Marketing Japan: Akira Kurosawa and Other Short, Fun Japanese Videos Online!

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

A lot of cinema fans in the west just love Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa, but did you know that he is more famous in the west than he is in Japan? Actually, that happens a lot with artists and musicians from Japan; they are popular in the west, but not so much in Japan.

Kurosawa didn't become even remotely popular in Japan until years after Seven Samurai was released in 1954 and remade in the USA as "The Magnificent Seven," starring Yul Brenner, Eli Wallach and Steve McQueen in 1960. 

Many people believe that Seven Samurai is one of the ten greatest movies ever made and is the very first action movie. 

So, today, for your Sunday morning pleasure, I wanted to show you  few things that I found that are very nice and I thought very culturally interesting for your enjoyment. The first is a one minute short film montage of Japanese posters of the films directed by Akira Kurosawa, played to the theme music of "Yojimbo." It is only one minute long and very fun!

Double click on video for full screen

Double click on video for full screen

Here is also a great Akira Kurosawa documentary (about 11 minutes) that talks about the director's life with much detail about Seven Samurai.

Double click on video for full screen

Double click on video for full screen

This material is from an Internet site that I often enjoy going to and searching around. It is called the Internet Archive - it is absolutely free - and it is full of rights free materials that can be used for student films and other non-profit uses. To show you what can be done using the materials here, I used one here for a Punk Rock and Horror video that I made with Ken Nishikawa a few years ago. It is for the Kyoto girl's punk band, The Soap. Watch it here:

Double click on video for full screen

Double click on video for full screen

Pretty cool, eh?

Anyway, I digress... The Internet Archive is full of great films, short and long and I highly recommend it.

The Internet Archive is here.

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Keywords:
Japan, Akira Kurosawa, Eli Wallach, Mike Rogers, Seven Samurai, Marketing Japan, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, The Soap, Kyoto, Ken Nishikawa, Punk Rock, horror video, Yojimbo, Internet, Internet archive, cinema, Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, Magnificent Seven

Kurosawa Film Trailers (Part 4 of 5)

Here is part 4 of 5 of Akira Kurosawa film trailers in English

High and Low (1963)

From Wikipedia:

High and Low (天国と地獄 Tengoku to Jigoku, literally "Heaven and Hell") is a 1963 film directed by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshirō Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai and Kyōko Kagawa. It was loosely based on King's Ransom, an 87th Precinct police procedural by Ed McBain.

Akahige (Red Beard) 1965

From Wikipedia:

Red Beard (赤ひげ Akahige) is a 1965 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa about the relationship between a town doctor and his new trainee. The film was based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's short story collection, Akahige shinryotan (赤ひげ診療譚). Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and the Injured provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), who is rescued from a brothel. Red Beard looks at the problem of social injustice and explores two of Kurosawa's favourite topics: humanism and existentialism.

Dodesuka-den (1970)

From Wikipedia:

Dodesukaden (どですかでん) is a film by Akira Kurosawa set in a contemporary Japanese rubbish dump. The film focuses on the lives of a variety of characters who happen to live in the dump. The first one introduced is a mentally challenged boy who pretends to be a tram conductor by following a set route through the dump in an imaginary tram that he mimes. The film title refers to a Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound made by a tram or train while in motion ( "Do-desu-ka-den do-desu-ka-den do-desu-ka-den"). The sound is made by the boy as he makes his daily faux-tram route through the dump. Dodesukaden was filmed on an actual dump in Tokyo.

This was Kurosawa's first color film, and he took full of advantage of the new color medium. After the success of Red Beard, it took Kurosawa five years before this film appeared. None of the actors from Kurosawa's stock company of the 1950's and 60's were in this film and most of the cast were relatively unknown. Dodesukaden was unlike anything that Kurosawa had made before, and was critically panned in Japan despite earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film for the 44th Academy Awards for films made in 1970. 

Dodesukaden was Kurosawa's first financial failure and came during the worst possible time in his life. When Dodesukaden was filmed Kurosawa had been going through a lull in his career and personal life - he was finding it increasingly difficult to obtain financing despite the critical and financial success of his previous films, and rumors about his deteriorating mental health only made matters worse. Dodesukaden was only made by the cooperation and co-producing of three other Japanese directors, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi, and Kon Ichikawa.

The critical failure of Dodesukaden sent Kurosawa into a deep depression, and in 1971 he attempted suicide. Despite having slashed himself over 30 times with a razor, Kurosawa survived his suicide attempt; however, he would not return to filmmaking for five years, releasing Dersu Uzala in 1975.

Kurosawa Film Trailers (Part 3 of 5)

Here is part 3 of 5 of Akira Kurosawa film trailers in English.

The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

From Wikipedia:

The Bad Sleep Well (悪い奴ほどよく眠る Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru) is a 1960 film directed by the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. It was the first film to be produced under Kurosawa's own independent production company. It was entered into the 11th Berlin International Film Festival.

The film stars Toshirō Mifune as a young man who gets a prominent position in a corrupt postwar Japanese company in order to expose the men responsible for his father's death. It has its roots in Shakespeare'sHamlet. It also is a critique of corporate corruption.

Yojimbo (1961)

From Wikipedia:

Yojimbo (用心棒 Yōjinbō) is a 1961 jidaigeki (period drama) film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It tells the story of a ronin (masterless samurai), portrayed by Toshirō Mifune, who arrives in a small town where competing crime lords make their money from gambling.

Sanjuro (1962)

From Wikipedia:

Sanjuro (椿三十郎 Tsubaki Sanjūrō) is a 1962 black and white Japanese samurai film directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshirō Mifune. It is a sequel to Kurosawa's previous film Yojimbo, with Mifune reprising his role as a wandering ronin. The film combines action and humour, and is lighter in tone than its predecessor.

Kurosawa Film Trailers (Part 2 of 5)

Here is part 2 of 5 of Akira Kurosawa Film Trailers in English.

Seven Samurai (1954) 

From Wikipedia:

Seven Samurai (七人の侍 Shichinin no Samurai  is a 1954 Japanese film co-written, edited and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film takes place in Warring States Period Japan (around 1587/1588). It follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (ronin) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.

Seven Samurai is described as one of the greatest and most influential films ever made, and is one of a select few Japanese films to become widely known in the West for an extended period of time. It is the subject of both popular and critical acclaim; it was voted onto Sight & Sound's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1982 and 1992, and remains on the directors' top ten films in the 2002 poll.

Throne of Blood (1957)

From Wikipedia:

Throne of Blood is a 1957 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa. Its original Japanese title isKumonosu-jō (蜘蛛巣城), which means "Spider Web Castle". The film transposes the plot of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth to feudal Japan.

Hidden Fortress (1958)

(This is the film that George Lucas said inspired Star Wars.)

From Wikipedia:

The Hidden Fortress (隠し砦の三悪人 Kakushi toride no san akunin) is a 1958 jidai-geki film directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshirō Mifune as General Rokurota Makabe and Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki. A literal translation of the Japanese title is The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress.

Kurosawa Film Trailers (Part 1 of 5)

Since there seems to be much interest in Kurosawa films, I have searched Youtube for you and found a bunch of Kurosawa trailers in English or with English subtitles.

These pages are heavy so I will split them up into different groups. This is part 1 of 5.

Rashomon (1950)

From Wikipedia:

Rashomon (羅生門 Rashōmon^?) is a 1950 Japanese crime mystery film directed by Akira Kurosawa, working in close collaboration with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. It stars Toshirō Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyō and Takashi Shimura. The film is based on two stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa — ("Rashomon" provides the setting, while "In a Grove" provides the characters and plot).

Rashomon can be said to have introduced Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western audiences, albeit to a small and discerning number of theatres, and is considered one of his masterpieces. The film won theGolden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and also received an Academy Honorary Award at the 24th Academy Awards.

The Idiot (1951)

From Wikipedia:

The Idiot (白痴 Hakuchi^?) is a 1951 Japanese film by director Akira Kurosawa. It is based on the novelThe Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was filmed in black and white at an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. It was Kurosawa's second film for the Shochiku studio, after the previous year's Scandal.

Originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes, the film was severely cut at the request of the studio, against Kurosawa's wishes, after a single poorly-received screening of the full-length version. When the re-edited version was also deemed too long by the studio, Kurosawa sardonically suggested the film be cut lengthwise instead.^[1] According to Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, there are no existing prints of the original 265-minute version. Kurosawa would return to Shochiku forty years later to make Rhapsody in August, and, according to Alex Cox, is said to have searched the Shochiku archives for the original cut of the film to no avail.

"Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favourite author, and he is the one — I still think — who writes most honestly about human existence."

—Akira Kurosawa^[2]

Ikiru (1952)

From Wikipedia:

Ikiru (生きる "To Live"^?) is a 1952 Japanese film co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film examines the struggles of a minor Tokyo bureaucrat and his final quest for meaning. The film stars Takashi Shimura as Kanji Watanabe.



Parts two ~ five will be up tomorrow!