Kurosawa’s Birthday Month, Day 13

Congratulations to yesterday’s winner, Caroline! Caroline’s pick for a work of Western literature she wishes Kurosawa had adapted was Oedipus Rex:

I would love to have seen Kurosawa do Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Honestly, I think that he is the only filmmaker who could have successfully adapted the very influential Western work. His directing style and writing sensibilities could have brilliantly rendered the paranoia, alienation, and fated tragedy of the protagonist. I can just imagine the dark mood, eerie period atmosphere, and jarring music that Kurosawa would have used in depicting this story. The chorus would obviously have been done in a really original way, and the climax of Oedipus blinding himself and his final exile seems like it was written with Kurosawa in mind. And finally, Toshiro Mifune would have been fantastic in the role.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, write a Kurosawa-related limerick.

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must reside in the U.S. or Canada and leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a copy of Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa by Teruyo Nogami).

UPDATE: Our winner is Joren Cain:

There once was a man named Toshiro.
In film after film, he’s our hero.
And then, in Yojimbo,
A town’s future in limbo,
He reduces the bad guys to zero.

Congratulations, Joren!

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