Today marks the 99th anniversary of master film director Akira Kurosawa's birth. Kurosawa is best known in the West for a cycle of black and white samurai flicks, usually featuring the immense talent of Toshiro Mifune, and made for Godzilla's Toho Studio. Kurosawa began his directorial career during the second world war, making a series of nationalistic, pro-Japanese films like Judo vs Boxing epic Sanshiro Sugata Part II.
Following the war, Kurosawa began to focus on contemporary Japan, marshaling Tokyo ashes crime thrillers like Police procedural Stray Dog to the screen. It was 1950's period memory fuzz drama Rashomon that brought him, and Japanese cinema, to a place of wider international acceptance. The film won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and an Honourary Academy Award the following year.
Kurosawa followed that success with a glut of stone cold classics like class-clash siege template Seven Samurai; and Yojimbo, the neanderthal film example of all taciturn loner narratives. In 1985 at the age of 75, Kurosawa completed his final samurai epic Ran, then the most expensive film ever produced in Japan. Kurosawa continued to direct smaller, personal features like Dreams and Madadayo well into his 80s.
Below is one of my favourite scenes from 1961's Yojimbo. Toshiro Mifune plays Sanjuro, a rudderless ronin who privately resolves to exterminate two warring gangs who plague a poor, brutalised town. His methods include treachery, political manoeuvring and, when pressed, overwhelming swordsmanship.
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