Born on March 23, 1910 in Tokyo, Akira Kurosawa was the youngest of his eight siblings. Kurosawa said his first significant role model and influence was his art teacher, named Tachikawa, who was focusing on his emphasis on art education for young students. It was in this way that the young kurosawa was introduced to film and the arts. An exceptional painter, he enrolled in an art school that underlined more Western styles types of art. About this time he also joined an artists" group with a great passion for Nineteenth century Russian literature, the writer Dostoevsky was a particular preference for him. Another person who Kurosawa looked up to and was influenced by was Heigo, his brother, who loved the film and worked as a benshi, a film narrator for foreign silent films. After his Heigo's suicide, Kurosawa feelings became deeply affected and at times would distract him while he was working on a project. .
In 1930 Kurosawa replied to an ad that expressed a film studio's need for assistant film directors. He applied and was granted the job and began assisting Kajiro Yamamoto. It was only a matter of time when he would start moving up in the film industry and hit it big. Kurosawa's exceptional talent for film granted him major film opportunities and in just 5 years he was already writing scripts and directing whole sequences for Yamamoto films. Finally his big break came in 1943, when he made his debut as a director with Judo Saga, in a magnificent martial arts sequence in which two masters fight to the death in a desolate field. Think about the commendations given to the similar fight sequences in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and it's clear why in 1943 people began to talk about a young film-maker with great potential and a bright future.
It was in World War II when his first films were produced, however these films did not express Kurosawa's true nature because he had to comply with Japanese government propaganda policy.