# Talk:Akira Kurosawa

The Author of this article credits Stray Dog as Kurosawa's first collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, when it is in fact Kurosawa's breakthrough film, Drunken Angel which first starred the then unknown Mifune in a Kurosawa film.  Drunken Angel was released in April of 1948 while Stray Dog was released in October of 1949.  By this point Kurosawa had already collaborated with mifune a second time in The Quiet Duel.  I believe it is important to recognize the significance of Drunken Angel, It is a spectacular film that is tremendously important to Japanese cinema and it is also responsible for launching Mifune's career as a actor and also introducing Kurosawa as a truly talented and skilled director.  Donald Ritchie notes the importance of this film in his book, The Films of Akira Kurosawa.  "Japanese critics have agreed that this picture is to Japanese cinema as Paisa or Bicycle Thieves is to Italian, that it perfectly epitomizes a period, its hopes, its fears: that it marks the major 'breakthrough' of a major directorial talent who has finally 'realized' himself."(Ritchie, 47)  I will try to formalize this correction within the actual article, but am new to Wikipedia, so if anyone reads this and notices that the error was left uncorrected than please assume I was unable to do so and please correct it if you are able.              

Any quoted material is taken from The Films of Akira Kurosawa by Donald Ritchie.

Why do we have only one close image of Kurosawa-sensei from the 1950s and one very small image of him in a group picture? Why on earth are there images of people like Dostoyevski, Ed McBain, Steven Spielberg, and a bust of Ingmar Bergman, but no later pictures of the subject of the article? I'm not the best person for the job, but I think there should be at least one more recent image of the subject of the article; probably more.
*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 17:47, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

It would be preferable to have more pictures of Kurosawa in this article, but that's all dependent on what photos Wikipedia can get permission to use, preferably those which are in the public domain or available under a Creative Commons license. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:07, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

I found a better image of Kurosawa from 1960. It is slightly later in time period, and it shows the front of his face instead of the side. It is also the one used on the Japanese 
wikipedia article of his. Should we use it as the infobox image? Windywendi (talk) 22:07, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

i know i'm late to this discussion, but there seems to have been no update to the photos here. but it would be nice to see it! i personally don't understand why there's still a painting of dostoevsky, a photo of ed mcbain, and a bust of bergman. ok, he was inspired by dostoevsky, but this article would in totality be better served by containing more pictures of the man himself, particularly later in life, or even more illustrative photos, of locations in his films, examples that relate better to the content of the article, for if mcbain, why not shakespeare?--Plifal (talk) 05:29, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

It's rather unusual to have a quote in the lead section, which is meant to be a summary of the article overall. Is there any particular justification for it here? Sdkb talk 16:40, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Copying from my talk:
You undid my addition of a quote to the lead of Akira Kurosawa. I think that was a mistake. The lead for William Shakespeare (a Featured Article) rounds out with the following from Ben Jonson: "not of an age, but for all time". The lead for James Joyce has the following from the man himself: "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." That's also a Featured Article.So I think it's entirely appropriate to have the Kurosawa quote in the lead, but won't press the issue until consensus has been reached. Charlie Faust (talk) 14:59, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
I think the quote in Shakespeare is rather different than the one I removed here because it's both short enough that it's more of an aphorism and highly famous as a quote in its own right. For Joyce, I'm not familiar enough with the subject to say whether the quote is famous enough to be due for the lead, but the lead overall is fairly long, so I would say there's a good chance it's inappropriate as well (and in any case WP:OTHERSTUFF).
The overall principle is that the lead ought to be a summary of [the article's] most important contents, and it's rare that a single thing someone said is so important to their overall life story as to merit inclusion in this sort of summary. Quotes are fine for the body, but it's hard to use them to summarize the body. We're not like a newspaper or an essay, where they can appear to help add flavor. Sdkb talk 16:31, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look a noticed that there were uncited statements, including entire paragraphs. Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 01:55, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

happy to help save this before that, do you mind listing a few areas of detail which you think need addressing?--Plifal (talk) 10:20, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
@Plifal: Thanks for offering to help save this. I have added citation needed tags to the article to indicate places without citations. Also, some sections (especially in the "Biography" section) are quite long: I recommend 2-4 paragraphs per heading, and longer sections to be broken up with additional headings or trimmed. Z1720 (talk) 13:13, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
@Z1720, thank you! i'll get to work on this. given that it's a vital article and the scope of some aspects of his life and work are likely going to receive more emphasis, do you have any recommendations re. the sections in the biography section? the others can be edited relatively easily, but 'first postwar films' through to the end of 'birth of a company' especially are some of the most written about periods of his life and aren't so easily reframed via different subsection headings. i'll think about it though. is it basically only the biography section has this issue? thanks for flagging by the way!--Plifal (talk) 13:46, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
@Plifal: I have never heard of this person, so I can't give suggestions on where to split until I read the article. I would suggest reading through the sections first and seeing if there is redundant words that can be trimmed. WP:REDEX has suggestions on how to do this. Afterwards, see if the text can be divided somewhere, or perhaps some prose that is too much detail can be moved to another article or removed. Z1720 (talk) 13:52, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
@Z1720, understood. i'm pretty familiar with the literature on his films at this point so this shouldn't be too much of an issue but may still take some time. if you have the inclination i must heartily recommend watching his films! seven samurai is a masterpiece of world cinema :) --Plifal (talk) 13:55, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
@Z1720, i have been through the article and should have addressed your concerns. anything pressing you can see?--Plifal (talk) 09:07, 7 June 2025 (UTC)
@Plifal: Nothing pressing. It seems fine now. Z1720 (talk) 19:55, 13 June 2025 (UTC)