Akira Kurosawa 10 Interesting Facts About The Legendary Director

Akira Kurosawa: 10 Interesting Facts About The Legendary Director

Akira Kurosawa is one of cinema’s greatest directors, but there’s a lot about him that his admirers may have forgotten

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Few Japanese directors have been as widely celebrated by international audiences as Akira Kurosawa. His samurai classics Yojimbo and Seven Samurai are among the most iconic action films in cinema history, while his post-modern historical drama Rashomon changed the way people thought about trusting what they saw with their eyes.

From crime dramas to Shakespearean tragedies, there is almost no genre he was unwilling to tackle. Of course, he is best known for his historical epics. He also inspired numerous other directors, among them George Lucas. Here are ten interesting facts about Akira Kurosawa that his fans need to know.

10 He Was The First Director To Film the Sun

Back in the early days of movie making, an old truism was that a video camera could not physically film the sun as it was thought to be impossible. Akira Kurosawa changed all of that in his 1950 masterpiece Rashomon where he did, in fact, shoot the sun.

More will be addressed about Rashomon later, but a major theme of the film was that people should doubt even what they see with their eyes. Filming the sun was just one way he defied conventional wisdom about observable reality in that film.

9 He Directed Propaganda During World War II

Like most directors in World War II Japan, Akira Kurosawa made propaganda films. The fascist government of wartime Japan’s military dictatorship ordered that films must promote “kokusaku,” or nationalist patriotism to the state.

The 1944 film The Most Beautiful (Ichiban Utsukushiku) opened with a loudspeaker blasting propaganda to factory workers–a scene utterly lacking in either subtlety or nuance. Then again, propaganda is the enemy of creativity.

8 ‘The Hidden Fortress’ Inspired Star Wars

It is a pretty well known fact that George Lucas was directly inspired by the films of Akira Kurosawa when he was making Star Wars. While still a student, Lucas would watch Kurosawa films at a local theater house and many elements of the Star Wars mythos can be seen in the stylings of Kurosawa’s chanbara period dramas.

No work more directly contributed to Star Wars than the 1958 movie The Hidden Fortress (Kakushi Toride no san Akunin). The film opens by following two peasants, the lowest members of the cast as far as importance, which Lucas has stated inspired his decision to open A New Hope by following R2D2 and C3PO. The general and princess in the film inspired Obi-Wan and Leia, while the fortress of the English title was partially the inspiration behind the Death Star.

7 He Was Named The ‘Asian of the Century’

Once upon a time, there were things called magazines, which were a lot like books but thinner and printed every month (or in some cases, every week). Once such magazine was called AsianWeek, which was the largest publication in English that catered to Asian-Americans.

In 1995, the magazine named Akira Kurosawa the “Asian of the Century” in regards to “Arts, Literature, and Culture.” This accolade has many connotations, but there is no denying the impact Kurosawa had both in his own country and abroad.

6 He Loved Painting

In his early life, Kurosawa loved to paint. In fact, he got his start in movies with one of his first jobs was as a narrator for silent films during a time when he dreamed of being a professional painter.

During this time in his life, his politics and art seemed to intersect, as he would go to art galleries and see as many movies as he could while being affiliated with the Proletarian Artists’ League. Unfortunately for his dreams, he shared the same fate as many artists of the proletariat, as his painting did not pay enough to live on. This led to him committing more fully to his career in film.

5 ‘Red Beard’ Ended His Friendship With Toshiro Mifune

Actor Toshiro Mifune is known by many cinema buffs for his many appearances in various Kurosawa films. He was once considered the greatest representation of Japanese manliness and he famously studied the movements of lions to prepare for some of his iconic roles, emulating their loping strides as part of his method acting.

Mifune was barely known until Kurosawa cast him in a prominent role in the 1948 film Drunken Angel (Yoidore Tenshi). They worked on sixteen films together, though finally had a falling out while working on Red Beard, in which an aging Mifune was relegated to a less important role while also being incapable of getting work on other projects due to the dyed red beard he had to maintain. Mifune’s performances inspired George Lucas – who actually wanted to cast him in Star Wars – as well as Clint Eastwood, whose Man With No Name character was obviously inspired by the wandering ronin that Mifune played in Yojimbo.

4 He’s A Big Shakespeare Fan

Japanese artists have been influenced by Western media ever since the embargo against the West ended at the start of the Meiji Restoration. Case in point, the brilliance of Shakespeare is celebrated in Japan even today.

Kurosawa was a huge Shakespeare fan and adapted two of the Bard’s plays into film. One film, Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jo) was based on Macbeth, while the 1985 jidaigeki Ran is a retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear but set in Sengoku Era Japan. Both films have a distinctly Japanese and Kurosawa twist to their narratives, and each is hauntingly worthy of the legacy of Shakespeare.

3 He Defied Cinematic Conventions With ‘Rashomon’

Possibly the most famous movie Kurosawa ever made, Rashomon has more than earned its reputation. As stated before, it was the first film ever to show the sun on camera – something believed to be impossible at the time.

Another trend at the time was for audiences to trust what they saw on screen, as they were used to trusting their senses. The narrative of Rashomon tells the same story four times, each time recounting the events surrounding an assault and a murder, yet drastically different in their details. It is one of the rare films that still can be rewatched again and again by modern audiences while revealing more about itself the whole time.

2 He Influenced Hollywood In A Big Way

One reason for Kurosawa’s success is that beyond his appeal in Japan, he also was beloved by foreign audiences. To say that he influenced other directors is an understatement. Yojimbo was directly ripped off scene-for-scene in the Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars, prompting Kurosawa to claim plagiarism. Kurosawa went on record to say that Sergio Leone’s unofficial remake was “a fine movie, but it was my movie.” Toho, the production company of Yojimbo, successfully sued for 15% of A Fistful of Dollars’ international sales.

Another Western classic, The Magnificent Seven, is a retelling (and Kurosawa-approved remake) of Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai), which remains one of the greatest action movies ever made. As stated before, Star Wars would not even exist if not for Kurosawa’s influence on George Lucas. Similarly, the ever-controversial Roman Polanski called Kurosawa one of the three directors he most admired.

1 It’s Difficult To Pin Down His Personal Politics

To make art is an inherently political act, whether the artist means it to be or not. As such, art – and particularly cinema -reflect the politics of the creators and times that shaped them. Interestingly, Kurosawa’s personal politics are a bit harder to pin down.

His early films were made under the pressures of the Japanese military dictatorship, where nationalist propaganda was required. Later films of his seemed to lean the other way, rebuking Japanese nationalism. He joined a leftist political artists group in the 20’s and worked with the Soviets on a number of projects, but he also showed businessmen in a favorable disposition in a number of his films. Meanwhile, his work in the 60’s have almost no depictions of the leftist counterculture movements that swept Japan at the time. The politics of his art are all over the spectrum. Then again, that is part of what gives him such universal appeal.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/akira-kurosawa-director-film-legendary-facts-trivia/

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