The Life of Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) directed 30 films during a career that lasted over 50 years. He also worked as a producer, a screen writer, and in his early life, as an assistant director. Kurosawa's films are powerful and memorable, and his influence is lasting.

During the first decades of his career, Kurosawa's films were made at Japanese studios, mainly in Tokyo. His work became a model for various Western film makers, especially Sergio Leone of Italy who adapted Kurosawa's plots set in Samurai Japan into plots set in the US West -- the so-called "spaghetti westerns." Later in life, Kurosawa worked with American directors in Hollywood, particularly with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who had both acknowldged his influence on their work.

Early Life

Reading Kurosawa's memoir, titled Something Like an Autobiography, which was published in 1983, is quite fascinating, both as an account of history and of a remarkable career. The account begins with his childhood and schooldays, and details his career up until 1950. That is to say, he covers only the initial part of his career: the part before his greatest fame and recognition.

Kurosawa's memories of the 1920s, and the attitudes of his father, who came from an old Samurai family, are quite interesting. He remembered events like the great Tokyo earthquake and resulting fire in 1923. He also described how his father took him often to see silent films, which in Japan were narrated by professional story tellers so that audiences would better understand them. His brother later worked in such a role. Kurosawa describes vaguely his political activism in the 1930s, but seems to avoid any detailed political discussions.

Very little is said about the militarization that took place in his early adulthood in Japan or about the prelude and outbreak of World War II. Although he seems to have been engaged with a political organization, he explains very little about that. After 1940, Kurosawa offers almost no detail about his personal life. He mentions his marriage to an actress who had a starring role in one of his films, and mentions that they had a child, but he reveals almost nothing else about his family.

In 1941, Kurosawa notes that he was exempted from military service, and spent the years of the war making commercial films at the studio where he had started a few years earlier. He seems totally absorbed in describing the competition and acrimony between his studio and a rival, not the upheavals that must have been taking place all around him. His reaction to the wartime conditions had little more than a description of his utter detestation and resentment of the censors that judged every film. Almost as an afterthought he wrote:

"I offered no resistance to Japan's militarism. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I did not have the courage to resist in any positive way, and I only got by, ingratiating myself when necessary and otherwise evading censure. I am ashamed of this but I must be honest about it." (p. 145)

Having read about the extreme suffering of the Japanese people during and after the war, I can’t help but feel that this memoir isn’t telling us everything. 

Kurosawa the Great Film Artist 

Kurosawa began working as an assistant film director and script writer in the late 1930s. In his memoir, he gives details of his contribution to each of his films from 1938 through 1950, He describes his innovations in film-making, and explains how he learned from other directors, how he developed his own style and methods of working, how he identified the great actor Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997), how he worked with technical staff, and how his films were received. I have seen very few of these early films, as in fact, Kurosawa is best known for his work that followed his first international success with Rashomon.

When it came to Kurosawa's account of his methods and accomplishments in film-making, I was particularly impressed by the way he combined Western film ideas with the conventions, visual details, and plots of traditional Japanese theater, particularly Noh drama. I was interested in his use of Japanese literary works as the basis of his scripts. For example, Rashomon, which he made in 1950, was based on the story by author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa titled "In a Grove," which was published in 1921. Rashomon was the first of Kurosawa's films to become famous in Europe and the US, when it won the Golden Lion award at the festival in Venice, Italy.

I first encountered Kurosaawa's work when I attended various film series that were formerly common on university campuses before the availability of DVDs and streaming. A few of them were shown in Berkeley when I was a student there in the 1960s. Later, I saw many of the films at an ongoing Japanese film series that ran for many years at the University of Michigan. As far as I can find out, the series ran from 1954 until 2018. Kurosawa's status as a creative giant of cinema art has never declined. Several of his most acclaimed films are available on streaming now, and I hope to watch or re-watch some of them, including Rashomon.

Review © 2023 mae sander

Update: The Guardian published an article on Rashomon on August 15: "Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa’s truly daring film is still electrifying -- Famously telling four contradictory accounts of the same event – a samurai is dead – Kurosawa’s unsettling movie influenced countless productions that came after"