Those Who Make Tomorrow

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, producer, and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a... brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata . After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel , in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshirō Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films. Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America.
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Kajirō Yamamoto was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, and actor who was known for his war films and comedies and as the mentor of Akira Kurosawa. Born in Tokyo, Yamamoto attended Keio University where he helped form a film appreciation society. He first appeared in film in 1921 as an... actor opposite Yoshiko Okada, but that only earned the wrath of his family, who disowned him. He worked as an actor on the stage, joined Nikkatsu as an assistant director, and finally made his directorial debut in 1924 at Tōa Kinema. After working at Nikkatsu again, he was lured to Photo Chemical Laboratories in 1934, where he first made a name filming the comedies of Kenichi Enomoto. When P. C. L. became the Toho company, Yamamoto helmed realist dramas such as Tsuzurikata kyōshitsu and Uma , and war films such as Hawai Mare oki kaisen. After World War II, he continued directing films, but increasingly worked in television and radio. He is now mostly known as the mentor of Akira Kurosawa, who served as his assistant director on 17 films.
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