 ''Lady Ogin'' - directed by Kei Kajima

1978 ''Japanese Godfather: Conclusion'' - directed by Sadao Nakajima

1978 ''The Fall of Ako Castle'' - directed by Kinji Fukasaku

1978 ''Lord Incognito'' - directed by Tetsuya Yamauchi

1979 ''Winter Kills'' - directed by William Richart

1979 ''The Adventures of Kosuke Kindaichi'' - directed by Nobuhiku Kobayashi

1979 ''Secret Detective Investigation-Net in Big Edo'' - directed by Akinori Matsuo

1979 ''1941'' - directed by Steven Spielberg

1981 ''Bushido Blade'' - directed by Tsugunobu Kotani

1981 ''Port Arthur'' - directed by Toshio Masuda

1981 ''Shogun'' - directed by Jerry London - this was shown on television in the U.S. and as a theatrical version in the rest of the world

1981 ''Inchon!'' - directed by Terence Young

1982 ''The Challenge'' - directed by John Frankenheimer

1983 ''Conquest'' - directed by Sadao Nakajima

1983 ''Theater of Life'' - directed by Sadao Nakajima, Junya Sato and Kinji Fukasaku

1983 ''Battle Anthem'' - directed by Toshio Masuda

1984 ''The miracle of Joe the Petrel'' - directed by Toshiya Fujita

1985 ''Legend of the Holy Woman'' - directed by Toru Murakawa

1986 ''Song of Genkai Tsurezure'' - directed by Masanobu Deme

1987 ''Shatterer'' - directed by Tonino Valerii

1987 ''Tora-san Goes North'' - directed by Yoji Yamada

1987 ''Princess from the Moon'' - directed by Kon Ichikawa

1989 ''Demons in Spring'' - directed by Akira Kobayashi

1989 ''Death of a Tea Master'' - directed by Kei Kumai

1989 ''cf Girl'' - directed by Izo Hashimoto

1991 ''Strawberry Road'' - directed by Koreyoshi Kurihara

1992 ''Helmet'' - directed by Gordon Hessler

1992 ''Shadow of the Wolf'' - directed by Jacques Dorfman

1994 ''Picture Bride'' - directed by Kayo Hatta

1995 ''Deep River'' - directed by Kei Kumai

Television appearances

All shows aired in Japan except for ''Shogun'' which aired in the U.S.

1968 ''The Masterless Samurai'' - 6 one hour episodes

1971 ''Daichūshingura'' - 52 one hour episodes

1972 ''Ronin of the Wilderness'' - 104 one hour episodes

1973 ''Yojimbo of the Wilderness'' - 5 one hour episodes

1976 ''The Sword, The Wind and the Lullaby'' - 27 one hour episodes

1977 ''Ronin in a Lawless Town'' - 23 one hour episodes

1978 ''The Spy Appears'' - 5 one hour episodes

1978 ''An Eagle in Edo'' - 38 one hour episodes

1979 ''Hideout in a Suite'' - 11 one hour episodes

1980 ''Shogun'' - parts 1 & 5 159 minutes parts 2-4 93 minutes

1981 ''Sekigahara'' - one seven hour episode

1981 ''Bungo's Detective Notes'' - 3 one hour episodes

1981 ''The Ten Battles of Shingo'' - 2 one hour episodes

1981 ''My Daughter! Fly on the Wings of Love and Tears'' - 1 two hour episode

1981 ''The Crescent Shaped Wilderness'' - 1 two hour episode

1982 ''The Ronin's Path'' - 5 two hour episodes

1982 ''The Happy Yellow Handkerchief'' - 1 two hour episode

1983 ''The Brave Man Says Little'' - 1 eight hour episode

1983 ''The Ronin's Path vol. 5'' - 1 one hour episode

1983 ''Ronin-Secret of the Wilderness Valley'' - 1 one hour episode

1984 ''Soshi Okita, Burning Corpse of a Sword Master'' - 1 one hour episode

1984 ''The Burning Mountain River'' - 51 episodes

References

Further reading

External links

English:

Toshirō Mifune: Biographical details and selected filmography at the British Film Institute

Japanese: - Toshirō Mifune Official Website

Toshirō Mifune at the Japanese Movie Database

Category:1920 births Category:1997 deaths Category:Japanese expatriates in China Category:Japanese film actors Category:Japanese Methodists Category:Japanese people from Manchukuo Category:Japanese military personnel of World War II Category:Japanese television actors Category:Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure Category:People from Dalian

az:Tosiro Mifune bn:তোশিরো মিফুনে bg:Тоширо Мифуне ca:Toshirō Mifune cs:Toširó Mifune da:Toshirō Mifune de:Toshirō Mifune es:Toshirō Mifune fr:Toshirō Mifune gl:Toshiro Mifune ko:미후네 도시로 id:Toshiro Mifune it:Toshirō Mifune he:טושירו מיפונה ka:მიფუნე ტოსირო la:Toshirō Mifune hu:Mifune Tosiró ml:തൊഷീരൊ മിഫൂൻ nl:Toshiro Mifune ja:三船敏郎 no:Toshiro Mifune pl:Toshirō Mifune pt:Toshiro Mifune ru:Мифунэ, Тосиро sh:Toširo Mifune simple:Toshirō Mifune sk:Toširo Mifune sl:Toširo Mifune sr:Тоширо Мифуне fi:Toshirō Mifune sv:Toshiro Mifune tr:Toşiro Mifune zh:三船敏郎

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
name	Ryuichi Sakamoto坂本龍一
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
born	January 17, 1952Tokyo, Japan
instrument	Keyboard, piano
genre	Classical, Electronic (dance, electro, electronica, house, progressive, techno), Experimental (avant‑garde, rock), J‑pop, New Wave, Soundtrack, Synthpop, World
occupation	Musician, composer, record producer, actor
years active	1977–present
label	Columbia Music Entertainment (1978–1979)Alfa Records (1979–1983)MIDI (1984–1986)Sony Music Entertainment Japan (1986–1987)EMI (1989–1991,1993)For Life Records (1994–1997)Warner Music (1998–2006)commmons (2006–present)A&M; RecordsRestless Records
associated acts	Yellow Magic Orchestra, Akiko Yano, Chris Mosdell, Sandii, Japan, David Sylvian, Kiyoshiro Imawano, Michael Jackson, Mari Iijima, David Bowie, Youssou N'Dour, Madonna, Talvin Singh, Sketch Show }}

is a Japanese musician, composer, record producer, writer, singer, and actor, based in Tokyo and New York. He began his career in 1978 as a member of the pioneering electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), where he played the keyboards and occasionally sang the vocals. The band was an international success, with worldwide hits such as "Computer Game / Firecracker" (1978) and "Behind the Mask" (1978), the latter written and sung by Sakamoto. At around the same time, he began pursuing a solo career in pop music, debuting with an experimental electronic fusion album ''The Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto'' (1978), and later released the pioneering electro music album ''B-2 Unit'' (1980), which included the electro classic "Riot in Lagos". After YMO disbanded in 1983, he produced more hit solo records, including collaborations with various international artists, through to the 1990s.

He began acting and film composing with ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence'' (1983), which he starred in and composed the score for; the song "Forbidden Colours" which he composed for it became a worldwide hit and he won a BAFTA Award for the film's score. He later won an Academy Award and Grammy Award for scoring ''The Last Emperor'' (1987), and has also won two Golden Globe Awards for his work as a film composer. In addition, he also composed music for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony. In the early 1990s, he briefly reunited with YMO, playing an instrumental role in the techno and acid house movements of the era, before parting ways again shortly afterwards. His 1999 musical composition "Energy Flow", also known as the alternative title of the single disc ''Ura BTTB'', was the first number-one instrumental single in Japan's Oricon charts history. He has also occasionally worked on anime and video games, as a composer as well as a scenario writer. In the late 2000s, he reunited once again with YMO, while continuing to compose film music. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions.

Biography

Early years and Yellow Magic Orchestra

Sakamoto entered the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1970, earning a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music. He studied ethnomusicology there with the intention of becoming a researcher in the field, due to his interest in various world music traditions, particularly the Japanese (especially Okinawan), Indian and African musical traditions. He was also trained in classical music and began experimenting with the electronic music equipment available at the university, including synthesizers such as the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. One of Sakamoto's classical influences was Claude Debussy, who he described as his "hero" and stated that “Asian music heavily influenced Debussy, and Debussy heavily influenced me. So, the music goes around the world and comes full circle.”

After working as a session musician with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi in 1977, the trio formed the internationally successful electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) in 1978. Known for their seminal influence on electronic music, the group helped pioneer electronic genres such as electropop/technopop, synthpop, cyberpunk music, ambient house, and electronica. The group's work has had a lasting influence across genres ranging from hip hop and techno to acid house and general melodic music.

Sakamoto was the songwriter and composer for a number of the band's hit songs, including "Yellow Magic (Tong Poo)" (1978), "Technopolis" (1979), "Nice Age" (1980), "Ongaku" (1983), and "You've Got to Help Yourself" (1983), while playing the keyboards for many of their other songs, including international hits such as "Computer Game / Firecracker" (1978) and "Rydeen" (1979), and singing in several songs such as "Kimi ni Mune Kyun" (1983). He also wrote "Technopolis" (1979), which contributed to the development of techno, and the international hit "Behind the Mask" (1978), a synthpop song for which he sang the vocals through a vocoder and which would later be covered by a number of international artists, including Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton.

Solo career

Sakamoto released his first solo album in mid-1978, ''Thousand Knives of Ryūichi Sakamoto'', with the help of Hideki Matsutake, who would later be the "fourth member" of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and with the band's founding member Haruomi Hosono also contributing to the song "Thousand Knives". The album experimented with different styles, such as "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia" fusing electronic music with traditional Japanese music, while "Grasshoppers" was a more minimalistic piano song. The album was recorded from April to July in 1978 using a variety of electronic equipment, including various synthesizers such as the KORG PS-3100 polyphonic synthesizer, Oberheim Eight-Voice, Moog III-C, Polymoog, Minimoog, and Micromoog, as well as the Korg VC-10 vocoder, KORG SQ-10 analog sequencer, and Syn-Drums electronic drum kit. It was also the earliest known record to utilize the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 Microcomposer music sequencer, which was programmed by Matsutake. Sakamoto would later remix his song "Thousand Knives" using the Roland TR-808 drum machine as "1000 Knives" for his band's album ''BGM'' (1981). His song "Grasshoppers" would also later be sampled in Ghostface Killah's "Baby" (2009).

In 1980, he released the solo album ''B-2 Unit'', which is considered to be his "edgiest" record. It is known for the electronic classic "Riot in Lagos", which is considered an early example of electro music (electro-funk), for having anticipated the beats and sounds of electro. Ryuichi Sakamoto, particularly his song "Riot in Lagos", had an influence on early electo and hip hop artists such as Afrika Bambaata, and was cited by Kurtis Mantronik as a major influence on his electro hip hop group Mantronix. The song was later included in Playgroup's compilation album ''Kings of Electro'' (2007), alongside later electro classics such as Hashim's "Al-Nafyish" (1983). According to ''Dusted Magazine'', Sakamoto's use of squelching bounce sounds and mechanical beats was later incorporated in early electro and hip hop music productions such as “Message II (Survival)” (1982) by Melle Mel and Duke Bootee, “Magic’s Wand” (1982) by Whodini and Thomas Dolby, Twilight 22’s “Electric Kingdom” (1983), and Kurt Mantronik's ''Mantronix: The Album'' (1985). The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was listed by ''The Guardian'' in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music.

Also in 1980, Sakamoto released the single "War Head / Lexington Queen", an experimental synthpop and electro record. That same year, Sakamoto began a long-standing collaboration with David Sylvian when he co-wrote and performed on the Japan track "Taking Islands In Africa". In 1982, Sakamoto worked on another collaboration with Sylvian, a single entitled "Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music". That same year, his collaboration with Kiyoshiro Imawano, "Ikenai Rouge Magic", topped the Oricon singles chart. In 1983, he produced Mari Iijima's debut album ''Rose''.

Following the disbanding of Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1983, Sakamoto released a number of solo albums during the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums boasted a roster of collaborators that included David Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop, among others. Sakamoto would alternate between exploring a variety of musical styles, ideas, and genres – captured most notably in his groundbreaking 1983 album ''Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia'' – and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement in ''Futurista'' (1986). At times, Sakamoto would also present varying interpretations of technology's intersection with music: He would present some pieces, such as "Replica", with Kraftwerkian rigidity and order, while he would infuse humanity and humor into others – "Broadway Boogie Woogie", for example, liberally lifts samples from Ridley Scott's film ''Blade Runner'' and pairs them with a raucous, sax-driven techno-pop backdrop.

As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences, and collaborators followed suit. ''Beauty'' (1989) boasted a tracklist that combined pop and traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, yet featured guest appearances by Jill Jones, Brian Wilson, and Robbie Robertson. ''Heartbeat'' (1991) and ''Sweet Revenge'' (1994), meanwhile, looked to international horizons and worked with a global range of artists such as Roddy Frame, Dee Dee Brave, Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian, and Ingrid Chavez. 1996 saw the appearance of two notable albums: ''Smoochy'', which fused pop and electronica with bossa nova and other South American forms, and ''1996'', which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, accompanied with violin and cello.

Following ''1996'', Sakamoto simultaneously delved into the classical and "post-techno" genres with ''Discord'' (1998), an hour-long orchestral work in four parts. Here he evoked the melodic qualities of his film score work, imbued with the influence of 20th century classical composers and spoken word. The Sony Classical release also featured an interactive CD-ROM component and website that complemented the work. Shortly thereafter, the Ninja Tune record label released a series of remixes of various sections, produced by a number of prominent electronica artists, including Amon Tobin, Talvin Singh and DJ Spooky.

The next album, ''BTTB'' (1998) – an acronym for "Back to the Basics" – was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated ''Discord''. The album comprised a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a major hit in Japan) and a frenetic, four-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo." On the ''BTTB'' U.S. tour, he opened the show performing a brief avant-garde DJ set under the stage name DJ Lovegroove.

1999 saw the long-awaited release of Sakamoto's "opera" ''LIFE''. It premiered with seven sold-out performances in Tokyo and Osaka. This ambitious multi-genre multi-media project featured contributions by over 100 performers, including Pina Bausch, Bernardo Bertolucci, Josep Carreras, His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie.

Sakamoto later teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his ''1996'' trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, ''Casa'' (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of New York Times's top albums of 2002.

Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release ''Vrioon'', an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They later released ''Insen'' (2005) – while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist.

Meanwhile, Sakamoto continues to craft music to suit any context: In 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800. A recent reunion with YMO pals Hosono and Takahashi also caused a stir in the Japanese press. They released a single "Rescue" in 2007 and a DVD "HAS/YMO" in 2008. Sakamoto's latest album, ''Out Of Noise'', was released on March 4, 2009 in Japan. In July 2009 Sakamoto was honored as Officier of Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the French Embassy in Tokyo.

Film composer and actor

Moviegoers may recognize Sakamoto primarily through his score work on two films: Nagisa Oshima's ''Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence'' (1983), including the title theme and the duet "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian, and Bernardo Bertolucci's ''The Last Emperor'' (1987), the latter of which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su. In that same year he composed the score to the cult-classic anime film ''Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise''.

Frequent collaborator David Sylvian contributed lead vocals to "Forbidden Colours" – the main theme to ''Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence'' – which became a minor hit. Sixteen years later, the piece resurfaced as a popular dance track called "Heart of Asia" (by the group Watergate).

Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's ''Tacones lejanos (High Heels)'' (1991), Bertolucci's ''The Little Buddha'' (1993), Oliver Stone's ''Wild Palms'' (1993), John Maybury's ''Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon'' (1998), Brian De Palma's ''Snake Eyes'' (1998) and ''Femme Fatale'' (2002), Oshima's ''Gohatto'' (1999), and Kiran Rao's ''Dhobi Ghat'' (2011). He also composed the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.

Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from ''Beauty'') and "Bibo No Aozora" (from ''1996'') provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's ''Japanese Story'' (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's ''Babel'' (2006), respectively.

Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in ''Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence'', alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played roles in ''The Last Emperor'' ( as Masahiko Amakasu) and Madonna's "Rain" music video.

Personal life

Sakamoto has been married twice. His first marriage took place in 1972 but ended in divorce two years later. Sakamoto has a daughter from this relationship. Sakamoto then married popular Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano in 1982, having collaborated with her on some of her recordings. Yano was also a regular touring member of Yellow Magic Orchestra. They finally divorced in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately. They had one daughter, J-pop singer Miu Sakamoto.

In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published ''Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni'', a collection of essays and conversations.

He is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing that it is antiquated in the information age. He argued that in "the last 100 years, only a few organisations have dominated the music world and ripped off both fans and creators" and that "with the internet we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music." He is a member of anti-nuclear organization Stop Rokkasho and demand the abolition of Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant.

Awards

Ryuichi Sakamoto has won a number of awards for his work as a film composer, beginning with his score for ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence'' (1983) winning him the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. His greatest award success was for scoring ''The Last Emperor'' (1987), which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score, Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, as well as a BAFTA nomination.

His score for ''The Sheltering Sky'' (1990) later won him his second Golden Globe Award, and his score for ''Little Buddha'' (1993) received another Grammy Award nomination. In 1997, his collaboration with Toshio Iwai, ''Music Plays Images X Images Play Music'', was awarded the Golden Nica, the grand prize of the Prix Ars Electronica competition. He also contributed to the Academy Award winning soundtrack for ''Babel'' (2006) with several pieces of music, including the "Bibo no Aozora" closing theme. In 2009, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France's Ministry of Culture for his musical contributions.

The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.

Selected discography

Original studio albums

Several albums exist in 2 versions, the original Japanese version and the international version, each having differences in tracklistings.

''Thousand Knives'' (1978)

''Tokyo Joe'' (1978, with Kazumi Watanabe, more a compilation than a proper album, featuring an odd mix of tracks from ''Thousand Knives'' and from the eponymous album by Watanabe's short lived Kylyn band)

''Summer Nerves'' (1979, with The Kakutogi Session)

''B2-Unit'' (1980)

''Left-Handed Dream'' (1981) (Tracklistings differ between Japanese and international issues)

''The Arrangement'' (1981, with Robin Scott) (originally released as an EP, later expended into a full album containing the complete sessions)

''The End of Asia'' (1982, with Danceries)

''Ongakuzukan'' (1984) with the single ''Replica'' (the international release from 1986 is titled ''Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia'', and has a different tracklisting)

''Esperanto'' (1985)

''Futurista'' (1986)

''Coda'' (1986)

''Neo Geo'' (1987)

''Playing the Orchestra'' (1989)

''Undo #1'' (1989)

''Beauty'' (1989)

''Heartbeat'' (1991)

''Benedict Beauty'' (1992)

''Soundbytes'' (1994, compilation of tracks recorded 1981–1986)

''Sweet Revenge'' (1994)

''Smoochy'' (1995)

''1996'' (1996)

''Discord'' (1997)

''BTTB'' (1999)

''Cinemage'' (1999)

''Intimate'' (1999, with Keizo Inoue)

''L I F E'' (2000)

''In The Lobby''

''Comica'' (2002)

''Elephantism'' (2002)

''Moto.tronic'' (2003, Compilation of tracks recorded between 1983 & 2003)

''Love'' (2003)

''Chasm'' (2004)

''/04'' (2004)

''/05'' (2005)

''Cantus omnibus unus; for mixed or equal choir'' (2005)

''Bricolages'' (2006)

''Out of Noise'' (2009)

''Playing the Piano'' (2009)

Original soundtracks and event scores

''Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence'' (1983)

''Works I – CM'' (released in 2002, featuring commissioned works from 1981–1984)

''Koneko Monogatari (A Kitten's Story)'' (1986)

''Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise'' (''Ôritsu uchûgun Oneamisu no tsubasa'') (1987)

''The Last Emperor'' (1987) (Won Oscar, Grammy, BAFTA)

''Fantasy of Light and Life'' (1989)

''Black Rain'' (1989) – featuring his song "Laserman"

''Tengai Makyo Ziria'' (1989) – video game

''The Sheltering Sky'' (1990)

''The Handmaid's Tale (1990)

''Peachboy (Momotaro)''

''High Heels'' (1992)

''Wuthering Heights'' (1992)

"El Mar Mediterrani" (composition for Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony) (1992)

''Topazu / Tokyo Decadence'' (1992)

''Wild Palms'' (1993)

''Little Buddha'' (1993)

''Music for Yohji Yamamoto Collection 1995''

''Stalker'' (1997)

''Snake Eyes'' (1998)

''Love is the devil'' (1998)

DreamCast (1998) – start-up sound for video game console

''Gohatto'' (1999)

''Poppoya ''(Main theme) (1999)''

''L.O.L.: Lack of Love'' – Dreamcast video game (2000), for which he was also the scenario writer

''Zero Landmine'' (2001)

''Minha Vida Como Un Filme'' (2002)

''Femme Fatale'' (2002)

''Century Of Reform'' (2002)

''Derrida'' (2002)

''Japanese Story'' (2003) – featuring "Chinsagu No Hana" (from ''Beauty'')

''Seven Samurai 20XX'' – PlayStation 2 video game (2004)

''Shining Boy & Little Randy'' (2005)

''Tony Takitani'' (2005)

''Babel'' (2006) – featuring "Bibo No Aozora" (from ''1996'')

''Dawn of Mana'' (2006) – PlayStation 2 video game

''Silk'' (2007)

''Indigo'' (Short-Film) (2008)

''Dhobi Ghat'' (India) (2011)

With Morelenbaum² (Paula Morelenbaum and Jaques Morelenbaum)

''Casa'' (2001)

''A Day in New York'' (2003)

With Carsten Nicolai, as alva noto + ryuichi sakamoto

''Vrioon'' (CD, 2002)

''Insen'' (CD, 2005)

''Revep'' (CD EP, 2006)

''Insen Live'' (DVD, 2006)

''Utp_'' (CD+DVD, 2008, with Ensemble Modern)

''Summvs'' (CD, 2011)

With Fennesz

''Sala Santa Cecilia'' (2005, live EP)

''Cendre'' (2007)

Other collaborations

Geisha Girls

Japan: ''Gentlemen Take Polaroids'' (1980, features Ryuichi Sakamoto as co-writer of the track ''Taking Islands In Africa'')

Mari Iijima: ''Rose'' (1983, produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto)

David Sylvian: ''Brilliant Trees'' (1984, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano/synthesizers on 3 tracks)

David Sylvian: ''Alchemy: An Index of Possibilities'' (1985, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano and strings on 1 track)

Thomas Dolby: ''Fieldwork'' (1985, written by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Thomas Dolby, featuring Thomas Dolby on vocals)

David Sylvian: ''Secrets of the Beehive'' (1987, featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto on all 10 tracks)

David van Tieghem: ''Safety in Numbers'' (1989, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on keyboards on 2 tracks)

Hector Zazou: ''Sahara Blue'' (1992, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano on 4 tracks)

Hector Zazou: ''Strong Currents'' (2003, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano)

Aztec Camera: ''Dreamland'' (1993, produced with Roddy Frame)

Holly Johnson: ''Love And Hate'' (1994), features Johnson on vocals

Arto Lindsay: ''O Corpo Sutil'' (1996, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on 4 tracks)

Red Hot + Rio, produced by the Red Hot Organization: ''É Preciso Perdoar'' (1996, Ryuichi Sakamoto performs keyboards for the duet sang by Cesária Évora and Caetano Veloso)

David Sylvian: ''Dead Bees on a Cake'' (1999, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on 7 tracks)

David Sylvian: ''Everything and Nothing'' (2000, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on 9 tracks)

Senor Coconut: ''Yellow Fever!'' (2006, features Ryuichi Sakamoto on 1 track)

Willits + Sakamoto: ''Ocean Fire'' (2007, with Christopher Willits)

Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses: ''Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses'' (features Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano and backing vocals)

Rodrigo Leão: "Cinema" (features Ryuichi Sakamoto on 1 track)

Commmons

In 2006, Sakamoto, with avex Group's help, founded , a record label promising change in the way music should be. For him, Commmons is not his label, but is a platform for all aspiring artists to join as equal collaborators and share for benefits of the music industry. The word Commmons has three M's because the 3rd M stands for music.

See also

Yellow Magic Orchestra

Stop Rokkasho

This Is The One

Avex Group

*Commmons

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

References

External links

The official Ryūichi Sakamoto web site

Commmons – Sakamoto's record label

Raster-Noton site

Fan Website

Ustream – Live Channel for RYUICHI SAKAMOTO NORTH AMERICAN TOUR 2010

Classical Archives Interview

Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:People from Tokyo Category:Japanese composers Category:Japanese film score composers Category:Japanese dance musicians Category:Japanese electronic musicians Category:Japanese record producers Category:Japanese anti–nuclear power activists Category:Anime composers Category:Electro musicians Category:House musicians Category:Techno musicians Category:Video game musicians Category:Intellectual property activism Category:20th-century classical composers Category:21st-century classical composers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners Category:Tokyo University of the Arts alumni Category:Japanese keyboardists Category:Avex Group

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