Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) moved with ease and mastery from the mysterious and internal to the spectacular and panoramic. Kurosawa was a man of all genres and all periods, bridging the traditional and the modern, the old and the new, the East and the West. He had a flair for fusing Western literature with elements from his native Kabuki theater. Ran retells King Lear as a samurai tale; Throne of Blood retells Macbeth; Hakuchi adapts Fyodor Dostoevsky\\'s The Idiot as a tale set in northern Japan.

Kurosawa became the first Japanese director widely known in the West when his Rashomon won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. His film techniques and storytelling innovations have greatly influenced European and American film, particularly westerns.

Because of his ability to control all aspects of film production and to maintain artistic control on almost all of his projects, Kurosawa was known throughout Japan as \\the Emperor.\\ Ranging from 1952 to the mid-1990s, this collection includes an interview by Lillian Ross, a conversation with Gabriel GarcA-a Marquez, and a previously unpublished interview with the book\\'s editor.

Bert Cardullo is professor of American culture and literature at Ege University, in Izmir, Turkey. He is the author of In Search of Cinema: Selected Writings on International Film Art and Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter.