We are pleased to announce that Paul Anderer, Fred and Fannie Mack Professor of Humanities in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, has authored a new book titled Kurosawa’s Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Iconic Films. The book, published by Pegasus Books in October 2016, is a groundbreaking investigation into the early life of the iconic Akira Kurosawa in connection to his celebrated 1950 film “Rashomon.”
From the publisher:
Although he is a filmmaker of international renown, Kurosawa and the story of his formative years remain as enigmatic as his own Rashomon. Paul Anderer looks back at Kurosawa before he became famous, taking us into the turbulent world that made him. We encounter Tokyo, Kurosawa’s birthplace, which would be destroyed twice before his eyes; explore early twentieth-century Japan amid sweeping cross-cultural changes; and confront profound family tragedy alongside the horror of war. From these multiple angles we see how Kurosawa’s life and work speak to the epic narrative of modern Japan’s rise and fall. With fresh insights and vivid prose, Anderer engages the Great Earthquake of 1923, the dynamic energy that surged through Tokyo in its wake, and its impact on Kurosawa as a youth. When the city is destroyed again, in the fire-bombings of 1945, Anderer reveals how Kurosawa grappled with the trauma of war and its aftermath, and forged his artistic vision. Finally, he resurrects the specter and the voice of a gifted and troubled older brother—himself a star in the silent film industry—who took Kurosawa to see his first films, and who led a rebellious life until his desperate end. Bringing these formative forces into focus, Anderer looks beyond the aura of Kurosawa’s fame and leads us deeper into the tragedies and the challenges of his past. Kurosawa’s Rashomon uncovers how a film like “Rashomon” came to be, and why it endures to illuminate the shadows and the challenges of our present.
“Paul Anderer offers us not only the spiritual, philosophical, and aesthetic evolution of one of the pre-eminent masters of world cinema but a close insightful analysis of his most seminal and influential film. Lucid, knowing and elegantly nuanced, Kurosawa’s Rashomon is a pivotal read not only for film makers and film scholars but for anyone who is simply enraptured by the masterworks of this giant of twentieth century culture.”
-Richard Price, author of The Whites and Lush Life
The book is available to purchase through Amazon and other booksellers.
