Timeline

HEIAN PERIOD (794–1185)
966, 973	Respective birthdates of Sei Shonagon (The Pillow Book, 1002) and of Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji, 1010), women at court and literary rivals (to whom Kurosawa compares himself and his childhood friend).
1019	Birth of Abe Sadato (warrior leader; putative Kurosawa ancestor, d. 1062).
1120	Konjaku Monogatari (Tales of Times Now Past). A collection of folklore and Buddhist cautionary tales, circulating orally throughout the latter Heian period; first extant literary version dates to the early twelfth century (often used by Akutagawa to frame his historical fiction, such as Rashomon).
1180–85	Wars between the Heike and the Genji clans. Marks the end of the Heian “golden age,” and the destruction of Kyoto (period setting for the film Rashomon; historical locus for Kurosawa’s favorite classic, The Tales of the Heike).
	Yoshitsune (1159–1189). A leader of the victorious Genji. His older brother, Yoritomo, would turn on him.

KAMAKURA PERIOD (1185–1333)
1212	An Account of My Hut (Kamo no Chomei, 1155–1216). Buddhist parable of a world in ruins, caused by earthquake, fire, war, and human desire.

MUROMACHI PERIOD (1336–1573)
1363–1443	Zeami Motokiyo. With his father, Kan’ami, the principal creator of Noh theatre, which fused older harvest rituals, medieval acrobatics, and pantomime acts with court-based music and classical poetics; author of the Kadensho, a “manual” of Noh theatre practices, which Kurosawa read during the war; also the author of another Kurosawa favorite, Lady Han.

AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD (1573–1603)

Late 1500s

Historical locus for Seven Samurai. A period of intense upheaval, auguring the end of the feudal system and the onset of an “early modern” way of life. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Japan was forcibly united in fealty to the victorious Tokugawa Shogun. From domains on the “losing side” emerge an increasing number of ronin—masterless samurai who roam the towns and the countryside in search of sustenance and employment.

EDO (TOKUGAWA) PERIOD (1603–1867)
1644–1694	Matsuo Basho. Author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1694) and other haiku-filled travel chronicles.
1653–1725	Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The great dramatist of his time, writing for joruri or “puppet theatre,” and for kabuki, which used live actors. Author of such shinju-based plays as The Love Suicides at Sonezaki (1703), and The Love Suicides at Amijima (1720).
1670–1703	Horibe Yasubei. An orphan who became a warrior and a legend. His mother died in childbirth; his father was a ronin who died when Yasubei was thirteen; later adopted for his martial prowess by the Ako domain. Sentenced to commit ritual suicide (seppuku) for his role in the attack to avenge his Ako lord—the plot and the punishment fueling stories and plays about “The Forty-Seven Ronin.” (Kurosawa once likened his brother to him.)
1748	Date of the first joruri and kabuki performances of Chushingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), bringing the legend of the Forty-Seven Ronin to the stage.
1761–1816	Santo Kyoden. Born in Fukagawa in eastern Edo (present-day Tokyo); son of a pawnbroker. Author of popular, often salacious stories, set in or around the pleasure quarters.
1776–1822	Shikitei Sanba. Another author of playful, bawdy fiction, such as Ukiyoburo (Bathhouse of the Floating World, 1809–1813).
1840	Kanjincho (The Subscription List); a “modern” kabuki play that gained great popularity; a featured character here is allegedly based on a Kurosawa ancestor, the border captain Togashi.
1853	“Black Ships” enter Japanese waters, under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry, an American naval officer (1794–1858). Augurs the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and of Japan’s isolation.

MEIJI PERIOD (1868–1912)
1868	After a final battle with forces on the Tokugawa side, loyalists to the emperor declare an Imperial “Restoration” and the formation of a new government; “Meiji” (“enlightened rule”) is promulgated as the official reign name.
	The city of Edo is officially renamed Tokyo.
1869	Maruzen Bookstore founded in the area between Kyobashi and Nihonbashi. It is where successive generations of “literary youth” would go to find the latest translations of (mostly) Western literature.
1869–1882	“Hokkaido Development Commission” (Kaitakushi). Government-backed plan to better exploit the resources of its vast northern territory.
1875	Sapporo Agricultural College founded (where the author Arishima Takeo—father of Mori Masayuki—studied and later taught).
1888	Rendezvous (Aibiki), taken from Ivan Turgenev’s (1818–1883) Sketches from a Hunter’s Album, is translated from the Russian by the novelist Futabatei Shimei (1864–1909), to great acclaim.
1892–1893	Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, appears in installments, in a partial translation from English. (A complete translation from Russian would later be published serially in 1914–1915.)
1894–1895	Sino-Japanese War, ending in Japan’s victory; Treaty of Shimonoseki cedes parts of eastern Manchuria and the island of Formosa (Taiwan) to Japan.
1895–1896	Serialization of Takekurabe (Childhood Years) by the great female author of the period, Higuchi Ichiyo (1872–1896).
1898	Birth of Mizoguchi Kenji, renowned filmmaker and near contemporary of Kurosawa (d. 1956).
1899	Birth of Kawabata Yasunari, first Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1968 (d. 1972).
	Birth of Yamano Ichiro, famous film narrator/benshi; mentor to Kurosawa’s brother (d. 1958).
1901	A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), appears in a complete Japanese translation.
	Collection titled Musashino is published by Kunikida Doppo (author, 1871–1908).
1903	Birth of Ozu Yasujiro, renowned filmmaker, known especially for family-centered home dramas; helped Kurosawa get his first film a “pass” from the wartime censors (d. 1963).
1903	First Japanese translation of Leo Tolstoy’s (1828–1910) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (used by Kurosawa as a frame story for his Ikiru, 1952).
1904–1905	Russo-Japanese War. The Treaty of Portsmouth exacts limited concessions from the Russian side, provoking the Hibiya Riots (amid ongoing economic distress and demands for citizen participation in politics).
1906	Birth of Kurosawa Heigo, in Tokyo.
1908	Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) publishes his Psychology and Crime.
1909	Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons is published in a complete Japanese translation.
1910	Birth of Kurosawa Akira, in Tokyo (the youngest of the seven living siblings).
	Inaugural edition of the literary and culture magazine Shirakaba.
	Annexation of Korea.
	Anarchists, led by Kotoku Shusui (b. 1871), arrested in the Great Treason Incident.
	Birth of Uekusa Keinosuke (d. 1993), Kurosawa’s childhood friend (who later co-scripted One Wonderful Sunday and Drunken Angel with him).
	The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) first appears in a complete Japanese translation.
1911	Birth of the actor Mori Masayuki in Sapporo, Hokkaido. His family name is Arishima Yukimitsu; eldest son of the author Arishima Takeo.
	Execution of the anarchist Kotoku Shusui.
	Sensational debut of Matsui Sumako (1886–1919) in the role of Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
	The Public Prosecutor by Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) appears in a complete Japanese translation.
	Zigomar, French crime film, by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (1862–1913).
	Osanai Kaoru (1881–1928), who would become a leader of the “new theatre” movement, translates Anton Chekhov’s A Marriage Proposal into Japanese. Just after the war, Kurosawa would direct this play for the stage.

TAISHO PERIOD (1912–1926)
1912	Zigomar craze in Japan; the education and interior ministries warn of the harmful effects of watching and identifying with the popular criminal in this French serial.
1913	Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is published in a complete Japanese translation (from the English).
1914	Birth of Hayasaka Fumio (d. 1955), music composer and Kurosawa’s close friend who wrote the musical scores of his greatest films, including Rashomon.
1915	Akutagawa publishes the short story “Rashomon.”
	Matsui Sumako appears in a production of Turgenev’s On the Eve (his novel that had been adapted into a Japanese stage play). Matsui sings a popular piece written the same year, “The Gondolier’s Song” (Gondora no uta), which Kurosawa will have his dying hero Watanabe sing, twice, in the most moving of all his films—Ikiru (1952).
	Carmen by Prosper Merimee (1803–1870) appears in a complete Japanese translation. (Akutagawa makes use of it in writing his novella “Thieves,” 1917.)
1917	The Present and Future of Moving Pictures by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, 1886–1965 (famous novelist, early film fan, and scenario writer).
1917–1918	Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov appears serially, in what would become a complete translation from the Russian by Yonekawa Masao.
1919	Broken Blossoms by D. W. Griffith (1875–1948).
	Publication of Arishima Takeo’s A Certain Woman.
	Kurosawa begins his catalog of the silent films he saw, from this year until 1929.
	Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is published in a complete translation from the Russian.
	Kurosawa’s “little big sister” Momoyo dies, likely from the flu pandemic, at the age of sixteen.
1920	Birth of Mifune Toshiro, in Tsingtao, China.
1920–1924	Das Kapital, by Karl Marx, is published in Japanese in ten volumes over four years.
1921	The Kid by Charlie Chaplin; features an orphan “taken in.”
	First performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936). Kurosawa cites this play as an “avant-garde” influence on Rashomon.
	Orphans of the Storm by D. W. Griffith, a melodrama featuring orphans “found” on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral.
	Founding of the proletarian magazine The Sower.
	Tokyo premiere of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, made by the German filmmaker Robert Wiene in 1919, and narrated by the famous benshi Tokugawa Musei (1894–1971).
	Osugi Sakae’s translation of the Russian prince turned anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s (1842–1921) Autobiography.
	Earliest installments of Shiga Naoya’s A Dark Night’s Passing, which he would work on for sixteen years and complete in 1937.
1922	Publication of Akutagawa’s story “In A Grove.”
	Founding of the Japanese Communist Party.
	Nosferatu by F. W. Murnau.
	A full translation of Mikhail Artsybashev’s Breaking Point is published in two volumes. Kurosawa Heigo will call it “the world’s greatest novel.”
1923	Double-suicide in July of Arishima Takeo and his lover, Hatano Akiko (he is the author and father of the actor, Mori Masayuki, who plays the samurai in Rashomon).
	August: final issue of the magazine Shirakaba.
	Sept. 1: The Kanto Daishinsai (The Great Earthquake of 1923); massive destruction and loss of life in Tokyo and Yokohama.
	Osugi Sakae (author, anarchist, b. 1885) and his lover/partner, Ito Noe (author, feminist, b. 1895) are beaten to death in police custody.
1924	Founding of the avant-garde magazine MAVO.
1925	First radio broadcasts in Japan.
	Enactment of the “Peace Preservation Law,” broadening the power of the government to monitor and control activities deemed to be subversive.
	Kurosawa Heigo begins his career as a full-fledged film narrator (benshi) at the Ushigomekan in Kagurazaka.
	The Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein (Soviet filmmaker, 1898–1948).
	Joyless Street by G. W. Pabst (Austrian filmmaker, 1885–1967).
1926	A Page of Madness, experimental silent film directed by Kinugasa Teinosuke (1896–1982).

SHOWA PERIOD (1926–1989)
1927	Death (by an overdose of barbiturates) of Akutagawa; posthumous publication of his Spinning Gears and The Life of a Stupid Man.
	Kurosawa graduates from Keika Middle School.
	First of thirty-eight volumes in Shinchosha’s World Literature series (last volume appears in 1931).
1928	March 15 Incident (round-up of communists and other suspected subversives).
	Nikkaten Exhibition (Kurosawa is invited to contribute his “Still Life”).
	First performance of Bolero by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
1929	PCL (Photo Chemical Laboratories) founded; specializes in sound technology for film.
	The Second Proletarian Artist’s Exhibition, Ueno (sponsored by the “All-Japan Federation of Proletarian Arts,” aka Nappu). Kurosawa exhibits his labor paintings.
1930	Morocco by Josef von Sternberg. A popular talkie in Japan; augurs the end of the silent film and the career of the benshi.
	Earth by the Soviet director, Alexander Dovzhenko.
1931	Yoshikawa Eiji publishes Miyamoto Musashi, a modern retelling of the heroic ronin tale.
	Manchurian Incident. A rigged explosion on the Manchurian Railway creates a pretext for Japan to expand its operations on mainland China.
1932	Founding of Toho Studios (where Kurosawa trained and where he made the majority of his films).
1933	Japan withdraws from the League of Nations.
	Kobayashi Takiji, communist author, is murdered in prison by the police.
	Mass round-up of anti-government radicals, followed by coerced “confessions” of their ideological sins
	Suda Teimei (Kurosawa Heigo) commits double suicide with Nakamura Imako, using the drug karumochin, at an inn on the Izu Peninsula, on July 10.
1934	Emergence of organized professional baseball in Tokyo; a professional league will be established in 1936.
1937	China Incident (aka Marco Polo Incident). Hastens the “total war” between China and Japan.
	Bungaku za is established, the modern theatre company where Mori Masayuki was a founding member.
	Humanity and Paper Balloons, iconoclastic period film by Yamanaka Sadao, who was born in 1909. (Drafted into the army, Yamanaka died of dysentery in China, 1938.)
	Founding of the Manchukuo Film Association (Manei), headed by the Japanese army officer Amakasu Masahiko (d. 1945).
1940	Declaration of the euphemistic “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
	Signing of the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan.
1941	December 7 (December 8 in Japan), Japanese attack the Malay Peninsula and Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii.
1942	Tomita Tsuneo publishes Sugata Sanshiro (Toho purchases the rights).
	Kurosawa begins shooting his first film.
	Doolittle’s raids on Tokyo and the Battle of Midway (both signal the turning of military fortunes against Japan).
1944	The Most Beautiful, a wartime Kurosawa film featuring women (the lead role is played by Yaguchi Yoko, whom Kurosawa would marry).
1945	Fire-bombing of Tokyo (March through mid-August).
	Atomic bombing of Hiroshima (August 6).
	Atomic bombing of Nagasaki (August 9).
	Emperor’s radio address (August 15).
	Japanese surrender and the American occupation of Japan (September 2, 1945 through April 28, 1952).
1946	No Regrets for Our Youth, screenplay co-written with Hisaita Eijiro, proletarian playwright and screenwriter (1898–1976).
	Tokyo Trials begin on April 29, and continue for over two and a half years, until November 12, 1948.
1948	Author Dazai Osamu commits suicide along with his lover.
1950	Burning of the Temple of the Golden Pavilion by a deranged acolyte.
	Rashomon, produced by Daiei, is shot in the summer, and released in the early autumn.
1951	Rashomon wins the Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion) at the Venice International Film Festival.
1952	Rashomon receives an honorary Academy Award.
1953	NHK broadcasts mark the beginning of the television age in Japan.
1962	Abe Kobo publishes his Suna no onna (Woman in the Dunes, English translation 1964).
1964	Tokyo Olympics (necessitating a final “clean-up” of the postwar devastation).
1978	Uekusa Keinosuke publishes his “I-novel,” It Was Dawn, But . . . : The Kurosawa Akira of My Youth.
1982	Kurosawa publishes his jiden, or self-chronicle (first in English, titled Something Like an Autobiography, translated by Audie Bock, Knopf).
	Death of Shimura Takashi (b. 1905). He played the crucial, heroic role in Kurosawa’s three greatest films: as the woodcutter in Rashomon, as the dying bureaucrat who comes back to life in Ikiru, and as the leader of the samurai (ronin) recruited to save the farming village, in Seven Samurai.
1984	Iwanami publishes the Japanese version of Kurosawa’s memoir, titled Gama no abura, or, The Oily Sweat of an Anxious Toad.
1985	Death of Yaguchi Yoko on February 1. The former actress was Kurosawa’s wife and the mother of their two children. She was born in Shanghai in 1921.

HEISEI PERIOD (1989–)
1997	Death of Mifune Toshiro on December 24, at the age of seventy-seven.
1998	Death of Kurosawa Akira on September 6, at the age of of eighty-eight.