Kurosawa Akira Heroes and Heroism. Kurosawa’s Films Kurosawa Akira (1910-1998) SIGNIFICANT BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS (early life) His dream to be an artist;

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 (favourite authors)

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: before he became a director – Kurosawa wrote scripts for all his films. Strong, clear narrative line and sharp characterization.

Kurosawa’s Auteuristic Motifs and Themes

Creation of HEROES and ANTI-HEROES• Male characters who are stubborn, courageous,

resilient, though often reckless or not faultless. • They face moral choices or dilemmas• Though they live in a world of moral chaos or in

the void of ethical or behavioural standards, they choose to act for the public good.


• Kurosawa’s heroes - willing to do greater and nobler things - sacrifice themselves for this purpose.

• Kurosawa’s anti-heroes try to be honest to their individual demands - existentialist demands which are at the same time public demands.

• An imperfect young man becomes a hero by encountering an older ‘tutor’and growing up; the wretched becomes a hero though his potential revealed by coincidental circumstances.


• Creation of larger-than-life but memorable characters

• Clear delineation of characters ands sharp characterization of individual movie characters

Hero and Heroism

• SUGATA Sanshiro is at first a brash, self-confident 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.

Hero and Heroism

• An alcoholic doctor working for the poor, disfranchised and foreigners, Sanada, treats the gun wound a Yakuza of the Tokyo post-war black market, Matsunaga, received without reporting the police. Sanada selflessly tried to save Matsunaga who more seriously suffers from tuberculosis.

Hero and Heroism

• A young police officer, Murakami, got his pistol stolen and it is used for robbery and murder. With the assistance of a senior and wiser police officer, Sato, he desperately tries to capture the murder.

Hero and Heroism

• 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 [his short remaining life]. The most unlikely person proves to be a great little hero.

Hero and Heroism

• Heroic warriors in Seven Samurai - Kanbei, Katsushiro, Gorobei, Shichijiro, Kyuzo, Heihachi, and Kikuchiyo

• Characterization based on the sharp observation of human types and differentiation in characters

Hero and Heroism

• SHIMADA Kanbei• Though a great samurai and cool strategist, he is

not fortunate in battles as fighting always on the losing side. Now, though he is a ronin, he has every quality to be a great leader and fights against 70 bandits with his six men.

Hero and Heroism

• KATAYAMA Gorobei

• Experienced, self-controlled master samurai, who is a great strategist supporting Kanbei as his right-hand man, though he does not look like it.

Hero and Heroism

• Shichiroji• He worked for Kanbei before he lost tenure.

Extremely loyal to Kanbei and knows perfectly what his former master wants and how he behaves. A model feudal man of honour and duty.

Hero and Heroism

• HAYASHIDA Heihachi

• Not a great swordsman but has a great sense of humour and unexpected sensitivity cheering other samurais and villagers.

Hero and Heroism

• 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.

Hero and Heroism

• OKAMOTO Katsushiro

• Young, novice samurai, who adores Kanbei. He is naïve and innocent at start but grows up under the tutelage of Kanbei through his touch battle experiences.

Hero and Heroism

• 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 he has no skills as a swordsman

Hero and Heroism

• ‘Seven samurai is about the relationship between the samurai and the villagers. And I wanted to show each samurai as an individual.’ Kurosawa Akir

Hero and Heroism

• 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

Hero and Heroism

• 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.

Hero and Heroism

• 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 worrior. Sanjuro - a great medieval anti-hero.

Hero and Heroism

• In Red Beard (1965) the doctor named NI’IDE 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.

Hero and Heroism

• High and Low (1963) - The wealthy company executive, GONDO, mortgages everything he has to buy out his company. The son of his chauffeur is kidnapped being mistaken for his own child. He agrees to pay the ransom from the money that he has saved to take over the company.

Hero and Heroism

• A Russian tribesman is an unlikely hero who guides a team of a Russian topographical expedition in a Siberian journey in the extreme climate. Derus Uzala

Humanism and Humanitarianism

• Trust in human goodness and decency• Trust in human rationality and wisdom• Humanism - all human beings are rational and

can be enlightened. Thus, they have dignity and worth which are unique to themselves.

• Humanitarian concerns - the revelation of deprived and oppressive conditions and the demonstration of the wish to improve them.

• Humanitarian and humanistic ideals backbone of film characters’ heroism and heroic actions.


• He gives everything he has in his last days in order to get a mosquito-infected bog drained and make it into a public park – the local community’s dream.

• Heroism of a small man and petit bureaucrat • Humanism defeats bureaucracy


• 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


• 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 townsfolk.


• 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 and throughout the 1950 and 60s.


‘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

• SUBTHEME• 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 Sanshiro and YANO Shogoro in

Sugata Sanshiro• 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.

• WTANABE Kanbei, the experienced warrior and the young samurai, Katsushiro, who has yet to fight in a battlefield in Seven Samurai.

• The compassionate doctor, NI’IDE and the young and ambitious doctor YASUMOTO in Red Beard.

Kurosawa Akira - maker of men’s filmsHeroic men; male relationship and comradeship;Little space for women; few female characters who are as impressive as male counterparts.

Kurosawa Akira Heroes and Heroism. Kurosawa’s Films Kurosawa Akira (1910-1998) SIGNIFICANT BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS (early life) His dream to be an artist;

Documents