Kurosawa’s Humanism

It is fourteen years now since Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashomon burst on the world, evoking reactions ranging from waspish—”slow, complacent, Louvre-conscious, waiting-for-prizes” (Manny Farber in The Nation)—to ecstatic—”It is a rare cinema treat” (Philip T. Hartung). Today, Kurosawa’s reputation, refueled by annual chefs-d’oeuvre, shows no signs of flagging, and no one would raise an eyebrow at the statement that he is a towering figure of the film. What does surprise many people in the West is his enormous popularity in his native country. The Japanese public has a habit of bandying directors’ names that is unthinkable almost anywhere else. It is as though British or American fans were to swap encomiums not only for Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and The Beatles but for George Stevens, David Lean, and John Frankenheimer. Kurosawa is a national presence despite the fact that he has unhesitatingly dealt in themes not usually thought “popular”: corruption in bureaucracy, the futility of the miltary system, the absurdity of Japanese face-saving and self-deception, the pomposity of the Kabuki Theater. In the West, only that supreme entertainer and supplier of vicarious thrills, Hitchcock, is known to the mass audience. If a new philosopher and poet of Kurosawa’s caliber were to emerge in the Western cinema, it is unlikely that he would go recognized beyond a minority of specialists.

Kurosawa is extremely reticent, unwilling to discuss his films on the ground that “if I could have said it in words I would have—then I wouldn’t have needed to make the picture” (“Kurosawa on Kurosawa” by Donald Richie; Sight and Sound, Summer 1964). He is a quiet, reserved man who saves all his energy for his work. Totally committed to his role as Japan’s foremost film artist, he has no time for interviewers and has granted only a handful in his career. He dislikes discussing techniques of film and will not speak in detail of other directors’ work. He has, however, expressed admiration for Ford, Stevens, and Wyler, and in general he thinks American movies far superior to his own.