Download or read book Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan written by David A. Conrad and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The samurai films of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa are set in the past, but they tell us much about the present, as do his crime stories, romances, military films, medical dramas and art films. His movies are beloved for their timeless protagonists and haunting vistas of old Japan, but we haven't yet fully grasped everything they can teach us about modern Japan. Kurosawa's films evolved as Japan redefined and reinvented itself, from movies made for the wartime regime to those made amid the trials of American occupation. From the lavish epics of the economic miracle years to searching masterpieces made with international assistance in a globalizing world, Kurosawa's movies responded to changing times. This detailed study of all 30 of Kurosawa's films analyzes the links between the thrilling narratives onscreen and the equally remarkable events that occurred in Japan over his long, productive career. This book explores how Kurosawa's classics depict the political, economic, cultural, sexual and environmental upheavals of a nation at the center of a turbulent century, both directly and through period-piece mythmaking.
Download or read book Akira Kurosawa written by Eric San Juan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The career of acclaimed filmmaker Akira Kurosawa spanned more than five decades, during which he directed more than thirty movies, many of them indisputable classics: Rashomon, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo, among others. During the height of his creative output, Kurosawa became one of the most influential and well-known directors in the world, inspiring filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and movies such as The Magnificent Seven; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; and Star Wars. In Akira Kurosawa: A Viewer’s Guide, Eric San Juan provides a comprehensive yet accessible examination of the artist’s entire cinematic endeavors. From early films of the 1940s such as Sanshiro Sugata and No Regrets for Our Youth to Oscar winner Dersu Uzala—the author helps readers understand what makes Kurosawa’s work so powerful. Each discussion includes a brief synopsis of the film, an engaging analysis, and thoughtful insights into the film’s significance. All of Kurosawa’s works, from 1943 to 1993, are analyzed here, including the overlooked television documentary Song of the Horse, produced in 1970. In addition to more than twenty photos, Akira Kurosawa: A Viewer’s Guide provides rich discussions that will appeal to students of cinema as well as anyone who wants to learn more about Japan’s greatest director.
Download or read book Akira Kurosawa written by Eric San Juan and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an accessible look at the films of Akira Kurosawa, whose movies are works of art and popular culture touchstones, influencing such directors as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The author examines all of the director's works and explains why that film is culturally significant and what makes it an enjoyable viewing experience.
Download or read book All the Emperor s Men written by Hiroshi Tasogawa and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2012 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). When 20th Century Fox planned its blockbuster portrayal of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, it looked to Akira Kurosawa a man whose mastery of the cinema led to his nickname "the Emperor" to direct the Japanese sequences. Yet a matter of three weeks after he began shooting the film in December 1968, Kurosawa was summarily dismissed and expelled from the studio. The tabloids trumpeted scandal: Kurosawa had himself gone mad; his associates had betrayed him; Hollywood was engaged in a conspiracy. Now, for the first time, the truth behind the downfall and humiliation of one of cinema's greatest perfectionists is revealed in All the Emperor's Men. Journalist Hiroshi Tasogawa probes the most sensitive questions about Kurosawa's thwarted ambition and the demons that drove him. His is a tale of a great clash of personalities, of differences in the ways of making movies, and ultimately of a clash between Japanese and American cultures.
Download or read book Kurosawa written by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work will become not only the newly definitive study of Kurosawa, but will redefine the field of Japanese cinema studies, particularly as the field exists in the west.
Download or read book Akira Kurosawa written by Peter Cowie and published by Rizzoli International Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first and only illustrated book on the work of the master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa timed for the centennial of his birth. By looking at the full range of Kurosawa's films, this book captures the meticulously crafted visual style of one of the world's great directors in more than 200 images, many never before published. Akira Kurosawa is arguably the greatest of all Japanese film directors and is respected around the world as one of the masters of the art form. This is the first illustrated book to pay tribute to his unmistakable style-with more than two hundred images, many never before published. The filmmaker is also famous for his attention to detail, and fans will delight in seeing annotated script pages, sketches, and storyboards that reveal the meticulous craft behind Kurosawa's genius. Peter Cowie examines how Kurosawa took the samurai genre to its apogee in such films as Yojimbo and Seven Samurai; his literary influences in such films as Throne of Blood [Macbeth] and Ran [King Lear]; and in his take on our relationship to the modern world in such films as High and Low and Dreams.
Download or read book Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan written by David A. Conrad and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-04-22 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The samurai films of legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa are set in the past, but they tell us much about the present, as do his crime stories, romances, military films, medical dramas and art films. His movies are beloved for their timeless protagonists and haunting vistas of old Japan, but we haven't yet fully grasped everything they can teach us about modern Japan. Kurosawa's films evolved as Japan redefined and reinvented itself, from movies made for the wartime regime to those made amid the trials of American occupation. From the lavish epics of the economic miracle years to searching masterpieces made with international assistance in a globalizing world, Kurosawa's movies responded to changing times. This detailed study of all 30 of Kurosawa's films analyzes the links between the thrilling narratives onscreen and the equally remarkable events that occurred in Japan over his long, productive career. This book explores how Kurosawa's classics depict the political, economic, cultural, sexual and environmental upheavals of a nation at the center of a turbulent century, both directly and through period-piece mythmaking.
Download or read book Akira Kurosawa written by Akira Kurosawa and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work includes the collected interviews with the first Japanese film director to become widely known in the West when his film "Rashomon" won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951.
Download or read book Something Like An Autobiography written by Akira Kurosawa and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated by Audie E. Bock. "A first rate book and a joy to read.... It's doubtful that a complete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtained without reading this book.... Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction." --Variety "For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments." --Washington Post Book World
Download or read book From Book to Screen written by Keiko I. McDonald and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2000 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the connections between Japan's modern literary tradition and its national cinema. The first part offers a historical and cultural overview of the working relationship that developed between pure literature and film. The second analyzes 12 literary works and their adaptions.
Download or read book The Emperor and the Wolf written by Stuart Galbraith, IV and published by . This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 848 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune made 16 feature films together, including "Rashomon, Seven Samurai, " and "Yojimbo. The Emperor and the Wolf" is an in-depth look at these two great artists and their legacy that brims with behind-the-scenes details about their tumultuous lives and stormy relationships with the studios and with one another. Two 16-page photo inserts.
Download or read book Kurosawa s Rashomon written by Paul Anderer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking investigation into the early life of the iconic Akira Kurosawa in connection to his most famous film—taking us deeper into Kurosawa and his world. Paul Anderer looks back at Kurosawa before he became famous, taking us into the turbulent world that made him. We encounter Tokyo, Kurosawa’s birthplace, which would be destroyed twice before his eyes; explore early twentieth-century Japan amid sweeping cross-cultural changes; and confront profound family tragedy alongside the horror of war. With fresh insights and vivid prose, Anderer discusses the Great Earthquake of 1923, the dynamic energy that surged through Tokyo in its wake, and its impact on Kurosawa as a youth. When the city is destroyed again, in the fire-bombings of 1945, Anderer reveals how Kurosawa grappled with the trauma of war and its aftermath, and forged his artistic vision. Finally, he resurrects the specter and the voice of a gifted and troubled older brother—himself a star in the silent film industry—who took Kurosawa to see his first films, and who led a rebellious life until his desperate end. Kurosawa’s Rashomon uncovers how a film like Rashomon came to be, and why it endures to illuminate the shadows and the challenges of our present.
Download or read book Waiting on the Weather written by Teruyo Nogami and published by Stone Bridge Press, Inc.. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revealing memoir about the director and his films, by his first assistant for fifty years.
Download or read book Visions of Japanese Modernity written by Aaron Andrew Gerow and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Aaron Gerow focuses on the early period in which the institutional and narrational structure of Japanese cinema was in flux, arguing that the transnational intertext is less important than the power-laden operations by which the meaning of cinema itself was discursively defined. Both progressive critics of the 'pure film' movement and the more conservative Japanese cultural bureaucrats demanded a unitary text that suppressed the hybrid and unpredictable meanings attendant on early Japanese cinema's informal exhibition contexts. Gerow points out the irony that the progressive and individualist pure film movement critics worked in concert with the Japanese state to undo the 'theft' of Japanese cinema, proposing to replace representations of Japan in Western films by exporting a Japanese cinema 'reformed' to emulate the international norm.
Download or read book Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan written by Rachael Hutchinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-08-21 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Censorship in Japan has seen many changes over the last 150 years and each successive system of rule has possessed its own censorship laws, regulations, and methods of enforcement. Yet what has remained constant through these many upheavals has been the process of negotiation between censor and artist that can be seen across the cultural media of modern society. By exploring censorship in a number of different Japanese art forms – from popular music and kabuki performance through to fiction, poetry and film – across a range of historical periods, this book provides a striking picture of the pervasiveness and strength of Japanese censorship across a range of media; the similar tactics used by artists of different media to negotiate censorship boundaries; and how censors from different systems and time periods face many of the same problems and questions in their work. The essays in this collection highlight the complexities of the censorship process by investigating the responsibilities and choices of all four groups – artists, censors, audience and ideologues – in a wide range of case studies. The contributors shift the focus away from top-down suppression, towards the more complex negotiations involved in the many stages of an artistic work, all of which involve movement within boundaries, as well as testing of those boundaries, on the part of both artist and censor. Taken together, the essays in this book demonstrate that censorship at every stage involves an act of human judgment, in a context determined by political, economic and ideological factors. This book and its case studies provide a fascinating insight into the dynamics of censorship and how these operate on both people and texts. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars interested in Japanese studies, Japanese culture, society and history, and media studies more generally.
Download or read book Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature written by Rachael Hutchinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing the Other in Modern Japanese Literature looks at the ways in which authors writing in Japanese in the twentieth century constructed a division between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in their work. Drawing on methodology from Foucault and Lacan, the clearly presented essays seek to show how Japanese writers have responded to the central question of what it means to be ‘Japanese’ and of how best to define their identity. Taking geographical, racial and ethnic identity as a starting point to explore Japan's vision of 'non-Japan', representations of the Other are examined in terms of the experiences of Japanese authors abroad and in the imaginary lands envisioned by authors in Japan. Using a diverse cross-section of writers and texts as case studies, this edited volume brings together contributions from a number of leading international experts in the field and is written at an accessible level, making it essential reading for those working in Japanese studies, colonialism, identity studies and nationalism.
Download or read book Akira Kurosawa written by Peter Wild and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two,” said Francis Ford Coppola. “Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.” Through masterpieces such as Kagemusha, Seven Samurai, and High and Low, Akira Kurosawa (1910–98) influenced directors from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to Martin Scorsese, and his groundbreaking innovations in cinematography and editing, combined with his storytelling, made him a cinematic icon. In this succinct biography, Peter Wild evaluates Kurosawa’s films while offering a view of the man behind the camera, from his family life to his global audience. After discussing Kurosawa’s childhood in Japan, Wild explores his years as an assistant director at a new film studio and his early films during and after World War II before he won international acclaim with Rashomon. While surveying Kurosawa’s impressive career, Wild also examines the myriad criticisms the director faced both within his own country and abroad—he was too influenced by Western cinema; not authentically Japanese; and he was too sentimental, naïve, arrogant, or out of touch. By placing Kurosawa and his films in the context of his times, Wild helps us to understand the director and the reproaches against him. Cogent and concise, Akira Kurosawa will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of this masterful filmmaker.
