Translated by Audie E. Bock.

"A first rate book and a joy to read.... It's doubtful that a complete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtained without reading this book.... Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction."
--Variety

"For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments."
--Washington Post Book World

Akira Kurosawa directs this loose adaptation of Ed McBain's crime novel. Industrialist Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) faces a dilemma when a kidnapper snatches the son of his chauffeur by mistake: if he pays the ransom, he will not be able to take over the shoe company he works for, and will face ruin as a result. Meanwhile, police pursue the kidnapper (Tsutomu Yamazaki) through the waterfront bars and heroin dens he frequents.

Six early films by Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa. The films included comprise: 'Sanshuro Sugata' (1943), 'Sanshuro Sugata No 2' (1945), 'The Most Beautiful' (1944), 'The Men Who Tread On the Tiger's Tail' (1952), 'No Regrets For Our Youth' (1946) and 'One Wonderful Sunday' (1947).

Collection of five classic films from the celebrated Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

In 'Ikiru' (1952) a dying man discovers a zest for life and desire to do some good after 30 years of dedicated work for the civil service. When Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), Chief of the Citizen's Section of the Town Hall, finds he has only six months to live he uses his influence to cut through bureaucratic red tape and give the go-ahead to the construction of a children's park in a poor area.

In 'Red Beard' (1965), set at the end of the Tokugawa era, domineering Dr Niide (Toshirô Mifune), known as 'Red Beard', is responsible for training new doctors, among them the lazy and socially ambitious Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama). However, through a series of lessons in human sufferings, Yasumoto is eventually transformed into a caring doctor.

In 'The Lower Depths' (1957), adapted from the play by Maxim Gorky, Sutekichi (Mifune) is a pedlar who hides from the police in a dosshouse. Here he encounters many different characters, including an older woman who is in love with a thief, himself infatuated with a younger woman.

In 'I Live in Fear' (1955), at the height of the Cold War, ageing Japanese foundry owner Kiichi Nakajima (Mifune) decides that he and his entire family must emigrate to Brazil in order to find safety from a potential nuclear attack. The rest of the family, unwilling to sell up and move, attempt to have Kiichi declared mentally incompetent.

'Dodes'ka-den' (1970), set in Tokyo, portrays the lives of a variety of slum-dwellers, including the mentally ill Roku-chan (Yoshitaka Zushi) who passes his days pretending to be a conductor on a make-believe tram.

This was Akira Kurosawa's first independent feature and for it he adapted an Ed McBain thriller, transposing the action to Japan. In this tale of revenge, Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune) obtains a position as private scretary to Iwabuchi (Masayuki Mori), the government official he suspects killed his father. Nishi then marries Iwabuchi's daughter and plans a fitting retribution.