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.

Victor Santos (Polar, Violent Love) writes and illustrates a crime and mystery story inspired by Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s tales featuring the heroic commissioner Heigo Kobayashi When the body of a skilled samurai is found along the road to Yamashina in feudal Japan, the search begins for his killer. Detective Heigo Kobayashi takes the case but finds only dead-end clues and no firsthand witnesses.

Rashomon By Akutagawa Ryunosuke This was not only lust, as you might think. At that time if I'd had no other desire than lust, I'd surely not have minded knocking her down and running away. Then I wouldn't have stained my sword with his blood. But the moment I gazed at her face in the dark grove, I decided not to leave there without killing him

Akira Kurosawa is widely known as the director who opened up Japanese film to Western audiences, and following his death in 1998, a process of reflection has begun about his life’s work as a whole and its legacy to cinema. Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon has become one of the best-known Japanese films ever made, and continues to be discussed and imitated more than 60 years after its first screening. This book examines the cultural and aesthetic impacts of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, as well as the director’s larger legacies to cinema, its global audiences and beyond. It demonstrates that these legacies are manifold: not only cinematic and artistic, but also cultural and cognitive. The book moves from an examination of one filmmaker and his immediate social context in Japan, and goes on to explore how an artist’s ideas might transcend their cultural origins to ultimately provide global influences. Discussing how Rashomon’s effects began to multiply with the film being re-imagined and repurposed in numerous media forms in the decades that followed its initial release, the book also shows that the film and its ideas have been applied to a wider range of social and cultural phenomena in a variety of institutional contexts. It addresses issues beyond the realm of Rashomon within film studies, extending to the Rashomon effect, which itself has become a widely recognized English term referring to the significantly different interpretations of different eyewitnesses to the same dramatic event. As the first book on Rashomon since Donald Richie's 1987 anthology, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of film studies, film history, Japanese cinema and communication studies. It will also resonate more broadly with those interested in Japanese culture and society, anthropology and philosophy.

"Rashomon" is one of the greatest of Japanese director Akira Kurasowa's films and the winner of the Academy Award for best foreign picture in 1952. It features Toshiru Mifune, the best-known Japanese actor in the West, as "the bandit", an accused rapist and murderer. This volume brings together the full continuity script of "Rashomon", an essay by Donald Richie on "Rashomon", the Akutagawa Stories upon which the film is based, critical reviews and commentaries on the film and a filmography.

"Rashomon and Other Stories" has had a profound impact on both Japanese and international literature. The stories "Rashomon" and "In a Bamboo Grove" were famously adapted into the 1950 film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, which brought Akutagawa's work to a global audience and won numerous awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Akutagawa's exploration of the human condition, his innovative narrative techniques, and his ability to capture the complexities of moral and existential dilemmas have cemented his place as one of Japan's greatest writers. His works continue to be studied and appreciated for their literary merit and their insights into the human psyche.

Award-winning writer Parker brings ancient Japan to life in a tale of blackmail and murder among high-ranking nobles. 10 illustrations.