Akira Kurosawa

At 88 years old, Akira Kurosawa has this physical status:

Akira Kurosawa (Japanese) was a Japanese film producer and screenwriter who produced 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.

He is regarded as one of the most influential and influential filmmakers in cinema history. Kurosawa joined the Japanese film industry in 1936 after a brief stint as a painter.

He made his debut as a producer during World War II with the well-known action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a.). Judo Saga (Journal) is a fictional story about a girl named Judo Saga.

The critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshiro Mifune in a leading role, solidified the director's reputation as one of Japan's most influential young filmmakers.

The two guys will continue to work on another 15 films together. Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo, was the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival.

For the first time in the Japanese film industry, the commercial and critical success of the film opened up Western film markets, which in turn resulted in international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers.

Kurosawa produced about one film per year during the 1950s and early 1960s, including a number of highly regarded (and often adapted) films, including Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961).

He became much less prolific in the 1960s, but his later work, including his last two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), continued to win awards, but more often in Japan than in Japan. He received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990.

He was named "Asian of the Century" by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, and he was cited as one of the five people who most significantly contributed to Asia's transformation in the twentieth century.

Many retrospectives, research, and biographies have praised his career, as well as in numerous print and video publications, as well as advertisements in several consumer media formats.

(1946–1965): The Red Beard was a military veteran of the American Civil War (1946–1965).

Kurosawa, inspired by the Occupation's political ideals, wanted to make films that would inspire a new respect for the individual and the self after the war. No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), the first such film to be inspired by both the 1933 Takigawa incident and the Hotsumi Ozaki wartime spy case, mocked Japan's prewar period for its political imperialism. Yukie (Setsuko Hara), a woman who was born into upper-middle-class privilege, comes to question her values in the middle of a political crisis, atypically for the producer. The original script had to be rewritten extensively, and the finished product divided critics due to the film's controversial subject matter and gender of its protagonist. Despite this, the film maintained its audience acceptance by turning the film's name into a postwar hit.

One Wonderful Sunday, his next film, premiered in July 1947 to mixed reviews. It's an uncomplicated and sentimental love story about an impoverished postwar couple trying to relish, within the devastation of postwar Tokyo, who's one week off. Frank Capra, D. W. Griffith, and F. W. Murnau, all of whom were Kurosawa's most popular directors, appear in the film. The Snow Trail, an adventure thriller starring Senkichi Taniguchi from Kurosawa's screenplay, was another film released in 1947 with Kurosawa's involvement. It was Toshiro Mifune's debut as the world's most popular young actor. Kurosawa had attempted to convince Toho to sign Mifune during an audition in which the young man greatly impressed Kurosawa but was unable to alienate the majority of the other judges, but Kurosawa intervened to persuade Kurosawa.

Drunken Angel is often thought of as the director's first major work. Though Kurosawa's occupation-era films had to go through rewrites due to American censorship, Kurosawa believed that this was the first film in which he was free expression. A gruesome tale about a doctor who struggles to save a gangster (yakuza) with tuberculosis, but this was also the first time Kurosawa directed Mifune, who went on to direct only one of the director's next 16 films (the exception being Ikiru). Although Mifune was not in character in Drunken Angel, his dramatic role as the gangster so dominated the story that he moved the focus away from the title character, the alcoholic doctor played by Takashi Shimura, who had already appeared in many Kurosawa films. Kurosawa did not want to smother the young actor's nascent reputation, and Mifune's rebellious demeanor energized audiences in the same way that Marlon Brando's defiant stance would resurface American film audiences a few years later. The film premiered in Tokyo in April 1948 to rave reviews and was named by the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics survey as the best film of its year, the first of three Kurosawa films to be so lauded.

Kurosawa, along with producer Sjiro Motoki, along with colleagues and acquaintances Kajiro Naruse and Senkichi Tanichi, formed Film Art Association, a new independent production unit (Eiga Geijutsu Kyro). Kurosawa's debut work and first film for Daiel studios, but not all Kurosawa created a contemporary play by Kazuo Kikuta and adapted it for film. Toshiro Mifune was a teenage doctor struggling with syphilis, which was Kurosawa's deliberate effort to break the actor away from being stereotyped as gangsters in the Quiet Duel film Toshiro Mifune. It was a box office hit in March 1949, but it is generally considered one of the director's lesser accomplishments.

Stray Dog was his second film of 1949, which was also produced by the Film Art Association and released by Shintoho. It's a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in this genre) that delves into Japan's mood during its painful postwar reconstruction by including the life of a young detective portrayed by Mifune and his obsession with the recovery of his handgun, which was stolen by a penniless war soldier who later used it to rob and murder. It was the director's first collaboration with screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima, who would later assist in writing eight other Kurosawa films, and it was based on an unpublished book by Kurosawa in the style of a favorite writer of his own, Georges Simenon. The detective, disguised as an impoverished veteran, wanders the streets in search of the weapon thief, according to a video clip of war-ravaged Tokyo neighborhoods shot by Kurosawa's friend, Ishir Honda, who is the future director of Godzilla, uses a common, virtually wordless sequence that lasts for over eight minutes. The film is regarded as a precursor to the popular police procedural and buddy cop film genres.

Scandal, which was published by Shochiku in April 1950, was inspired by the director's personal experiences with, and indignation with, Japanese yellow journalism. The film is a unique blend of courtroom drama and social problem film about free expression and personal responsibility, but even Kurosawa regarded the finished product as highly unfocused and unsatisfactory, as nearly all commentators agree. However, it will be Kurosawa's second film of 1950, Rashomon, that will ultimately win him, and a whole new international audience.

Kurosawa was approached by Daiei studios to film another film for them after completing Scandal. Kurosawa selected a script by Shinobu Hashimoto, a young screenwriter who will eventually appear in nine of his films. Their first joint venture was based on Rynosuke Akutagawa's experimental short story "In a Grove," which chronicles the assassination of a samurai and the rape of his wife's wife from various points of view. Kurosawa saw promise in the script and, with Hashimoto's assistance, polished and expanded it, then pitched it to Daiei, who were eager to take the initiative due to the project's low budget.

The shooting of Rashomon began on July 7, 1950, and after extensive site work in Nara's primeval forest, the project was completed on August 17. Only one week was spent in hurried post-production, hampered by a studio fire, and the finished film premiered at Tokyo's Imperial Theatre on August 25, which was also expanding throughout the world the following day. The film was met with lukewarm reviews, with several commentators perplexed by its unique look and treatment, but it was nevertheless a modest financial success for Daiei.

The Idiot, Kurosawa's directorial's adaptation of the novel by the director's favorite author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, was Kurosawa's next film, for Shochiku. The tale is shifted from Russia to Hokkaido, but the original remains remarkably faithful to the original, a point that has been criticized by several commentators as detrimental to the work. Kurosawa's original cut went from 265 minutes to just 166 minutes, making the resulting narrative extremely difficult to follow. The severely edited film version is widely considered to be one of the director's least commercial films, although the original full-length version no longer exists. Contemporary critiques of the film's much-shortened edited version were very critical, but it was still a moderate success at the box office, owing to the success of one of its stars, Setsuko Hara.

In the meantime, Giuliana Stramigioli, a Japan-based representative of an Italian film company who had seen and loved the film and advised Daiei to submit it, was unveiled to Kurosawa, Rashomon, who had been accepted in the Venice Film Festival for the unidentified. Rashomon received the Golden Lion, the festival's highest award, on September 10, 1951, and it was surprising not only Daiei but also the international film industry, which was still unaware of Japan's long-serving cinematic history.

RKO acquired distribution rights to Rashomon in the United States after Daiei briefly displayed a subtitled print of the film in Los Angeles. The company was losing a significant amount of money. It had only one prior subtitled film in the American market, and Mikio Naruse's comedy Wife was the only previous Japanese talkie commercially released in New York. Be Like a Rose, 1937: a critical and box-office flop. However, Rashomon's commercial run was greatly aided by strong critiques from journalists and even columnist Ed Sullivan during the first three weeks in a single New York theatre, an almost unheard-of-time figure at the time.

This success in turn culminated in a revival of Japanese cinema in America and the West during the 1950s, showcasing the revival of Italian neorealist cinema. Rashomon was released in Japan, the United States, and the majority of Europe by the end of 1952. Kenji Mizoguchi (The Life of Oharu, Ushosho Sansho Ozu, Sansho Ozu, Nichi), and, later, Yasujir Ozu (Tokyo Story, An Autumn Afternoon)—artists are well-known in Japan but, before this period, virtually unknown in the West, were among the Japanese film-makers whose work became a success in festivals and commercial release in the West. Kurosawa's growing fame among Western audiences in the 1950s would make Western audiences more sympathetic to the reception of later generations of Japanese film-makers, ranging from Kon Ichikawa, Masaki Kobayashi, Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura to Juzo Itami, Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike.

Kurosawa's international success has made his career brisk, and he's back in Toho (which will continue to produce his next 11 films), and he's set to work on his next project, Ikiru. Takashi Shimura plays Watanabe, a cancer-ridden Tokyo bureaucrat, on a last hunt for meaning before his death. Kurosawa brought in Hashimoto as well as writer Hideo Oguni, who would go on to co-write twelve Kurosawa films. Despite the writer's tense subject matter, the screenwriters took a satirical route, some of whom had compared Brecht's writing to both the bureaucratic world of its hero and the cultural colonization of Japan. (In the film, American pop songs figure prominently) Because of this tactic, the filmmakers are often credited with saving the image from a narcotics-based on terminal illness dramas. Ikiru opened in October 1952 to rave reviews; Kurosawa received his second Kinema Junpo "Best Film" award and a huge box office triumph. It is still the most acclaimed of all the artist's films shot in the modern period.

Kurosawa's Ikiru screenwriters, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, and his mother, Marlene Oguni, were sent for a forty-day secluded residence in an inn to develop the screenplay for his next film, Seven Samurai. The ensemble performance was Kurosawa's first authentic samurai film, the genre in which he would be most well-known. The simple tale about a poor farming village in Sengoku, Japan, who recruits a group of samurai to protect it against an imminent threat from bandits, was treated to perfection by a huge cast (mainly made up of veterans of previous Kurosawa productions) and meticulously detailed action, spanning nearly three and a half hours of screen time.

Pre-production and a month in rehearsals were both spent. The shooting spree lasted for 148 days over nearly a year, with production and funding difficulties as a result of Kurosawa's health, as well as Kurosawa's health. The film finally opened in April 1954, half a year behind its initial launch date and around three times over budget, making it at the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made. (However, it was still a modestly funded program, even for that time). The film received rave reviews and became a big hit, bringing back the money invested and giving the studio a product that they could and did sell internationally, but with extensive edits. Over time — and with the introduction of the uncut version's theatrical and home video clips — its reputation has steadily grown. Some commentators now think it is the best Japanese film ever made, and a poll of Japanese film critics in 1999 named it the best Japanese film ever made. Seven Samurai ranked 17th in both the critics' and the producers' polls, earning a spot in the Top Ten lists of 48 critics and 22 directors in the most recent (2012) version of the widely respected British Film Institute (BFI) Sight & Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" survey.

Nuclear experiments in the Pacific in 1954 were causing radioactive rainstorms in Japan, and one particular event in March deposed a Japanese fishing boat, which resulted in nuclear disaster. Kurosawa's latest film, Record of a Living Being, was created in this tense atmosphere. The story concerned an elderly factory owner (Toshiro Mifune) who was so afraid of a nuclear attack that he became determined to relocate his entire extended family (both legal and extra-marital) to what he feels is the security of a farm in Brazil. Kurosawa's composer, collaborator, and close friend Fumio Hayasaka died (of tuberculosis) at the age of 41. Masaru Sato, Hayasaka's student, was given the film's score, and he will continue to direct all of Kurosawa's upcoming films. The first Kurosawa film to lose money during its original theatrical run opened in November 1955 to mixed critiques and muted audience reactions. Many people today believe it to be one of the finest films dealing with the psychological effects of the global nuclear crisis.

Throne of Blood, William Shakespeare's Macbeth's revival, was a groundbreaking transposition of the English work in a Japanese context, according to Kurosawa's next project, Throne of Blood, a Japanese translation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, which was set in the Sengoku Era. Kurosawa ordered Isuzu Yamada, his leading actress, to see the film as if it were a Japanese literary classic rather than a European literary masterpiece. Given Kurosawa's admiration of traditional Japanese stage acting, the actor's performance, especially Yamada, draws heavily on the Noh theater's stylized techniques. It was shot in 1956 and released in January 1957 to a marginally less positive domestic reaction than in the case of the director's previous film. Throne of Blood, a subsidiary of Abroad, regained prominence with its source material shortly after being listed among the most celebrated Shakespeare adaptations.

With the production of The Lower Depths, based on a Maxim Gorky play, taking place in May and June 1957, an interpretation of a classic European theatrical work was immediately followed almost immediately. The Lower Depths was shot on only two restricted sets in order to emphasize the restricted nature of the characters' lives, in comparison to the Shakespearean sweep of Throne of Blood. Though faithful to the story, this adaptation of Russian content to a completely Japanese setting — in this case, the late Edo period—unlike his earlier The Idiot — was considered as artistically successful. In September 1957, the film premiered, gaining mixed reviews similar to that of Throne of Blood. However, some commentators have rated it as one of the director's most underrated works.

After Seven Samurai, Kurosawa's three new films after that film failed to capture Japanese audiences in the way that this film did not. Even as Japan's industrial growth and rising living conditions, the director's mood had been growing increasingly cautious and grim. Kurosawa's films, particularly in Throne of Blood and The Lower Depths, challenged the possibility of redemption by personal responsibility, despite the current mood of the period. He understood this and planned for a more light-hearted and amusing film for his next film, while switching to Japan's new widescreen version. The Hidden Fortress, the resulting film, is an action-adventure comedy about a medieval princess, her loyal general, and two peasants, who all need to travel through enemy lines in order to reach their home country. The Hidden Fortress, which was released in December 1958, became a huge box office success in Japan, and critics from both in Japan and abroad have praised it. The film today is regarded as one of Kurosawa's most lightweight efforts, but it is still popular, not least because it was one of several key influences on George Lucas's 1977 space opera, Star Wars.

Kurosawa's productions, beginning with Rashomon, had a broader scope, as had the director's budgets. Toho, who is worried about this change, suggested that he could finance his own projects, thereby decreasing the studio's risks, while simultaneously giving him more artistic autonomy as co-producer. Kurosawa approved, and Kurosawa Production Company was established in April 1959, with Toho as the majority shareholder.

Despite risking his own money, Kurosawa chose a story that was more directly critical of the Japanese company and political elites than any previous ones. The Bad Sleep Well, a film by Kurosawa's nephew Mike Inoue, is a revenge drama about a young man who is able to penetrate a corrupt Japanese company with the intention of exposing the men responsible for his father's death. The film's subject was surprisingly broad: although the film was in progress, widespread Anpo demonstrations against the new US-Japan Security agreement were held against the country's democracy by giving too much power to corporations and politicians, particularly the young. The film opened in September 1960 to positive critical reaction and modest box office success. Kurosawa's most well-executed set pieces' 25-minute opening sequence depicting a corporate wedding reception is widely regarded as one of Kurosawa's finestly executed set pieces, but the remainder of the film is often seen as disappointing by comparison. The film has also been chastised for using the Kurosawan hero to combat a social problem that cannot be resolved by individual behavior, whether brave or cunning.

Kurosawa Production's second film, Yojimbo (The Bodyguard), revolves on a masterless samurai, Sanjuro, who strolls into a 19th-century town ruled by two militant factions and leads them to murder each other. The director used this film to experiment with several genre conventions, especially the Western, while simultaneously giving an unprecedentedly (for the Japanese screen) realistic representation of violence. Some commentators have portrayed the Sanjuro character in this film as a hero who magically reverses the historical triumph of the tyrant merchant class over the samurai class. Tatsuya Nakadai in his first major role in a Kurosawa film, as well as modern photography by Kazuo Miyagawa (who shot Rashomon) and Takao Saito, the film premiered in April 1961 and was a highly awaited and commercially lucrative venture, grossing more than any other Kurosawa film. The film and its blackly comedic tone were also highly admired in other countries. Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars was a virtual (unwanted) scene-by-scene reconstruction, with Toho bringing a lawsuit against Kurosawa's behalf and winning.

Kurosawa was under pressure from Toho to produce a sequel after the success of Yojimbo. Kurosawa reworked a script he had written before Yojimbo, including the hero of his previous film. Sanjuro was the first of three Kurosawa films to be adapted from writer Shgor Yamamoto's (the others were Red Beard and Dodeskaden). While the tale of a power struggle within a samurai clan is presented with greater clarity and closer to a conventional period film than Yojimbo, it is less sarcastic undertones. The film opened on January 1, 1962, quickly outshining Yojimbo's box office success and receiving positive feedback.

Kurosawa had also ordered Toho to buy the film rights to King's Ransom, a book about a kidnapping written by American author and screenwriter Evan Hunter under his pseudonym Ed McBain, as part of his 87th Precinct series of crime books. The producer intended to produce a film condemning kidnapping, which he described as one of the worst crimes ever committed. The suspense film, High and Low, was shot during the second half of 1962 and released in March 1963. It smashed Kurosawa's box office record (the third film in a row to do so), became the year's highest grossing Japanese film, and received raves. However, his triumph was somewhat marred when the film was criticized for a series of kidnappings in Japan around this time (he himself received kidnapping threats directed at his teenage daughter, Kazuko). Many commentators regard High and Low as one of the director's finest performances.

Kurosawa's next project, the Red Beard, was quickly moved forward. It is based on a short story collection by Shgor Yamamoto and incorporating elements from Dostoevsky's book The Insulted and Injured, a mid-nineteenth-century clinic for the poor, in which Kurosawa's humanist themes make their fullest representation. Yasumoto, a conceited and materialistic young doctor who has received a scholarship at the clinic under the strict tutelage of Doctor Niide, who is also known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), played by Mifune. Although he initially dismisses Red Beard, Yasumoto learns to respect his intelligence and courage, as well as patients at the hospital, whom he first feared as deserving of compassion and dignity.

Yz Kayama, a film and music actor, was a well-known film and music actor at the time, especially for his "Young Guy" (Wakadaish) series of musical comedies, so signing him to appear in the film almost guaranteed Kurosawa high box-office. The film, the filmmaker's longest ever, lasted for more than a year (after five months of pre-production), and it came to a close in spring 1965, leaving the director, his crew, and his actors exhausted. The Red Beard premiered in April 1965, becoming the year's highest-grossing Japanese production and the third (and final) Kurosawa film to top the prestigious Kinema Jumpo annual critics poll. It is one of Kurosawa's most popular and much-loved works in his native country. Critics have been much more divided outside of Japan. Most commentators accept the artist's artistic merits and some praise it as one of Kurosawa's finest, although others insist it lacks depth and real narrative power, with others claiming that it represents a backward step from the artist's previous pledges to social and political reform.

The film came at a certain point in an artist's career. At the time of its inception, the director himself acknowledged that a cycle of some sort had come to an end and that his future films and production methods would be different. His prediction was actually correct. Television began to dominate the leisure time of Japan's once large and devoted cinema audience in the late 1950s. And as film company profits faded, so did their appetite for risk, particularly Kurosawa's expensive production techniques.

The Red Bears also hit the midway point in the artist's career chronologically. He had directed twenty-three films during his previous 20 years in film (which included five years as assistant director), but only seven more would be completed in the remaining twenty-eight years, for various and complicated reasons. Also, Red Beard would be his last film starring Toshiro Mifune, for reasons that were never adequately explained. "Mr. Kurosawa's heart was in Mr. Mifune's body," Yu Fujiki, an actor who appeared on The Lower Depths, said regarding the closeness of the two men on the set. The relationship between them, according to Donald Richie, is a unique "symbiosis."

When Kurosawa's exclusive deal with Toho came to an end in 1966, the 56-year-old director was seriously considering change. The prospect of working outside Japan appealed to him as never before, considering the current state of the domestic film industry and having already received scores of offers from abroad.

Kurosawa's first overseas assignment was based on a Life magazine article. This will be his first in color on film, the Embassy Pictures action thriller, which will be shot in English and simply named Runaway Train. However, the language barrier was a significant issue, and the English version of the filmplay was not complete by the time filming was set to begin in fall 1966. The shoot, which needed snow, was postponed until fall 1967 and then canceled in 1968. Andrei Konchalovsky, another foreign director working in Hollywood, made Runaway Train (1985), but it was not based on Kurosawa's.

In the meantime, the producer had been involved in a much more ambitious Hollywood project.

Tora!

Tora!

Tora!, a 20th Century Fox and Kurosawa Productions, would be a representation of the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor from both the American and the Japanese perspectives of view, with Kurosawa helming the Japanese half and Anglophonic film-maker directing the American half. He spent several months on the script with Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, but it was not long before the project began to unravel. Not to be David Lean, as originally planned, but American Richard Fleischer. The budget was also reduced, and the screen time for the Japanese segment would no longer than 90 minutes, which is a significant issue considering that Kurosawa's script ran for more than four hours. Following several iterations with Darryl Zanuck's direct involvement, a more or less finalized cut screenplay was reached in May 1968.

Kurosawa began shooting in early December, but Kurosawa would only serve as director for a little over three weeks. He struggled to work with an unfamiliar crew and the demands of a Hollywood film, though his production methods left him speechless at Fox studios indicating a diagnosis of neurasthenia. For him to have rest and medical attention for more than two months, it is vital." Kurosawa had left the company due to "fatigue," according to the Americans, who effectively fired him on Christmas Eve 1968. Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda were eventually dropped in the film's Japanese scenes.

Tora!

Tora!

Tora!, who was eventually published in unenthical reports in September 1970, was described as "the most unmitigated tragedy" in Kurosawa's history, as Donald Richie put it. He had spent years of his life on a logistically late night project for which he didn't have a foot of film shot by himself. (He had his name removed from the credits, but the script for the Japanese half was still his and his co-writers'. He was estranged from his longtime collaborator, writer Ryuzo Kikushima, and never returned to work with him again. Inadvertently reveal misconduct in his own production company (a situation reminiscent of his own film, The Bad Sleep Wellbeing). His very sanity had been put into doubt. Worst of all, the Japanese film industry—and possibly the man himself—began to suspect that he will never make another film.Following the highly publicised Tora, he was aware that his image was in jeopardy.

Tora!

Tora!

Kurosawa quickly moved to a new venture to show that he was still viable. The Club of the Four Knights' founder, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa were among Kurosawa's helpers. (Yonki no kai) Although the intention was for the four directors to produce a film each, it has been said that Kurosawa's true motivation was to make it possible for him to finish a film and therefore return to the industry.

The first project on which we worked was a period film to be named Dora-heita, but when this was deemed too costly, attention was turned to Dodesukaden, an extension of yet another Shruchor Yamamoto project, highlighting the poor and destitute. The film was shot quickly (by Kurosawa's standards) in about nine weeks, with Kurosawa determined to show that he could still be effective in a short budget. The dynamic editing and complex compositions of his earlier photographs were stripped out of his debut in color, with the artist focusing on the development of a bold, almost surreal palette of primary colors in order to reveal the characters' hostile environment in which they live. It was first introduced in Japan in October 1970, but despite minor critical success, it was met with skepticism by the audience. The picture cost the Club of the Four Knights to disband, causing them to disband. Initial reception in a foreign country was somewhat encouraging, but Dodesukaden's latest venture, although not related to the director's finest work, has since been widely regarded as an interesting experiment.

Kurosawa converted to television work the following year for the first time in his career with Song of the Horse, a documentary about thoroughbred race horses. It featured a voice-over narrated by a fictional man and a child (voiced by the same actors as the beggar and his son in Dodesukaden). It's the only documentary in Kurosawa's filmography; the little crew included his frequent collaborator Masaru Sato, who produced the music. Song of the Horse is also unusual in Kurosawa's filmography, in that it includes an editor's name, implying that it is the only Kurosawa film in which he did not cut himself.

Kurosawa appears to have slit his wrists and throat multiple times during his inability to obtain funds for more research and reportedly having health issues: on December 22, 1971, he slit his wrists and throat multiple times. The suicide attempt was flop and the director's health returned quickly, with Kurosawa now taking refuge in domestic life, making it unclear if he will ever direct another film.

In early 1973, the Soviet studio Mosfilm approached the film-maker to ask if he would be interested in working with them. Kurosawa suggested a translation of Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev's autobiographical work Dersu Uzala, which was released in a Russian language. It was one he had been looking for since the 1930s that the book, about a Goldi hunter who lives in harmony with nature before being destroyed by encroaching civilization. Kurosawa, 63, embarked on the Soviet Union in December 1973 with four of his closest aides, marking a year-and-a-half stay in the country. Shooting in Siberia began in May 1974, despite the fact that filming in extremely harsh natural conditions was extremely difficult and demanding. The picture was taken in April 1975, with a physically ill and homesick Kurosawa returning to Japan with his family in June. Dersu Uzala's world premiere in Japan on August 2, 1975, and it did well at the box office. Though the critical reception in Japan was muted, the film was better reviewed abroad, winning the Golden Prize at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Critics are split on the film today: some see it as an example of Kurosawa's apparent artistic decline, while others see it as an example of Kurosawa's ostensible artistic decline, while others see it as one of his finest works.

Although television projects were sent to him, he had no intention in being outside of film industry. However, the hard-drinking director did agree to appear in a line of Suntory whiskey commercials that aired in 1976. Although fearing that he would never be able to make another film, the director continued filming on various fronts, scripting, and designing detailed illustrations in the event that he would not be able to film his stories.

George Lucas, an American filmmaker, released Star Wars, a huge science fiction film influenced by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, among other things. Lucas, like many other New Hollywood filmmakers, adored Kurosawa and regarded him as a role model, but was shocked to learn that the Japanese film company was unable to obtain funding for any new projects. In July 1978, the two met in San Francisco to discuss the project that Kurosawa considered most financially viable: Kagemusha, the epic tale of a thief hired as the double of a medieval Japanese lord of a noble clan. Lucas, who was enthralled by the screenplay and Kurosawa's illustrations, used his fame over 20th Century Fox to convince Kurosawa to produce Kagemusha, which then recruited fellow fan Francis Ford Coppola as co-producer.

Kurosawa was in high spirits when production began in April. Shooting spanned 1980 to 1980, and was plagued with issues, not the least of which was the dismissal of the original lead actor, Shintaro Katsu, who created the iconic Zatoichi character, due to an incident in which the actor fought against the director's wishes and on videotaping his own performance. (He was replaced by Tatsuya Nakadai in his first of two leading roles in a Kurosawa film). The film was released in Tokyo just a few weeks behind schedule and opened in April 1980. It was quickly recognized in Japan that it had become a big hit. The film was also a critical and box office success in other countries, winning the coveted Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival in May, although some commentators, then and now, chastised the film for its ostensible coldness. Kurosawa spent much of the year in Europe and America supporting Kagemusha, winning awards and honors, and exhibiting as art the drawings he had made to serve as storyboards for the film.

Kurosawa's next project, Ran, was another epic in a similar vein due to Kagemusha's international success. The script, which was partly based on William Shakespeare's King Lear, depicts a ruthless, bloodthirsty daimy (warlord) who, after wrongly denying his one loyal son's return to his two sons, who then betray him, plunging the entire kingdom into war. International assistance was also needed as Japanese studios remained hesitant about producing another film that would rank among the country's most expensive ever made. This time, it was French producer Serge Silberman, who had made Luis Buuel's last films. Filming didn't begin until December 1983 and lasted more than a year.

Ran's production was suspended in January 1985 after Kurosawa's 64-year-old wife Yko died on February 1. Kurosawa revived his film and Ran premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival on May 31, with a wide release the next day. The film was a moderate financial success in Japan, but it was a larger one overseas, and Kurosawa, who had worked with Kagemusha, began a trip to Europe and America, where he attended the film's premieres in September and October.

Ran won numerous awards in Japan, but not as well as many of the director's best films of the 1950s and 1960s had been recognized there. When Japan declined to approve Ran in favour of another film as its official entry to compete for an Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Film category, the film world was surprised. Both the producer and Kurosawa himself attributed the inability to even submit Ran for competition to a misunderstanding: no one knew if Ran qualified as a Japanese film, a French film (due to its funding), or both, so it was not submitted at all. The director Sidney Lumet led a fruitful campaign to gain an Oscar nomination for Best Director of Out of Africa, despite what seemed to be a blatant snub by his own countrymen. Emi Wada, the film's costume designer, received the film's only Oscar.

Kurosawa's finest creations, including Kagemusha and Ran, are often thought of as among Kurosawa's finest works. Kurosawa's best film after Ran's debut would be lauded as his best film, a major change in the director's attitude, who, when asked which of his films was his best, had always replied "my next one."

Kurosawa chose a subject that had never been shot before for his next film. Although some of his earlier pictures (such as Drunken Angel and Kagemusha) had brief dream sequences, Dreams was to be entirely based on the director's own dreams. Kurosawa's first fork in over forty years, for this deeply personal project, wrote the screenplay alone. Despite the fact that its estimated budget was lower than the films immediately preceding it, Japanese studios were also reluctant to support one of his productions, so Kurosawa turned to Steven Spielberg, another well-known American fan, who persuaded Warner Bros. to purchase the international rights to the finished film. Kurosawa's uncle, Hisao, as co-producer and soon-to-behead of Kurosawa Production, was able to obtain a loan in Japan that would fund the film's production costs. The shooting took more than eight months to complete, and Dreams premiered in Cannes in May 1990 to a polite but muted reception, similar to the reaction the image might have elsewhere in the world. He received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990. "I'm a little worried because I don't think I know cinema" in his acceptance address. Kurosawa was "regarded by many commentators as the best living filmmaker" at the time, according to Bob Thomas of The Daily Spectrum.

Kurosawa's first film fully released in Japan in August was now a more realistic story with Rhapsody, which delves into the scars of World War II's devastation of Nagasaki. It was based on a Kiyoko Murata book, but the director's references to the Nagasaki bombing came from the director rather than from the book. Richard Gere, who appears in a small role as the uncle of the elderly heroine, was his first film to have a role. The shooting took place in early 1991, with the film opening in the United States of largely critical commentary, particularly in the United States, where Kurosawa was accused of promulgating nascent anti-American sentiments.

Kurosawa wasted no time on his next project: Madadayo, or Not Yet. The film, based on autobiographical essays by Hyakken Uchida, follows a Japanese professor of German from the Second World War and beyond. The story revolves around annual birthday celebrations with his former students, during which the protagonist declares his inability to die despite being a leading topic for the film's 81-year-old creator. Filming began in February 1992 and was finished by the end of September. Its appearance on April 17, 1993, it was met with even more dissatisfaction than had been the case with his two preceding works.

Kurosawa also continued to work. In 1993 and 1995, he wrote the first screenplays The Sea Is Watching and After the Rain. Kurosawa slipped and broke the base of his spine when putting finishing touches on his earlier work in 1995. Following the crash, he'll be using a wheelchair for the remainder of his life, putting an end to any hopes of him directing another film. He's long-awaited wish — to die on the set when shooting a film — was never to be fulfilled.

Kurosawa's health began to deteriorate following his injury. Though his mind was still vibrant and vibrant, his body was giving up, and the producer was largely confined to bed, listening to music, and watching television at home for the last half-year of his life. Kurosawa died of a stroke in Setagaya, Tokyo, on September 6, 1998, at the age of 88. Kurosawa, his uncle Hiroko Kurosawa, married her daughter Kazuko Kurosawa, and many grandchildren, as well as many grandchildren at the time of his death. After the Rain (1999) and Kei Kumai's The Sea is Watching 2002, one of his grandchildren, actor Takayuki Kato and grandson by Kazuko, became a supporting actor in two films posthumously produced by Kurosawa that remained unproduced during his own lifetime.

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