In 1980, "Shadow Warrior". The original male lead was Shintaro Katsu, the one who played "Humpback City" and is also a very powerful actor in Japan. Later, because of the "performance concept", Kurosawa Akira called Tatsuya Nakadai to rush to the rescue.
In this play, we can also see Joe Shimura, which is probably his "curtain call performance", as shown below:
The 1985 film Chaos is based on Shakespeare's play King Lear. Probably because of this film, Westerners called Akira Kurosawa "the Shakespeare of cinema."
I remember a British friend of mine who also liked Akira Kurosawa and liked to talk about Akira Kurosawa. Ask him which one he likes best, and he says "Chaos."
Then, I never discussed "Akira Kurosawa" with him.
I don't really want to discuss these two films. If you really want to discuss, I think Chiaki shi's evaluation of Kurosawa's work next night is the most appropriate, he said: "It's getting worse and worse every year."
These two films, although they brought Kurosawa a huge international reputation, but for the Japanese film industry, they were harmful, but he did not realize it.
There are two reasons for this.
First, the first is to break off cooperation with Toshiro Mifune. Joe Shimura has never played an important role again. Even other actors such as Chiaki Shi can't see the shadow. Although it is said that the script is the reason, there is no need for so many actors, but Kurosawa's attitude towards actors is much worse than before.
Second, Akira Kurosawa has been pursuing his own film art, but he has forgotten to cultivate talents for the Japanese film industry. However, under the guidance and care of the older generation such as Kajiro Yamamoto and Yasujiro Ozu, he successfully embarked on the road of directing.
So, after him, Japanese cinema suddenly declined and had to be reflected!