Akira Kurosawa movies in order
Thirty films across fifty years, and a startling amount of modern cinema is downstream of them.
Updated 6 August 2026 · 30 titles tracked
Nothing connects except Yojimbo and its sequel Sanjuro, so order is free. The real question with Kurosawa is not sequence but entry point, because the reputation puts people off — three-hour black-and-white samurai films sound like an obligation.
They are not. Seven Samurai is 207 minutes and moves faster than most modern blockbusters, and Yojimbo is a comedy.
Kurosawa films, in a suggested starting order
An entry path rather than release order. Toggle on the filmography page.
- 1Seven Samurai1954 · Major work
- 2Rashomon1950 · Major work
- 3Yojimbo1961 · Major work
- 4Ikiru1952 · Major work
- 5High and Low1963 · Major work
- 6Ran1985 · Major work
- 7Throne of Blood1957 · Major work
- 8The Hidden Fortress1958 · Major work
- 9Sanjuro1962 · Major work
- 10Stray Dog1949 · Major work
- 11Drunken Angel1948 · Major work
- 12Kagemusha1980 · Major work
- 13The Bad Sleep Well1960 · Major work
- 14Red Beard1965 · Major work
- 15Dersu Uzala1975 · Major work
- 16Dreams1990
- 17Madadayo1993
- 18Rhapsody in August1991
- 19Dodes'ka-den1970
- 20The Lower Depths1957
- 21I Live in Fear1955
- 22The Idiot1951
- 23Scandal1950
- 24Sanshiro Sugata1943
- 25No Regrets for Our Youth1946
- 26The Quiet Duel1949
- 27One Wonderful Sunday1947
- 28The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail1945
- 29The Most Beautiful1944
- 30Sanshiro Sugata Part II1945
Start with Seven Samurai
A village hires seven masterless samurai to defend it from bandits. That structure — assemble a team, each with one defining skill, then spend the second half on the job — did not exist as a template before this film, and now it is everywhere.
The alternative is Yojimbo (1961): 110 minutes, very funny, and a ronin playing two criminal gangs against each other. Sergio Leone remade it without permission as A Fistful of Dollars, lost the lawsuit, and the western was never the same.
Rashomon is not the best first film
It is the famous one — it won at Venice in 1951 and is the reason Western audiences discovered Japanese cinema at all. It is also 88 minutes of four irreconcilable accounts of the same crime, which is a formal exercise before it is a story.
Watch it second. It lands much harder once you already trust him.
The ones that are not samurai films
Roughly half the filmography is contemporary. Ikiru (1952) is a dying bureaucrat deciding to build a playground, and it is the most humane thing he made. High and Low (1963) is a kidnapping that takes the wrong child — half chamber drama, half street procedural. Stray Dog (1949) is a detective hunting his own stolen pistol through a Tokyo heatwave.
If samurai films are not the draw, start with Ikiru or High and Low instead. Nothing is lost.
The late epics
Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) are the large colour films of his final period. Ran is King Lear with three sons, made at seventy-five, and is the most visually overwhelming thing in the filmography.
Worth knowing: by then no Japanese studio would finance him. Kagemusha was funded because George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola personally intervened, and Dersu Uzala (1975) was made in the Soviet Union in Russian because it was the only offer he had. It won the Foreign Language Oscar.
The early films are for later
The first six, from Sanshiro Sugata (1943) onward, were made under wartime censorship and are minor. Drunken Angel (1948) is where it starts — the first film with Toshiro Mifune, who then made sixteen with him before they stopped speaking after Red Beard (1965).
Common questions
What order should I watch Kurosawa movies in?
Any order — only Yojimbo and Sanjuro connect. Start with Seven Samurai or Yojimbo, then Rashomon, Ikiru, High and Low and Ran.
Which Kurosawa film should I watch first?
Seven Samurai. It is long but it moves, and it invented the assemble-a-team structure. If three and a half hours is too much, start with Yojimbo at 110 minutes.
How many films did Akira Kurosawa direct?
Thirty features, from Sanshiro Sugata (1943) to Madadayo (1993).
Which Kurosawa films inspired Star Wars?
The Hidden Fortress (1958). George Lucas took its structure of two bickering low-status characters escorting a princess, which became C-3PO and R2-D2.