What's In A Film? The Films of Akira Kurosawa Quiz

Answer: A carnation

"Drunken Angel" is where Kurosawa really hit his stride and he said, "In this picture I was finally myself. It was my picture. I was doing it and nobody else." Given this freedom, he decided to have a stab at the gangster way of life, and managed to avoid either glorifying, demonising, or sentimentalising the gangster. He preferred to "show how silly they (gangsters) are as human beings".

He does create a certain amount of sympathy for Matsunaga in the viewer, as well as in the doctor who takes Matsunaga under his wing to a certain extent despite times of extreme tension between the two. However, Matsunaga throwing the carnation into the fetid lake seems to be confirmation that he is beyond hope.

"Drunken Angel" starred Toshiro Mifune as Matsunaga in his first of 16 films under Kurosawa's direction. Doctor Sanada was played by Takashi Shimura, who had been working with Kurosawa since the director's début "Sanshiro Sugata". He ended up in 21 of Kurosawa films.

Answer: His pistol

Green detective Murakami, who is played by Toshiro Mifune, is paired up with veteran detective Sato, played by Takashi Shimura, and the relationship that builds up is warm and entertaining to watch. Murakami gets distressed every time he hears of a crime involving a pistol, worried that his stolen weapon might have been used to hurt somebody.

As in many Kurosawa films the weather plays a pivotal role in "Stray Dog". At the very start of the film a narrator tells us "it was a very hot day", and the film is drenched in sweat. Somehow, Mifune's performance as Murakami running around Tokyo in such oppressive heat is physically exhausting to watch.

The title "Stray Dog" would at first appear to refer to the crook who has stolen Murakami's pistol, but Kurosawa scholar Donald Richie has argued that the stray dog is actually Murakami since "when he loses the pistol he feels unmanned - worse, he feels unidentified. A detective is not a policeman. He has no uniform. His only identity is his pistol. If you take that away from him you take away everything". Because he has lost his weapon, Murakami thinks he'll be fired. "If he loses his position, he has no place in society. He becomes a stray."

Answer: A baby

The story of the rape and murder is told from various perspectives, one of which is that of the murder victim's ghost. The stories are incongruent, and since each witness has a reason to lie, the viewer is never really sure who to believe. Although Kurosawa seems to be saying something rather cynical about human selfishness, when the baby is found and taken in by one of the three men (a poor woodcutter), he counterbalances the bleak vision with a sense of hope in humankind.

"Rashomon", which was based on two short stories by Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, starred Kurosawa regulars Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, and Minoru Chiaki. It was a huge critical success and really made Kurosawa's reputation abroad. It's since become one his most discussed films and a classic of cinema. It was remade in 1974 as "The Outrage", a Western which starred Edward G. Robinson and Paul Newman.

About the red herrings: an umbrella would have come in handy, a dagger is a vital part of the story, and I just threw the pig in for fun.

Answer: A playground

"Ikiru", which means "to live", is one of Kurosawa's most life-affirming, heart-warming films in some ways, and one of his most pessimistic in others. There is a clear message in the title, and in the fact that Watanabe (played by Takashi Shimura) does actually do something concrete for the local community, but he has to be given a kind of death sentence in order to do so. When he is given the diagnosis that he has incurable cancer, a narrator tells us, "He is like a corpse, and actually he has been dead for the past 25 years."

His colleagues at his wake praise his altruism and promise to be more like him, but we know that when they get back to the office they'll wallow in bureaucratic conundrums once again.

One of my favourite Kurosawa scenes is when Watanabe is out on the town in search of worldly pleasures he has shunned all his life, and he ends up in a nightclub drunkenly singing the sorrowful Japanese song "Gondola no Uta". Here's a snippet of the plaintive lyrics:

"Life is brief
fall in love, maidens
before the raven tresses
begin to fade
before the flame in your hearts
flicker and die
for those to whom today
will never return"

Answer: In rice

The villagers have to survive on millet in order to feed the samurai.

"Seven Samurai" is probably Kurosawa's best-known work, partly thanks to "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), which is heavily indebted to "Seven Samurai". It was a watershed in terms of size, not only for Kurosawa but for Japanese cinema as a whole. It was a huge and expensive production, but also a huge success, both commercially and critically. It has since entered the canon of quality cinema.

"Seven Samurai" wasn't the only of Kurosawa's films to be used as a blueprint for other directors, to name just two; "Yojimbo" (1962) was the basis for Sergio Leone's "A Fistful Of Dollars" amongst others, and "The Hidden Fortress" (1958) was cannibalised by George Lucas for "Star Wars". However, to my mind none of the aforementioned come close to the artistic majesty of Kurosawa's originals.

Answer: Brazil

Toshiro Mifune plays the elderly character Kiichi Nakajima brilliantly despite actually having only been in his mid-thirties at the time of filming. Of course, Takashi Shimura's here too, playing the part of a dentist who takes his civil duty very seriously, hence his place on the Domestic Relations Department of the Tokyo Family Court. The court has to intervene in a family dispute, i.e. the majority of Nakajima's family wants him to be declared non compos mentis due to his madcap idea of moving to Brazil.

The film came about when Kurosawa's regular composer Fumio Hayasaka (who was seriously ill) and Kurosawa got caught up in the anti-nuclear testing zeitgeist. Obviously, the Japanese were even more suspicious of nuclear experiments than the countries who were actually carrying them out (USA, Russia, UK), and the two friends decided they should make a film on the topic.

It was originally planned as a satire, but in turned into more of a tragedy. Kurosawa later commented, "The way we felt, how could we have made a satire?" Nevertheless, the film does retain some of the original satire, which is actually one of the things that I admire about the film. He did manage to make something of a satire on a topic which was still extremely sensitive in 1955, a mere 10 years after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was the last time Kurosawa's old friend Fumio Hayasaka worked with Kurosawa since he died before finishing the score.

Answer: An office block

The office block shape is a reference to the window of an office block from which a company employee had conveniently jumped to his death five years previously, and Kurosawa's Hamlet-esque attack on corporate corruption begins to unfold.

"The Bad Sleep Well" was the first film produced by Kurosawa Productions, and now that Kurosawa had complete control, he thought carefully about what sort of film to make. He opted for "something about corruption, because it has always seemed to me that graft, bribery, etc., at the public level, is one of the worst crimes that there is".

Kurosawa painted quite a depressing picture of bribery, blackmail, and even murder being rife in the world of corporate business, and hinted at links to people in very high places. He later spoke of being disappointed with himself and his lack of bravery in going further and being quite explicit in his exposure, but like he said "you are bound to run into serious trouble".

Answer: Camellia flowers

Although "Sanjuro" wasn't conceived as being in any way linked to Kurosawa's previous film "Yojimbo", the latter's success in 1961 meant that the pressure was on Kurosawa to deliver the goods once again. The films are ostensibly very similar, most obviously in the almost identical lead character, but Kurosawa pointed out that the films are also very different. One of the greatest differences is how clear Kurosawa's message is in "Sanjuro", i.e. bloodshed is always awful and that "really good swords are kept in their scabbards". Humour is also more evident in "Sanjuro", maybe more so than in any other of Kurosawa's oeuvre.

The lead in both "Sanjuro" and "Yojimbo" was played by Toshiro Mifune, but the name he goes under is partly different. In both films he calls himself Sanjuro (which means 30 years old), but in "Yojimbo" he takes the second name Kuwabatake, in "Sanjuro" Tsubaki. The two words mean "mulberry field" and "camellia" respectively, and he picks them because they are what he is looking at when questioned as to his moniker.

Answer: His chauffeur's son

"High and Low" should actually have been called "Heaven and Hell", not only because that's the literal translation from the Japanese, but also because it captures the essence of the film better. The film is split into two neat parts, the first part mainly taking place in heaven; Gondo's deluxe apartment which sits perched on a ridge overlooking the city of Yokohama. The second part is hell; the rough part of Yokohama, where we are shown the kidnapper and his abode. The first part deals with the kidnapping and the ransom, the second is a police hunt for the culprit.

The music for the film was composed by Masaru Sato, who had been a pupil of Kurosawa's previous resident composer, Fumio Hayasaka. When Hayasaka died in 1955, Sato took over from him and composed the music for all of Kurosawa's films between 1955 and 1963, the last of which was "High and Low".

Answer: It's been set on fire

"Ran" is of course (roughly) based on Shakespeare's "King Lear", and whilst two of Lord Hidetora's sons have joined forces against him, the third son, who he banished, is actually loyal to him.

Kurosawa had the third castle built purposefully for the film, and on the slopes of Mount Fuji no less. In the documentary "The Making of Ran", we see Kurosawa's meticulous perfectionism in the rehearsals that lead up to each shot, which were vital in the filming of the burning castle since it could hardly be reshot.

"Ran" was hugely expensive to make, and the scale of the film is awesome. However, it's interesting to consider the film in comparison to some of Kurosawa's much simpler undertakings such as "The Lower Depths" or even "Rashomon". When seen in this light it's clear that the grand spectacle of "Ran" works because it's right for the story, just as the simple staging of the other films works for those stories.