Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明, Kurosawa Akira; March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. With a bold and dynamic style strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Known as a hands-on filmmaker, he was heavily involved with all aspects of production as a director, writer, producer, and editor.

Following a brief stint as a painter, Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and screenwriter, he made his directorial debut during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (1943), released when he was 33. Following the war, he cemented his reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan with the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which he cast the then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role; the two men would then collaborate on 15 more films.

Rashomon (1950) premiered in Tokyo and became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. The film's commercial and critical success opened Western film markets to Japanese films for the first time, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Kurosawa directed approximately one film per year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded and often adapted films, including Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963), and Red Beard (1965). He became much less prolific after the 1960s, though his later work—including two of his final films, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to receive critical acclaim.

In 1990, Kurosawa accepted the Academy Honorary Award. He was posthumously named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, who cited him as one of the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century. His career has been honored by many releases in many consumer media in addition to retrospectives, critical studies, and biographies in both print and video.