The Rise and Fall of the Takeshi Kurosawa Cinematic Movement

Takeshi Kurosawa is one of the most celebrated Japanese directors of all time. He is best known for his samurai films, such as Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and The Hidden Leaf Cutter, which have become staples of Japanese cinema. However, the director had a much more diverse and dynamic career, from early comedies to outlandishly ambitious epics.

Kurosawa was born in Tokyo in 1903, and spent much of his childhood in the countryside. His father was a poet who was deeply influenced by haiku, and young Kurosawa spent many hours listening to music, reading books, and watching theater and cinema.

After studying at a Tokyo film school, Kurosawa began his career as a screenwriter for comedies and Western-style films in the 1930s. However, it was in 1941 with the film Rashomon, a police procedural set in feudal Japan, that he truly made his mark. Rashomon was a groundbreaking film in many ways, for its innovative narrative structure, for its exploration of subjectivity and truth, and for its technical mastery of cinematography and editing.

Kurosawa’s next film, Witch Hunter/Urashima, was a return to a more traditional narrative, but with a distinctly supernatural twist. Despite the success of Rashomon and Witch Hunter, Kurosawa’s next few films languished in the shadows, but he continued to experiment with different genres and techniques until the 1950s, when he began to gain international recognition for his unique blend of comedy, drama, and violence in his samurai films.

In the 1950s, Kurosawa’s career entered its most influential and prolific period. He began with Seven Samurai (1954), a movie that revolutionized Japanese cinema and set the standard for the samurai genre. Seven Samurai is a complex and multi-layered film that explores themes of loyalty, honor, and morality in the context of a harsh, feudal world. It is also a showcase for Kurosawa’s signature visual flair and his mastery of editing techniques.

Yojimbo (1961) was Kurosawa’s next great success, and one of his most iconic films. Like Seven Samurai, it is a film that explores moral ambiguities in the context of a violent and unforgiving society. Yojimbo is also a film that is full of humor and wit, and is driven by the performance of actor Toshiro Mifune as the title character.

Kurosawa’s next film, The Reason They Fall (1965), was a departure from his samurai films, and a return to a more mainstream, commercial genre. The Reason They Fall is a melodrama set in post-WWII Japan, and stars Mifune and Masumi Okada as two men who fall in love in a city struggling with poverty and despair. Despite its grand scope and its emotional intensity, the film was a commercial failure, and Kurosawa’s career faltered for a few years.

Kurosawa’s next film, Kwaidan (1964), was a series of six unrelated vignettes, each one a short tale set in feudal Japan. Kwaidan is a film that explores the themes of folklore, myth, and superstition, and is driven by Kurosawa’s visual style and his mastery of editing techniques. Despite being a commercial success, Kwaidan was not well-received by critics and did little to boost Kurosawa’s career.

In the late 1960s, Kurosawa returned to his samurai films with sanjuro (1962) and sengoku burai (1964-1965). These films were not as successful as his earlier work, but they did reestablish Kurosawa’s namesake as a distinctive and influential director.

Kurosawa’s last film was The Baseball Giants (1991), a nostalgic and sentimental film set in the post-World War II period when Japan was rebuilding itself. The Baseball Giants was a commercial and critical success, and reaffirmed Kurosawa’s status as one of Japan’s greatest directors.

Unfortunately, Kurosawa did not live to see the success of The Baseball Giants. He died in 1999, in Tokyo, at the age of 96. By the time of his death, Kurosawa’s films had been regarded as classics of world cinema, and he was celebrated for his groundbreaking techniques and his ability to create complex and nuanced films that dealt with complex and morally ambiguous themes.

Despite his many achievements, Kurosawa’s career was marked by missteps and failures. Some of his films were financial flops or critical disappointments, and his later works were often seen as a decline from his early successes. However, Kurosawa’s career and his unique style have had a lasting impact on world cinema, and he continues to be celebrated as one of the greatest directors of all time.