Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I

by Shinobu Hashimoto

Overview

Any list of Japan's greatest screenplay writers would feature Shinobu Hashimoto at or near the top. This memoir, focusing on his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa, a gifted scenarist in his own right, offers indispensable insider account for fans and students of the director's oeuvre and invaluable insights into the unique process that is writing for the screen.

The vast majority of Kurosawa works were filmed from screenplays that the director co-wrote with a stable of stellar writers, many of whom he discovered himself with his sharp eye for all things cinematic. Among these was Hashimoto, who caught the filmmaker's attention with a script that eventually turned into Rashomon. Thus joining Team Kurosawa the debutant immediately went on to play an integral part in developing and writing two of the grandmaster's most impressive achievements, Ikiru and Seven Samurai.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939130587
Publisher:	Kodansha USA
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Shinobu Hashimoto is an award-winning screen-writer and film producer, best known across the globe for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa. Born in 1918, in southern Japan, Hashimoto was only a middle-school graduate before he entered the world of film. His debut work was an immediate critical success in the form of the screenplay for Kurosawa's Rashomon. Through the years he went on to work on the following movies among his more than 50 films: Rashomon, Ikiru -To Live-, The Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, and The Outrage with Paul Newman.

Table of Contents

Prologue Tokyo March 9

Chapter 1 The Birth of Rashomon 15

My Comrade at the Disabled Veterans' Rehabilitation Facility 17

My Lifelong Mentor, Mansaku Itami 22

Chapter 2 The Man Called Akira Kurosawa 41

Rashomon 43

Ikiru 65

Seven Samurai I 88

Seven Samurai II 111

Chapter 3 The Lights and Shadows of Collaborative Screenplays 141

The "Writer Leading Off" Approach 143

The Straight-to-Final Draft 149

Chapter 4 Hashimoto Pro and Mr. Kurosawa 177

Two Assistant Directors 179

Kagemusha 188

Ran 194

Chapter 5 What Followed for Mr. Kurosawa 203

Epilogue 219

Ryuzo Kikushima 221

Hideo Oguni 231

Akira Kurosawa 235

Editorial Reviews

Fans of Japanese cinema, as well as film historians should make it a point to read Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I, due to its immense profundity on both Hashimoto's impact on cinema as a whole, as well as Kurosawa's output as a filmmaker. Shinobu Hashimoto is one of the greatest screenwriters of Japan and this book can help English language speakers discover just a bit more about him, through one of the finest film books to be released in a long time.... Highly Recommended!” —FilmMonthly

“Part memoir, part screenwriting textbook, part treatise on the art of filmmaking, Compound Cinematics is a fascinating look inside the mind of one of the great screenwriters and his collaborations with one of the world’s greatest directors.... the book gives a wealth of information on how the director prepared for his films and wrote them. For Kurosawa scholars and even just fans of his movies, these details are absolutely wonderful.... for the sections with Kurosawa and the behind-the-scenes look at three of the world’s greatest films, this book is highly recommended.” —Cinema Sentries

“If you are interested in the creative process behind some of the greatest works of cinema, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book.... Hashimoto is one of the unsung masters. And Kurosawa is a master who cannot be sung enough. A book on their collaborations is a treasure for practitioners of screen storytelling and fans of movie history alike.” —Making the Movie

From the Publisher