March 23 - Akira Kurosawa

Happy Birthday, Akira Kurosawa! Born today in 1910, this Japanese editor, screenwriter, producer and film director had made thirty films in a career spanning fifty-seven years.  

  

In 1936, Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry, following a brief stint as a painter. 

After the war, he had cast the then-unknown Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune in a starring role for his critically acclaimed 1948 Japanese black and white drama/crime film 'Yoidore Tenshi' ('Drunken Angel'). 

  

The film afterwards cemented Kurosawa's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would then go on to collaborate on another fifteen films. 

  

In 1990, Kurosawa accepted the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. This occurred at the 62nd Academy Awards in late March of that year. 

  

Posthumously, he was named "Asian of the Century" in the "Arts, Literature, and Culture" category by AsianWeek magazine and CNN, cited there as being among the five people who most prominently contributed to the improvement of Asia in the 20th century.  

  

Kurosawa's career has been honored by many retrospectives, critical studies and biographies in both print and video, and by releases in many consumer media formats. 

  

The obvious influence of his more monumental titles make it easy to overlook the more humanistic, personal aspects of the master’s wide array of low-key, contemporary dramas and potent literary adaptations.  

  

Kurosawa is one of Japanese cinema’s few household names in the west, due to such groundbreaking jidaigeki (lit. "period dramas") action films.

On May 23, 2010, a Googe Doodle was created in what would have been Kurosawa's 100th birthday.

However, this was only found on Google UK, Google Israel, and many of the other international Google properties. 

Today, he is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. 

  

Kurosawa had been active from 1936–1993. 

  

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