In 2018 author Peter Tasker and Zen Photo Gallery decided to celebrate the 20th year of the passing of Japanese world cinema master director Akira Kurosawa with an elaborately illustrated hardbound coffee table book, On Kurosawa. And as an artifact, this book is successful with the extensive collection of movies stills, illustrations, and photographs by Akihide Tamura. The handsome book design was created by Satoshi Machiguchi and Yuka Nagase of MATCH and Company. The book is divided into seven sections starting with “I Masterpieces” followed by “II Breakthrough,” “III Who is Kurosawa?,” “Kurosawa & Mifune,” “V Slump,” “VI Recovery,” and ending with “VII Coda.” In addition, there is a useful list of sources which include “Films Associated with Kurosawa,” “Films About Kurosawa and Associates,” “Related Films: Mishima and Yamamoto,” “Books-English” and “Books-Japanese,” and an “Other” section with links to interesting Youtube videos, a Japanese Playboy article from 2008, and an internet link to a page about Kurosawa and Mifune. The text is comprised of a mix of essays, poetry, and short-stories inspired by one of Kurosawa’s 30 films, exploring both Kurosawa’s legacy as well as the truth and relevance of those films today. Some of the pieces are more successful than others in expressing these concepts. For example, in the section “Screen: Scandal” Tasker explores Kurosawa’s relationship with journalists and his inspiration for the 1950 film in which journalists are the villains. Tasker was also illuminating he wrote four different narratives (from the points of view of the producer, the auteur, the go-between, and the critic) about what went wrong when Kurosawa was dismissed from a production in the entry “Screen: Tora!Tora!Tora!”. “Screen: Rhapsody in August” addresses Kurosawa’s controversial take on the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki with a summary of the film interspersed with criticisms of Kurosawa’s victimization of Japan in the film by three different critics. There are other points in the essay when Tasker provides interesting tangents related to Kurosawa and his films such as a discussion of unimpressive contemporary re-makes of some of his films (“Screen: 21st Century Turkeys”), a list of Kurosawa’s favorite books (“Life: reading Books”), a discussion of the few women who appear in his films (“Life: Women”), and a list of his favorite 100 films of all time (“Life: Going to the Cinema”). Tasker’s book can be seen as a tantalizing introduction to the world of Kurosawa or as an additional resource for admirers of the great director. Either way, the volume would look good on any coffee table.
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