"Paul Anderer takes an altogether fresh look at Kurosawa’s most famous film, finding its deep wellsprings in catastrophes both public and private. His book gives a rich sense of the turbulent modernist currents and formidable pre-war film culture that nurtured Kurosawa’s art, and movingly conveys just how much was at stake in every frame of his greatest works."
"A powerful and deeply engrossing account of one of the greatest artists—and greatest films—of modern times. Paul Anderer, who wears his learning lightly, deftly brings to life Kurosawa’s world, work, and influences. This is cultural history at its very best."
"A well-researched study that is part biography of Kurosawa, part cultural history of modern Japan and part film monograph. Energetic, straightforward, and free of academic jargon."
New York Times Book Review
"One would think there’s little room for a fresh perspective on the man and his movies, but Paul Anderer’s compelling account of Kurosawa’s formative years proves otherwise. Kurosawa's Rashomon is a page-turner. Evocative, poetic, and informative. Kurosawa’s Rashomon does a wonderful job of fleshing out the historical and cultural context in which Kurosawa grew up, encouraging one to go back and revisit his films with new eyes."
"Paul Anderer takes an altogether fresh look at Kurosawa’s most famous film, finding its deep wellsprings in catastrophes both public and private. His book gives a rich sense of the turbulent modernist currents and formidable pre-war film culture that nurtured Kurosawa’s art, and movingly conveys just how much was at stake in every frame of his greatest works."
Paul Anderer…has written a well-researched study that is part biography of Kurosawa, part cultural history of modern Japan and part film monograph. He is previously the author of two scholarly works, but his prose in Kurosawa's Rashomon is energetic, straightforward and free of academic jargon…
The New York Times Book Review - Phillip Lopate
08/22/2016 Anderer (Other Worlds: Arisima Takeo and the Bounds of Modern Japanese Fiction) explores the early life of Japan’s most famous film director, Akira Kurosawa, in this meandering and unsuccessful work. Active for more than 50 years, Kurosawa directed classics such as The Seven Samurai, Ran, and Rashomon. Anderer’s premise is that a more complete understanding of Kurosawa’s films can be obtained by examining the director’s relationship with his older brother, Heigo, a film actor and suicide; the dual destructions of Tokyo in 1923 and 1945; and the director’s early political leanings. This approach hinges on the message at the core of Rashomon: one must hear multiple sides of the story to know what has happened. Anderer takes this too far in his writing, which is elliptical to the point of confusion, and often repetitive. Heigo’s suicide and two lost Tokyos are seminal life events for Kurosawa, but there seem to be half a dozen other influences during this period. Anderer provides some sense of the connection between the brothers, mostly expressed through their shared love of literature, but little explanation of what Tokyo meant to them. This book would be much aided by more straightforward chronology and some judicious editing. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Oct.)
09/15/2016 When Rashomon won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion in September 1950, the world embraced its director, Akira Kurosawa (1910–98), who quickly gained unrivaled prominence—Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg are a few of his self-declared disciples. Beyond reaching iconic status and inspiring endless volumes of analyses and critiques, Rashomon has become "a key word of our time," referring to the impossibility of knowing the truth and instead being confronted with multiple perceptions of what might have happened. Anderer (Mack Professor of Humanities, Columbia Univ.; Other Worlds: Arishima Takeo and the Bounds of Modern Japanese Fiction) turns that Rashomon effect on the film itself, presenting the inspirations and histories that went into its creation, including the pivotal consequences of the youthful double suicide of Kurosawa's beloved older brother and his lover, writer Ryunosuke Akutagawa's original texts, Japanese film history, Kurosawa's films before and after, important collaborators' reminiscences, and much more. VERDICT In spite of a culturally provocative premise, the narrative repeats and temporally wanders often; moreover, the text's assumed familiarity with Kurosawa's films suggests general audiences are unlikely to have the sustained interest to finish.—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
2016-07-26 A prismatic look at the esteemed filmmaker’s life.In his masterpiece Rashomon (1950), Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) presents contradictory stories about a murder in 12th-century Japan, as told by several witnesses. For viewers, notes film scholar Anderer (Humanities/Columbia Univ.; editor: Literature of the Lost Home: Kobayashi Hideo—Literary Criticism, 1924-1939, 1995, etc.) in his sensitive investigation of Kurosawa’s life, the retellings create “a horrifying gap between our words and images about the world and the world itself.” The author successfully uses a strategy similar to Kurosawa’s in focusing on forces that shaped Kurosawa’s art, and a complicated, enigmatic, and unsettling portrait emerges. The filmmaker seemed determined to obscure his past; in his memoir, Something Like an Autobiography (1982), he never told “the whole story” about his family life, including his older brother, Heigo, who could be abusive and manipulative but also protective and nurturing. After a restless, rebellious adolescence, Heigo became a successful benshi, a performer who narrated silent movies, taking characters’ voices and adding “lyrical riffs, ironical asides, or mood-inducing groans, shrieks, and whispers.” He was “fanatical” about movies, taking his brother to see the black-and-white films of the 1920s that later indelibly inspired him. But Heigo’s influence went beyond aesthetics: in 1933, when movies incorporated sound, Heigo’s career was over. He led a strike, but when it failed, he killed himself. Reports of his suicide, however, were inconsistent, leaving Kurosawa to wonder if he had been despondent over work or a love affair; if he killed himself with his lover; if he had a child, and if the child lived or died. Anderer also traces other dark forces in Kurosawa’s life, including the great earthquake of 1923, which destroyed Tokyo and Yokohama, and “the hollowed-out emptiness” of postwar Japan. The author gives enough details about Rashomon to suffice for readers who have not seen that film or others that he examines from Kurosawa’s oeuvre. Perceptive insights about the mysterious heart of a legendary movie and its maker.