Filmmaking technique of Akira Kurosawa

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The legacy of filmmaking technique left by Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998) for subsequent generations of filmmakers has been diverse and of international influence beyond his native Japan. The legacy of influence has ranged from working methods, influence on style, and selection and adaptation of themes in cinema. Kurosawa's working method was oriented toward extensive involvement with numerous aspects of film production.^[1] He was also an effective screenwriter who would work in close contact with his writers very early in the production cycle to ensure high quality in the scripts which would be used for his films.

Kurosawa's aesthetic visual sense meant that his attention to cinematography and filming was also demanding and often went beyond the attention which directors would normally expect to use with their cameramen. His reputation as an editor of his own films was consistent throughout his lifetime in his insisting on close participation with any other editors involved in the editing of his films. Throughout his career, Kurosawa worked constantly with people drawn from the same pool of creative technicians, crew members and actors, popularly known as the "Kurosawa-gumi" (Japanese: 黒澤組, 'Kurosawa group').

The style associated with Kurosawa's films is marked by a number of innovations which Kurosawa introduced in his films over the decades. In his films of the 1940s and 1950s, Kurosawa introduced innovative uses of the axial cut and the screen wipe which became part of the standard repertoire of filmmaking for subsequent generations of filmmakers. Kurosawa, and his emphasis on sound-image counterpoint, by all accounts always gave great attention to the soundtracks of his films and he was involved with several of Japan's outstanding composers of his generation including Toru Takemitsu.^[2]

There are four themes which can be associated with Kurosawa's filmmaking technique which recur from his early films to the films he made at the end of his career. These include his interest in (a) the master-disciple relationship, (b) the heroic champion, (c) the close examination of nature and human nature, and (d) the cycles of violence. Regarding Kurosawa's reflections on the theme of cycles of violence, these found a beginning with Throne of Blood (1957), and became nearly an obsession with historical cycles of inexorable savage violence—what Stephen Prince calls "the countertradition to the committed, heroic mode of Kurosawa's cinema"^[3] which Kurosawa would sustain as a thematic interest even toward the end of his career in his last films.