Daily Yomiuri online reports that around 380 million yen, or 4.25 million US dollars worth of Akira Kurosawa Foundation assets are currently unaccounted for. The Foundation, headed by Akira Kurosawa’s son Hisao Kurosawa, has allegedly also spent 40% of its 100 million yen capital without the approval of the foundation’s board of directors, the remaining 60 million apparently being “in the form of storyboards created by Kurosawa”.
According to an official quoted in the report, this probably means that the foundation is currently more or less penniless. This would explain why nothing seems to be moving forward under the AK foundation, including the much talked about Kurosawa memorial museum or the AK100 events.
I don’t know why but the whole AK100 events thing was stinking…