The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was noted for his visually arresting and intellectually adventurous evocations of Japan's mythic past and agonized present. His films established him as one of the great epic poets of the cinema.

Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo and educated there at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied painting. He entered the world of film almost accidentally, by winning an essay contest on the major weakness of Japanese cinema. After working for five years in various capacities at Toho Studios, he made his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), an intimate study of the life of a judo champion.

Kurosawa's second venture, Most Beautifully (1944), focuses on the Japanese working-class woman, producing a vivid and authentic documentary. The Men Who Tread on the Tails of Tigers (1944), a brilliant parody of a Kabuki story, was banned by the Japanese government because of its...