Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa was one of the most famous Japanese film directors, produced a lot of films in history and had influences to famous film directors in their current activities. He was born in the suburb of Tokyo in 1910. When he was 26 years old, he started to learn on the director trainee program in a major film studio in Tokyo, and in 1943, he made debut with “Sanshiro Sugata”; story about young and strong man traveled to learn self-defense. And then, he released “Rashomon”- one of the masterpiece monochrome films, shot in 1950- made him famous and won the Golden Lion at Venice film Festival in 1951. Four years later, he released “Seven Samurai” it made great hit and made him internationally famous. Early 1960, he owned his film company, Kurosawa Production, and released several fine works, and these films established his position in international cinema industry. Although the evaluation for his works were vary from and after “Red Beard” (his first color film released in 1965), there were many influences to filmmakers world wide. They inspired by his techniques using multiple cameras for shooting action scenes, also Kurosawa world in his works were very attractive. After 1970, he produced his works every 5 years because of his health and declining of cinema industry in Japan. He continued to make films in his lifetime. “Kagemusha” in 1980(produced with his big fan George Lucas and Francis Coppola) and “Ran” in 1985(collaborated with France film studio) were his masterpiece in his later year. He left lots of fine works and died in 1998 when he was 89 years old. We can find his influence’s traces left in films “Star Wars”, “God father”, and so on. Akira Kurosawa was a great producer in Japan and world film history.