A short life of the author
Akira Kurosawa (23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional painter who is universally regarded as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema — and who was also, in a literary sense, one of the most important screenwriters of the twentieth century. His published screenplays are works of literature in their own right: detailed, novelistic, and written with a narrative authority that goes far beyond standard screenplay format. His autobiography, Something Like an Autobiography (1982), is one of the finest memoirs any filmmaker has produced. His films adapted Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Gorky, Dashiell Hammett, and Evan Hunter, and his influence on Western cinema — on George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Sergio Leone, among many others — is incalculable.
Life and Career
Kurosawa was born in Tokyo, the youngest of eight children. His father was a former military officer who ran a school for physical education; his family was of samurai descent. He studied painting in his youth and was deeply influenced by Western art and literature — an unusual orientation for a Japanese artist of his generation. He entered the Japanese film industry in 1936 as an assistant director at PCL Studios (later Toho) and directed his first film, Sanshiro Sugata, in 1943.
His international breakthrough came with Rashomon (1950), which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and introduced Japanese cinema to Western audiences. The film’s narrative structure — the same event told from four contradictory perspectives, each equally plausible — was revolutionary and gave English the word “Rashomon effect” to describe situations where witnesses offer fundamentally incompatible accounts of the same event.
Over the next fifteen years, Kurosawa produced a body of work that stands with any director’s: Ikiru (1952), a devastating film about a dying bureaucrat who searches for meaning; Seven Samurai (1954), the greatest action film ever made and a foundational influence on the Western and action genres worldwide; Throne of Blood (1957), a Shakespeare adaptation (Macbeth) set in feudal Japan; The Hidden Fortress (1958), which directly inspired Star Wars; Yojimbo (1961), which Sergio Leone remade as A Fistful of Dollars; High and Low (1963), a police procedural of extraordinary moral complexity; and Red Beard (1965), an epic of humanist medicine.
After Red Beard, Kurosawa’s career entered a difficult period. He lost control of the production of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), attempted suicide in 1971, and struggled to finance projects in Japan. He was rescued by his international admirers: George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola helped finance Kagemusha (1980), which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and restored his reputation. Ran (1985) — his adaptation of King Lear set in feudal Japan — is one of the supreme achievements of world cinema: vast, tragic, visually overwhelming, and emotionally shattering.
His late films — Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991), and Madadayo (1993) — are smaller and more personal. He died in 1998, at eighty-eight.
Written Work
Kurosawa’s screenplays are unusually literary. He wrote or co-wrote virtually all of his films, and his scripts are notable for their detailed descriptions of setting, weather, character psychology, and physical action. The published screenplays — particularly Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Rashomon, and Ran — read as compelling narratives independent of the films.
Something Like an Autobiography (Gama no Abura, 1982) — the title translates literally as “Toad Oil,” a reference to a Japanese folk remedy — covers Kurosawa’s life up to the success of Rashomon. The book is modest, precise, and deeply informative about his artistic development. He describes his childhood, his discovery of cinema, his apprenticeship under director Kajiro Yamamoto, and his early creative struggles. The book deliberately stops before his period of international fame — Kurosawa explained that he could not be objective about events too recent.
His screenplays have been published in both Japanese and English in various editions, most notably in the two-volume collection The Complete Works of Akira Kurosawa (published by Kinema Junpo in Japan) and in English translations by Donald Richie and others.
Influence
Kurosawa’s influence on Western cinema is arguably greater than that of any other non-English-language filmmaker. Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and influenced every subsequent action ensemble film. The Hidden Fortress directly inspired Star Wars (George Lucas has acknowledged this repeatedly). Yojimbo became A Fistful of Dollars and through Leone influenced the entire spaghetti Western genre. Rashomon’s narrative structure has been imitated thousands of times.
Collecting Kurosawa
Something Like an Autobiography (1982, Knopf, translated by Audie E. Bock) in first English edition brings $40–$100 in dust jacket. The Japanese first edition brings $80–$200. Published screenplays in English translation bring $20–$50. Kurosawa’s original paintings and storyboards — he painted detailed storyboards for his later films — are museum-level rarities that bring thousands at auction. Signed copies of any of his books are extremely valuable.