68 Fun Facts About Akira Kurosawa

Through the ruins of which 1923 disaster did Kurosawa's older brother lead him at 13, insisting he look?

The Great Kantō earthquake: when Akira turned away from the bodies, Heigo scolded him to look carefully, on the principle that a fear faced directly loses its hold.

What nickname did the perfectionist Kurosawa earn in Japan?

The Emperor: he would halt a shoot until every detail was right, and Seven Samurai became the most expensive Japanese film made up to that time.

What was Kurosawa's 1943 directorial debut, a judo story adapted from a Tsuneo Tomita novel?

Sanshiro Sugata: Kurosawa pounced on the novel as soon as it was published and pressed Toho to buy the film rights so that he could direct it.

Which famous director's intervention got Kurosawa's debut past Japan's wartime censors?

Yasujirō Ozu championed the film as a real artistic achievement when the censors objected that it was too 'British-American' for wartime Japan.

What kind of character does Toshiro Mifune play in the postwar Tokyo drama Drunken Angel, his first Kurosawa film?

A young gangster: Kurosawa later admitted he struggled to stop Mifune's performance from taking the film away from its real hero, an alcoholic doctor.

Which prize did Rashomon unexpectedly win at the 1951 Venice Film Festival?

The Golden Lion, Venice's top prize, went to Rashomon in 1951; Kurosawa had not even known the film was entered, and the win opened Western cinemas to Japanese films.

Who got Rashomon entered at Venice without Kurosawa's knowledge?

An Italian distributor's agent, Giuliana Stramigioli of Italiafilm, had seen and admired Rashomon and pressed a reluctant Daiei studio to send it to Venice.

Rashomon's murder-from-four-viewpoints plot comes from which writer's short story 'In a Grove'?

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's 'In a Grove' supplied the clashing testimonies; Kurosawa took only the film's title and its framing scenes from a second story of his.

What taboo did Kurosawa and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa break while shooting Rashomon in the forest?

Pointing the camera at the sun was a taboo of the day; Miyagawa also used mirrors to bounce sunlight onto the actors in the forest shade.

Under what structure do the woodcutter, the monk and the commoner shelter from the rain in Rashomon?

A ruined city gate, old Kyoto's Rashōmon, gives the film its name; the downpour over it was tinted with black ink because plain water did not show up on film.

Ikiru (1952) was inspired by a novella by which Russian author?

Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich inspired Ikiru, in which Tokyo bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe, dying of stomach cancer, pushes a children's playground through city hall.

Which member of Kurosawa's regular troupe plays the dying bureaucrat Watanabe in Ikiru?

Takashi Shimura's Watanabe dies partway through the film; the rest is told in flashbacks at his wake, as colleagues puzzle over what changed him.

In Ikiru's most famous scene, Watanabe sits on a swing in the snow singing which song?

'Gondola no Uta' (1915) urges maidens to fall in love while life is brief; Watanabe first sings it in a nightclub, and the whole room falls silent.

Who does Kambei say has really won at the end of Seven Samurai?

The farmers: watching them sing as they plant rice beside the graves of his fallen comrades, Kambei says the hired swords have been defeated once again.

Where did Kurosawa take his two co-writers for 45 days to write Seven Samurai?

A secluded inn in the resort town of Atami: each man wrote the same scene alone, the best ideas were combined, and Hideo Oguni acted as referee.

Which Pixar film have critics likened to Seven Samurai, with outsiders recruited to fight off raiders?

A Bug's Life: the ant Flik goes looking for tough warriors to see off the grasshoppers, but the fighters he brings home turn out to be out-of-work circus performers.

Throne of Blood (1957) transplants which Shakespeare play to feudal Japan?

Macbeth becomes the samurai Washizu; Kurosawa built the castle set high on Mount Fuji and waited there for days with his crew for fog to roll over the slopes.

The stylised acting in Throne of Blood draws heavily on which traditional Japanese theatre?

Noh runs through the whole film: Kurosawa had his two leads model their expressions on its masks, and the flute-and-drum score comes from the same theatre.

The Lower Depths (1957) adapts a play by which Russian writer, relocated to Edo-period Japan?

Maxim Gorky's 1902 play keeps its stage shape on film: Kurosawa confined the action to two sets, the inside and the outside of one run-down tenement.

Kurosawa relocated Dostoevsky's The Idiot from Russia to which part of Japan?

Kurosawa set The Idiot (1951) in snowbound Sapporo, Hokkaido; Shochiku cut his 265-minute version to 166 minutes, and the full cut no longer exists.

Which film series did its creator say drew on Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress for its two bickering sidekicks?

Star Wars: its creator has said the two squabbling peasants became the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO, and his first outline stayed closer still to Kurosawa's plot.

What does the title of Kurosawa's 1961 samurai film Yojimbo mean in English?

Bodyguard: both of the town's rival bosses want to hire the rōnin as theirs, and he sells his sword to each in turn so that the two gangs destroy one another.

What does the wandering rōnin in Yojimbo look at when he invents his surname?

A mulberry field: he calls himself Kuwabatake, 'mulberry field', and adds a first name meaning thirty-year-old, though he admits he is nearer forty.

Which Sergio Leone film was a virtual scene-by-scene remake of Kurosawa's Yojimbo, prompting a successful Toho lawsuit?

A Fistful of Dollars drew a letter from Kurosawa to Leone calling it 'a very fine film, but it is my film'; Toho sued, and Leone's side settled out of court.

High and Low (1963) was adapted from King's Ransom, an 87th Precinct novel written under which pseudonym?

Ed McBain was Evan Hunter's pen name; novel and film turn on one dilemma, a rich man forced to choose between the deal of his life and a kidnapped child's ransom.

What is the single splash of colour in the otherwise black-and-white High and Low?

A plume of pink smoke rises when the kidnapper burns the ransom briefcases, which had been fitted with capsules for exactly that, and it leads the police to him.

Which of his films did Kurosawa make in 1965 as his last collaboration with Mifune?

Red Beard took two years to shoot; afterwards its star, keen to run his own productions and worn down by Kurosawa's perfectionism, never worked with him again.

Which Hollywood war epic did Kurosawa leave only weeks into filming, effectively fired by the studio?

Tora! Tora! Tora! lost Kurosawa soon after shooting began; two other Japanese directors were brought in to film the half he had spent two years preparing.

Which British director was Kurosawa told would film the American half of his Hollywood war epic?

David Lean was the name Kurosawa had been given; Richard Fleischer directed the American scenes instead.

Which 1970 film was Kurosawa's first in colour?

Dodesukaden (1970), shot quickly and cheaply to prove he could still work fast, was Kurosawa's first colour film; it lost money and his Club of the Four Knights production company dissolved.

Which Kurosawa film, a Soviet production made for Mosfilm, won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar?

Dersu Uzala, from a Russian explorer's memoir Kurosawa had wanted to film since the 1930s, was entered by the Soviet Union, so his Oscar-winner counted as a Soviet film.

Which two American filmmakers persuaded Fox to help finance Kurosawa's Kagemusha?

George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola got Fox to cover the shortfall when Toho could not afford to finish the film; the studio took the foreign rights and the pair an executive-producer credit abroad.

Kagemusha shared the 1980 Palme d'Or with which American film?

All That Jazz was Bob Fosse's own story: he gave its driven director the heart attack he had himself suffered while editing Lenny and rehearsing Chicago.

Which dying warlord does the petty thief impersonate in Kagemusha?

Takeda Shingen died on campaign in 1573; in the film his last order is to hide the death for three years, which is why his clan needs a double.

Which Zatoichi star lost the lead in Kagemusha after arriving on set with his own camera crew?

Shintaro Katsu was gone before the first day's shooting ended, sacked or walking out depending on who tells it, and Tatsuya Nakadai took over the double role.

Ran (1985) is partly based on which Shakespeare tragedy?

King Lear supplied the frame of an old ruler dividing his domain among his children; the idea began with the legend of a 16th-century daimyō's three loyal sons, and Kurosawa wondered what would happen if they were not loyal.

Which real Japanese daimyō, famous for three loyal sons, inspired the story of Ran?

Mōri Motonari is said to have shown his sons that one arrow snaps but three bound together hold, a scene that probably never happened; Kurosawa made the sons disloyal.

Ran won its only Academy Award in which category?

Costume Design, for Emi Wada's hundreds of hand-made costumes that took years to produce, was Ran's only win from four Oscar nominations, which included Kurosawa's only Best Director nod.

Which American director campaigned to get Kurosawa a Best Director Oscar nomination for Ran?

Sidney Lumet organised the campaign after Japan declined to put Ran forward for the foreign-language award; it brought Kurosawa the only directing nomination of his career.

Which filmmaker plays Vincent van Gogh in the 'Crows' segment of Kurosawa's Dreams (1990)?

Martin Scorsese's Van Gogh, met in a field by a young art student, explains that his ear was giving him trouble in a self-portrait, so he cut it off.

Which director convinced Warner Bros. to buy the international rights to Dreams so it could be financed?

Steven Spielberg stepped in because no Japanese studio would back the film, a string of episodes built from the director's own dreams.

Which Hollywood star has a small role in Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August (1991)?

Richard Gere plays Clark, the American nephew; the family fears his visit means the rich Hawaiian cousins are cutting them off, but he has come to see where his uncle died.

What was Kurosawa's final film, released in 1993, about a professor's yearly birthday parties?

Madadayo means 'Not yet': at each birthday party the students ask Professor Uchida 'Are you ready?' and he shouts back that he is not ready to die yet.

In his 1990 honorary Oscar speech, what did Kurosawa say he was 'a little worried' about?

Not yet understanding cinema: just turned 80, he promised the audience he would keep working as hard as he could to grasp its true essence and so earn the award.

What job did Kurosawa's beloved older brother Heigo hold in late-1920s Tokyo?

Silent-film narrator: Heigo performed live commentary for foreign films and took his young brother to the pictures constantly, until the talkies cost him his livelihood.

Which director became Kurosawa's mentor after championing his hiring as an assistant director in 1936?

Kajirō Yamamoto took Kurosawa on at P.C.L. (later Toho), promoted him from third to chief assistant within a year, and told him a director must first master screenwriting.

Which editing transition became Kurosawa's visual signature in his mature work?

The wipe, a line that sweeps one image off the screen like a turning page, carries Rashomon from one witness's version of the crime to the next.

On the set of which 1944 propaganda film did Kurosawa meet his future wife, actress Yōko Yaguchi?

On The Most Beautiful (1944), about women in an optics factory, Yōko Yaguchi was chosen by the other actresses to present their complaints to him; the arguing brought them together and they married in 1945.

Which composer, Kurosawa's close friend, died of tuberculosis during the making of I Live in Fear (1955)?

Fumio Hayasaka, who had scored Rashomon and Seven Samurai, died of tuberculosis in 1955; his student Masaru Sato finished I Live in Fear and scored the next eight Kurosawa films.

Which future Godzilla director shot the second-unit street footage of post-war Tokyo in Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949)?

Ishirō Honda, a friend since their days as assistant directors, filmed the long sequence of the detective roaming the city; Kurosawa said he owed the film's atmosphere largely to him.

Which of these directors joined Kurosawa in the 1969 'Club of the Four Knights' production company?

Kon Ichikawa joined Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita and Masaki Kobayashi; each of the four knights was meant to direct a film, but the company produced only one, Kurosawa's.

Which product did Kurosawa advertise in a series of Japanese television commercials?

Suntory whisky: his ads for the brand later inspired the commercial that Bill Murray's fading film star flies to Tokyo to shoot in Lost in Translation.

Kurosawa's leading man Mifune was born in a city that now belongs to which country?

China's Qingdao, then under Japanese occupation, was his birthplace; his father ran a photography business, and the army later put the son in an aerial photography unit.

Which European director dismissed his own film The Virgin Spring as a poor imitation of Kurosawa?

Ingmar Bergman made the film at the height of his admiration for Japanese cinema, and for Rashomon above all; the 'imitation' still won the foreign-language Oscar.

Kurosawa's abandoned English-language project was finally filmed in 1985 by Konchalovsky under what title?

Runaway Train was to have been Kurosawa's first colour film before the 1960s project fell apart; Konchalovsky worked from a new script loosely based on his.

Before entering the film industry, what career did the young Kurosawa pursue?

Painting never paid his way, but the training stayed with him: decades later he drew and painted whole films as storyboards while he waited for the money to shoot them.

Which director made The Magnificent Seven (1960), the Western remake of Seven Samurai?

John Sturges's Western took the very title under which Kurosawa's film had first played in American cinemas, so the original took back its own title.

Which 1962 Kurosawa film is a sequel to Yojimbo, reworked from a Shūgorō Yamamoto story?

Sanjuro began as a straight adaptation of Yamamoto's Hibi Heian; after Yojimbo's success Toho had Kurosawa rework the script around the same wandering rōnin.

In Stray Dog (1949), what is stolen from rookie detective Murakami on a crowded bus?

His Colt pistol is lifted on a packed bus in a Tokyo heatwave; when it turns up in a robbery, the guilt-stricken rookie is paired with a veteran detective to hunt it down.

The Bad Sleep Well (1960), a critique of corporate corruption, draws on which Shakespeare play?

Hamlet is the loose model: the hero, Nishi, marries into a corrupt corporation to avenge his father's death; it was the first film from Kurosawa's own production company.

Which 1996 Walter Hill film starring Bruce Willis relocated Kurosawa's Yojimbo to a Prohibition-era Texas town?

Last Man Standing turns the rōnin into a drifting gunman who hires himself out to both of the town's bootlegging gangs, one Irish and one Italian.

Who composed the score for Ran (1985)?

Tōru Takemitsu composed Ran's score; Kurosawa asked for music in the spirit of Mahler, and the assault on the third castle plays to Takemitsu's elegy with all sound effects silenced.

In the first episode of Kurosawa's Dreams, a boy secretly watches the wedding procession of which animals?

Foxes: his mother warns that they marry when the sun shines through rain and hate to be watched; he looks anyway, and an angry fox leaves a knife at the house for him.

Which British actor earned an Oscar nomination for Living (2022), a London-set remake of Ikiru?

Bill Nighy's dying civil servant also ends up on a playground swing in the snow, singing a Scottish folk song where the original had a Japanese ballad.

Which Hollywood star played the bandit in The Outrage, the 1964 Western remake of Rashomon?

Paul Newman played the Mexican bandit Juan Carrasco; Martin Ritt's film moved the clashing testimonies to a run-down railway station in the 1870s American Southwest.

In Rashomon, how does the murdered samurai give his own version of the crime?

Through a medium: Kurosawa said even the dead man cannot give up his flattering lies, and his version clashes with both the bandit's and the wife's.

Which film was Kurosawa's first shot in anamorphic widescreen?

The Hidden Fortress began a decade of wide-frame films; Kurosawa gave the format up only for his first colour picture, by one scholar's account because he disliked what the lenses did to colour.

High and Low's hilltop mansion looks down on which Japanese port city?

Yokohama: the kidnapper lives in the sweltering streets below and says that seeing the house on its hill every day is what made him plan the crime.