Editing Akira Kurosawa (section)

=== Childhood to war years (1910–1945) ===
==== Childhood and youth (1910–1935) ====
Kurosawa was born on March 23, 1910,<ref>{{Harvnb|San Juan|2018|p=11}}</ref> in [[Ōimachi Station|Ōimachi]] in the [[Ōmori]] district of Tokyo. His father Isamu (1864–1948), a member of a [[samurai]] family from [[Akita Prefecture]], worked as the director of the Army's Physical Education Institute's [[Secondary education in Japan#Middle school|lower secondary school]], while his mother Shima (1870–1952) came from a merchant's family living in [[Osaka]].<ref name="Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=14–15">{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=14–15}}</ref> Akira was the eighth and youngest child of the moderately wealthy family, with two of his siblings already grown up at the time of his birth and one deceased, leaving Kurosawa to grow up with three sisters and a brother.<ref name="Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=14–15" /><ref name="Kurosawa 1983 17">{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|p=17}}</ref>

In addition to promoting physical exercise, Isamu Kurosawa was open to [[Western world|Western traditions]] and considered theatre and motion pictures to have educational merit. He encouraged his children to watch films; young Akira viewed his first movies at the age of six.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=5–7}}</ref> An important formative influence was his [[Elementary schools in Japan|elementary school]] teacher Mr. Tachikawa, whose progressive educational practices ignited in his young pupil first a love of drawing and then an interest in education in general.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=12–13}}</ref> During this time, Akira also studied [[calligraphy]] and [[Kendo]] swordsmanship.<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|p=16}}</ref>

Another major childhood influence was Heigo Kurosawa (1906–1933), Akira's older brother by four years. In the aftermath of the [[1923 Great Kantō earthquake|Great Kantō earthquake]] and the subsequent [[Kantō Massacre]] of 1923, Heigo took the thirteen-year-old Akira to view the devastation. When Akira wanted to look away from the corpses of humans and animals scattered everywhere, Heigo forbade him to do so, encouraging Akira instead to face his fears by confronting them directly. Some commentators have suggested that this incident would influence Kurosawa's later artistic career, as the director was seldom hesitant to confront unpleasant truths in his work.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=51–52}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Prince|p=302}}</ref>

Heigo was academically gifted, but soon after failing to secure a place in Tokyo's foremost [[Secondary education in Japan#Upper secondary school|high school]], he began to detach himself from the rest of the family, preferring to concentrate on his interest in foreign literature.<ref name="Kurosawa 1983 17" /> In the late 1920s, Heigo became a [[benshi]] (silent film narrator) for Tokyo theaters showing foreign films and quickly made a name for himself. Akira, who at this point planned to become a painter,<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=70–71}}</ref> moved in with him, and the two brothers became inseparable.<ref name="Galbraith IV 2002 19">{{Harvnb|Galbraith|p=19}}</ref> With Heigo's guidance, Akira devoured not only films but also theater and circus performances,<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=72–74, 82}}</ref> while exhibiting his paintings and working for the left-wing Proletarian Artists' League. However, he was never able to make a living with his art, and, as he began to perceive most of the proletarian movement as "putting unfulfilled political ideals directly onto the canvas", he lost his enthusiasm for painting.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|p=77}}</ref>

With the increasing production of [[Sound film|talking pictures]] in the early 1930s, film narrators like Heigo began to lose work, and Akira moved back in with his parents. In July 1933, Heigo died by suicide. Kurosawa has commented on the lasting sense of loss he felt at his brother's death<ref>{{Harvnb|Richie|1999|p=11}}</ref> and the chapter of ''[[Something Like an Autobiography]]'' that describes it—written nearly half a century after the event—is titled, "A Story I Don't Want to Tell".<ref name="story">{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|p=84}}</ref> Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his three surviving sisters.<ref name="Galbraith IV 2002 19" /><ref name="story" />

==== Director in training (1935–1941) ====
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 | image1 = Akira Kurosawa, Ishiro Honda, Senkichi Taniguchi, and Kajiro Yamamoto.jpg
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 | caption1 =  From the left: Kurosawa, [[Ishirō Honda]], and [[Senkichi Taniguchi]] with their mentor [[Kajirō Yamamoto]], late 1930s
 | image2 = Akira Kurosawa and Mikio Naruse during the shooting of Nadare, 1937.jpg
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 | caption2 =  Kurosawa (left) and [[Mikio Naruse]] (right) during the production of ''Avalanche'' (1937)
}}
In 1935, the new film studio Photo Chemical Laboratories, known as P.C.L. (which later became the major studio [[Toho]]), advertised for assistant directors. Although he had demonstrated no previous interest in film as a profession, Kurosawa submitted the required essay, which asked applicants to discuss the fundamental deficiencies of Japanese films and find ways to overcome them. His half-mocking view was that if the deficiencies were fundamental, there was no way to correct them. Kurosawa's essay earned him a call to take the follow-up exams, and director [[Kajirō Yamamoto]], who was among the examiners, took a liking to Kurosawa and insisted that the studio hire him. The 25-year-old Kurosawa joined P.C.L. in February 1936.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=89–93}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|p=25}}</ref>

During his five years as an assistant director, Kurosawa worked under numerous directors, but by far the most important figure in his development was Yamamoto. Of his 24 films as [[Assistant director|A.D.]], he worked on 17 under Yamamoto, many of them comedies featuring the popular actor [[Ken'ichi Enomoto]], known as "Enoken".<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=652–658 }}</ref> Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director to chief assistant director after a year.<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=29–30}}</ref> Kurosawa's responsibilities increased, and he worked at tasks ranging from stage construction and film development to location scouting, script polishing, rehearsals, lighting, dubbing, editing, and second-unit directing.<ref>{{Harvnb|Goodwin|1994|p=40}}</ref> In the last of Kurosawa's films as an assistant director for Yamamoto, ''[[Horse (1941 film)|Horse]]'' (1941), Kurosawa took over most of the production, as his mentor was occupied with the shooting of another film.<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|p=35}}</ref>

Yamamoto advised Kurosawa that a good director needed to master screenwriting.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|p=103}}</ref> Kurosawa soon realized that the potential earnings from his scripts were much higher than what he was paid as an assistant director.<ref>{{Harvnb|Goodwin|1994|p=42}}</ref> He later wrote or co-wrote all his films and frequently penned screenplays for other directors such as [[Satsuo Yamamoto]]'s film, ''[[Tsubasa no gaika|A Triumph of Wings]]'' (''Tsubasa no gaika'', 1942). This outside scriptwriting would serve Kurosawa as a lucrative sideline lasting well into the 1960s, long after he became famous.<ref name="Akira Kurosawa" /><ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=658–707}}</ref>

==== Wartime films and marriage (1942–1945) ====
In the two years following the release of ''Horse'' in 1941, Kurosawa searched for a story he could use to launch his directing career. Towards the end of 1942, about a year after the [[Attack on Pearl Harbor|Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor]], novelist Tsuneo Tomita published his [[Musashi (novel)|Musashi Miyamoto]]-inspired judo novel, ''Sanshiro Sugata'', the advertisements for which intrigued Kurosawa. He bought the book on its publication day, devoured it in one sitting, and immediately asked Toho to secure the film rights. Kurosawa's initial instinct proved correct as, within a few days, three other major Japanese studios also offered to buy the rights. Toho prevailed, and Kurosawa began pre-production on his debut work as director.<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|p=39}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=121–123}}</ref>

Shooting of ''[[Sanshiro Sugata]]'' began on location in Yokohama in December 1942. Production proceeded smoothly, but getting the completed film past the censors was an entirely different matter. The censorship office considered the work to be objectionably "British-American" by the standards of wartime Japan, and it was only through the intervention of director [[Yasujirō Ozu]], who championed the film, that ''Sanshiro Sugata'' was finally accepted for release on March 25, 1943. (Kurosawa had just turned 33.) The movie became both a critical and commercial success. Nevertheless, the censorship office would later decide to cut out some 18 minutes of footage, much of which is now considered lost.<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=43, 45–46}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=124–128, 130–131}}</ref>

He next turned to the subject of wartime female factory workers in ''[[The Most Beautiful]]'', a propaganda film which he shot in a semi-documentary style in early 1944. To elicit realistic performances from his actresses, the director had them live in a real factory during the shoot, eat the factory food and call each other by their character names. He would use similar methods with his performers throughout his career.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=132–135 }}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=46–51 }}</ref>

[[File:Photo during the shooting of The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail 2, 1945.jpg|thumb|right|Filming of ''[[The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail]]'', 1945]]
During production, the actress playing the leader of the factory workers, [[Yōko Yaguchi]], was chosen by her colleagues to present their demands to the director. She and Kurosawa were constantly at odds, and it was through these arguments that the two paradoxically became close. They married on May 21, 1945, with Yaguchi two months pregnant (she never resumed her acting career), and the couple would remain together until her death in 1985.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=137–139}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=55–57}}</ref> They had two children, both surviving Kurosawa {{as of|2018|lc=y}}: a son, Hisao, born December 20, 1945, who served as producer on some of his father's last projects, and [[Kazuko Kurosawa|Kazuko]], a daughter, born April 29, 1954, who became a costume designer.<ref name="Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=64, 191">{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=64, 191}}</ref>

Shortly before his marriage, Kurosawa was pressured by the studio against his will to direct a sequel to his debut film. The often blatantly propagandistic ''[[Sanshiro Sugata Part II]]'', which premiered in May 1945, is generally considered one of his weakest pictures.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kurosawa|1983|pp=135–137}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=51–55}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Richie|1999|pp=24–25}}</ref>

Kurosawa decided to write the script for a film that would be both censor-friendly and less expensive to produce. ''[[The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail]]'', based on the [[Kabuki]] play ''[[Kanjinchō]]'' and starring the comedian Enoken, with whom Kurosawa had often worked during his assistant director days, was completed in September 1945. By this time, Japan had surrendered and the [[occupation of Japan]] had begun. The new American censors interpreted the values allegedly promoted in the picture as overly "feudal" and banned the work. It was not released until 1952, the year another Kurosawa film, {{lang|ja-latn|Ikiru}}, was also released. Ironically, while in production, the film had already been savaged by Japanese wartime censors as too Western and "democratic" (they particularly disliked the comic porter played by Enoken), so the movie most probably would not have seen the light of day even if the war had continued beyond its completion.<ref>{{Harvnb|Galbraith|pp=660–661}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Richie|2001|p=106}}</ref>