Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo. His father was a former army officer who became an athletic instructor. At 17 Kurosawa enrolled at an art school and then worked as a commercial artist. In 1936 he got a job as an assistant and scriptwriter to director at Photo Chemical Laboratories, which became better known as Toho Studios (the production company also behind Godzilla, among other films). By 1941 he was writing scripts and directing whole sequences. The first …showed first 75 words of 380 total…

…showed last 75 words of 380 total…recovered, Kurosawa spent nearly four years with Dersu Uzala, a Soviet-Japanese co-production, set in Siberia. In the 90s Kurosawa made his last and most personal films: Akira Kurosawa's Dreams and Rhapsody in August. Akira Kurosawa died on September 1, 1998, in Tokyo. After his death, he was honored with the most prestigious award a civilian can receive in Japan. George Lucas, Francis Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg all admit to having been heavily influenced by Kurosawa.