Kurosawa's movies put Japanese cinema on the global map and inspired many US film-makers like Steven Speilberg and George Lucas. The only director to have won two Oscars for best foreign film, Kurosawa received a life-time achievement award from the American Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences. ``I promise you from now on I will work as hard as I can at making movies, and maybe by following this path I will receive an understanding of the true essence of cinema and earn this award,'' he said after receiving this award in 1990. Kurosawa began his career in 1936, hoping to use his skills as a painter for films being made by PCL Studios, a pre-war predecessor of Japan's leading studio, Toho Co. His first film credit was as an assistant director in the filmSenman Choja produced in 1936.

Kurosawa emerged as a giant of Japanese cinema after the war, especially when he teamed up with the actor Toshiro Mifune. His 1948 film Drunken Angel that starred Mifune earned the two immense fame in Japan. The cosmopolitan film-maker shot into international fame in 1951 with Rashomon, a medieval murder tale which broke new cinematic ground by using different narratives to tell the same story from four points of view.

Most of his famous works were based on the works of Shakespeare and other western classics, cast in a Japanese cultural setting.

His 1991 film Rhapsody in August starring Richard Gere as a second generation American-Japanese who apologises to relatives in Hiroshima for the US bombing of the city stirred controversy abroad. This film was Kurosawa's first film in two decades to be made with Japanese backing, as major domestic film companies realised anew that he was their industry's leading light.

His 30th and last filmMadadayo, released in 1993, was a story about a poignant relationship between a retired university teacher and his former students which also marked the 50th anniversary of his career as film director.

For Japanese critics, Kurosawa's name evokes films of humanism, and exploration of the concept of heroism in the post-war era. For Donald Richie, who was perhaps Kurosawa's most avid promoter in the West, the director's lifelong preoccupation was the dichotomy between appearance and reality. Richie described Kurosawa as ``Japan's most western director.''``This major theme - the nature of reality - means that his pictures must also be as realistic as possible,'' Richie said. ``This has undoubtedly led to his reputation as a director who is both difficult and rewarding to work with.''

A tall, thick-set man known for his trademark cap and sunglasses, Kurosawa was born in Tokyo on March 23, 1910, the youngest of seven children of a soldier who later became a high-school gymnastics teacher. His familydescended from a Samurai clan in Northern Akita prefecture, and Kurosawa was given ``spartan kendo'' (Japanese fencing) training when he was a child. During high school, he refused to undergo military training and spent his spare time reading western writers, and had a fascination for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.