Red Beard
Kurosawa quickly moved on to his next project, "Red Beard". Based on a short story collection by Shūgorō Yamamoto and incorporating elements from Dostoyevsky's novel "The Insulted and Injured", it is a period film, set in a mid-nineteenth century clinic for the poor, in which Kurosawa's humanist themes receive perhaps their fullest statement. A conceited and materialistic, foreign-trained young doctor, Yasumoto, is forced to become an intern at the clinic under the stern tutelage of Doctor Niide, known as "Akahige" ("Red Beard"), played by Mifune. Although he resists Red Beard initially, Yasumoto comes to admire his wisdom and courage, and to perceive the patients at the clinic, whom he at first despised, as worthy of compassion and dignity.