Kurosawa Akira
Heroes and Heroism
Kurosawa’s Films
• Kurosawa Akira (1910-1998)
SIGNIFICANT
BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS
(early life)
• His dream to be an artist; he
went to art school after his
secondary education.
• Avid reader of classic
literature: Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy, Gorky, Shakespeare,
Akutagawa
Kurosawa’s Films
• Entered PCL in 1936 at
the age of 26 as an
assistant director. He
mainly worked for
Yamamoto Kajiro.
SIGNIFICANT FACTS
• Wrote many scripts:
throoughout his career,
Kurosawa always
involved in script writing
for his films. Strong,
clear narrative line and
sharp characterization.
Kurosawa’s Films
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Sanshiro Sugata (1943) 姿三四郎
The Most Beautiful (1944) 一番美しく
Sugata Sanshiro Part II (1945) 続姿三四郎
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) 虎
の尾を踏む男たち
• No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)
わが青春に悔い
なし
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One Beautiful Sunday (1946) 素晴らしき日曜日
Drunken Angel (1948) 酔いどれ天使
The Quiet Duel (1949) 静かなる決闘
Stray Dog (1949) 野良犬
Kurosawa’s Films
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Scandal (1950) 醜聞
Rashomon (1950) 羅生門
Idiot (1951) 白痴
Ikiru (1952) 生きる
Seven Samurai (1954) 七人の侍
I Live in Fear (1955) 生きものの記録
Throne of Blood (1957) 蜘蛛の巣城
The Lower Depths (1957) どん底
The Hidden Fortress (1958) 隠し砦の三悪人
The Bad Sleeps Well (1960) 悪い奴ほどよく眠る
Kurosawa’s Films
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Yojinbo (1961) 用心棒
Sanjuro (1962) 椿三十郎
High and Low (1963) 天国と地獄
Red Beard (1965) あかひげ
Dodesukaden (1970) どですかでん
Dersu Uzala (1975) デルス・ウザーラ
Kagemusha (1980) 影武者
Ran (1985) 乱
Dream (1990) 夢
Rhapsody in August (1991) 八月の狂詩曲
Madadayo (1993) まあだだよ
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
Creation of heroes and anti-heroes.
• Male characters who are strong, courageous, resilient,
morally correct and often reckless.
• Sanshiro in Sugata Sanshiro - a traditional hero.
• Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune), a punk, and Dr. Sanada
(Shimura Takashi), a alcoholic doctor in Drunken Angel anti heroes
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• The minor civil servant WATANABE Kanji in
Ikiru (1952) who discovers that he is terminally ill
with cancer and starts desperately searching
meaning for life [short remaining life]. The most
unlikely person proves to be a great little hero.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Heroic warriors in Seven Samurai - Kanbei,
Katsushiro, Gorobei, Shichijiro, Kyuzo, Heihachi,
and Kikuchiyo
• Characterizations based on the sharp observation of
human types and differentiation in characters
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• SHIMADA Kanbei
• Though a great samurai and cool strategist, he is
not fortunate in battles fighting on the losing sides.
Now, masterless, but he has every quality to be a
great leader and fights against 70 bandits with six
samurai.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• KATAYAMA Gorobei
• Experienced and masterful samurai, who is a
great strategist supporting Kanbei as his righthand man, though he does not look like it. He is
always calm and self-controlled.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Shichiroji
• He worked for Kanbei before he became
masterless. Extremely loyal to Kanbei and knows
perfectly what he wants and behave. A model of
feudal man of honour and duty.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• HAYASHIDA Hiehachi
• Not a great swordsman but has a great sense of
humour cheering other samurais and villagers.
He has warm sensitivity.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Kyuzo
• Extremely self-disciplined and ascetic master
swordsman on move. He believes he can trust in
nobody but himself. He shows no emotion but is
not nihilist.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• OKAMOTO Katsushiro
• Young, novice samurai who is from a good family
and adores Kanbei. He is naïve and innocent to
grow up under the tutelage of Kanbei.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Kikuchiyo
• A son of peasants and war orphan. Utterly
unconventional and extremely emotional person,
pretending he is a samurai. Fierce and reckless
fighter in battles though no skills as a swordsman
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• ‘Seven samurai is about the relationship between
the samurai and the villagers. And I wanted to
show each samurai as an individual.’ Kurosawa
Akira
• Humanitarian action to protect peasants
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Throne of Blood retells Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
• Washizu Takatoki (Mifune Toshiro) murders his
master following partly the prophesies given by a
medium and his wife’s cajolement.
• Tragic Shakespearean hero
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• The masterless samurai, KUWABATAKE Sanjuro
who by chance walks into a town dominated by
two rival groups of gangsters and two influential
merchants who rely on their protection. Sanjoro
devices to destroy both parties. Yojinbo A great
medieval anti-hero.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• A group of idealistic young men, determined to
clean up the corruption in their town, are aided by
a scruffy, cynical samurai (Tsubaki Sanjuro) who
does not at all fit their concept of a noble warrior.
Sanjuro A great medieval anti-hero.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• In Red Beard (1965) the doctor named Niide looks
after the poor and wretched who can barely pays
medical bills and the young doctor Yasumoto who
learns under his tutelage that he can do more good
for working in his clinic than becoming a court
doctor.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• A Russian tribesman is an unlikely hero who
guides a team of a Russian topographical
expedition in an impossible journey in frontiers.
Derus Uzala
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Humanitarian concerns - the revelation of deprived
and oppressive conditions and the demonstration
of the wish to improve them.
• Humanism - all human beings are rational and can
be enlightened. Thus, they have dignity and worth
which are unique to themselves.
• The pursuit of humanitarian and humanistic ideals
brings about heroism and heroic actions.
• Individual quest for such truth and justice is called
heroism.
Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes
• Kurosawa’s heroes - willing to do greater and
nobler things - sacrifice themselves for those.
• Kurosawa’s anti-heroes try to be honest to their
individual demands - humanist demands which
are at the same time public demands.
• The imperfect becomes heroes by encountering a
‘tutor’ and growing up; the wretched become
heroes though their potentials revealed by
coincidental circumstances.
Humanism and Heroism
• Sugata Sanshiro is at first a brash, selfconfident student of martial arts. However,
he gradually masters the true spirit of Judo
and attains enlightenment under a
influential teacher: harming the opponent
and winning a match is not the ultimate aim
of Judo. Its true purpose lies in gaining
total self-control and bettering oneself.
Humanism and Heroism
• In Ikiru, the terminally ill cancer patient, Kanji
Watanabe, is determined to do what is generally
considered impossible and unachievable though
he does not have many days to live. He gives
everything he has to get a mosquito-infected bog
drained and make it into a public park.
• Heroism of a small man
• Humanism defeats bureaucracy
Humanism and Heroism
• In Seven Samurai the defense of the village
against the bandits is an act of
humanitarianism, humanism and heroism.
• Helping those who suffer.
‘Again we have been defeated. The winners
are those farmers, but not us.’
Kanbei Shimada
Humanism and Heroism
• Humanist theme is
conveyed through the
anti-hero, Kuwagatake
Sanjuro.
• He agrees to be a
bodyguard to one faction
and then the other just
because it amuses him.
He soon decides that it is
better if all die.
• Sanjuro helps out
suffering villagers.
Humanism and Heroism
• Red Beard (1965)
• Helping others, particularly
the deprived and poor, is the
quintessential moral
obligation of ‘civil’ society.
• Compassion and
conscientiousness play the
prominent role in Kurosawa’s
films from the late 1940s
throughout the 1950 and 60s.
Humanism and Heroism
‘I had something special in mind when I
made this film … I wanted to make
something that my audience would want to
see, something so magnificent so that they
would just have to see it.’ Akira Kurosawa
• Magnificence in human compassion and
conscientiousness.
Growing-up and Entertainment
• Relationships between younger and older men
• Relationships between the innocent and the
experienced
• A younger man learns humanistic truths with
the tutelage of an older man.
• Sugata Sanshirô and Yano Shôgorô in Sugata
Sanshirô
• The young gangster, Matsuoka and his
alcoholic doctor, Sanada in Drunken Angel
Growing-up and Entertainment
• The young detective, Murakami and the
senior detective, Sato in Stray Dog.
• Watanabe Kanbei, the experienced warrior
and the young samurai, Katsushiro, who
has yet to fight in a battlefield in Seven
Samurai.
• The compassionate doctor, Niide and the
young and ambitious doctor Yasumoto in
Red Beard.
Kurosawa Akira - maker of men’s films
Heroic men; male relationship and comradeship;
Little space for women; few female characters who
are as impressive as male counterparts.