Description

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When 20th Century Fox planned its blockbuster portrayal of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, it looked to Akira Kurosawa - a man whose mastery of the cinema led to his nickname "the Emperor" - to direct the Japanese sequences. Yet a matter of three weeks after he began shooting the film in December 1968, Kurosawa was summarily dismissed and expelled from the studio. The tabloids trumpeted scandal: Kurosawa had himself gone mad; his associates had betrayed him; Hollywood was engaged in a conspiracy.

Now, for the first time, the truth behind the downfall and humiliation of one of cinema's greatest perfectionists is revealed in All the Emperor's Men. Journalist Hiroshi Tasogawa probes the most sensitive questions about Kurosawa's thwarted ambition and the demons that drove him. His is a tale of a great clash of personalities, of differences in the ways of making movies, and ultimately of a clash between Japanese and American cultures.

About the Author

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Hiroshi Tasogawa (Tokyo, Japan) was born in Tokyo in 1934, graduated from Waseda University in 1958, and became a reporter for NHK, Japan's public broadcasting corporation. Later, he was a reporter for the Associated Press and a professor of media reporting at Tokai University. He is now an author and freelance journalist. His book Akira Kurosawa vs. Hollywood (Bungei Shunju Ltd. 2006) was given four prestigious literary awards in Japan: the Osaragi Jiro Award, the Kodansha Nonfiction Award, the Oya Soichi Nonfiction Award, and the Geijutsu Sensho Award. His other books include A Newscaster, about Edward R. Murrow, a founder of American broadcast journalism.