Today, film posters may seem like a lost art form, often reduced to decorative ephemera on cinema walls. Yet in their heyday, they were the primary tool for attracting audiences, encapsulating a film in a single striking image. While Akira Kurosawa’s films have been the subject of countless books, their marketing materials have received far less attention. Yoshikazu Inoue‘s new book Akira Kurosawa Original Movie Poster Collection (Two Virgins, 2025), helps to correct that imbalance with a publication that collects an extraordinary range of visual ephemera connected to Kurosawa’s work.
The book came out about a month ago and it is presented in both Japanese and English. Across its 192 B4-sized pages, the book features over 300 full colour images of posters, press sheets, lobby cards and other materials covering the history of all of Kurosawa’s films. The author kindly provided me with a digital review copy.
At its core, Akira Kurosawa Original Movie Poster Collection focuses on the Japanese posters for Kurosawa’s films, although this definition is a little more flexible than it first appears. In addition to domestic theatrical posters, it also includes posters produced by Toho for their international marketing campaigns. The only exception seems to be Dreams, which is represented in the book only by its American poster, with no kind of Japanese version included.
Beyond Kurosawa’s core filmography, the book also reproduces posters and materials related to some of his lesser-known projects: posters that were created for the unfinished film The Lifted Spear and the film Those Who Make Tomorrow which Kurosawa co-directed but largely disowned, as well as both a poster and the theatre programme for the stage adaptation that Kurosawa directed of Drunken Angel.
Each item included is accompanied by details such as size, year of publication, and often short descriptive notes that place the artwork in historical or artistic context. All information is presented in both Japanese and English.
For Kurosawa enthusiasts, the book is a genuine treasure trove. Not only is it wonderful to have all of these materials collected into one publication, but some of the included items have rarely, if ever, appeared in print before. Among the highlights are the original Sanshiro Sugata poster that I believe has not been featured in any publication before, a striking Dersu Uzala poster that was made by manga artist Mori Masaki which was never used publicly, as well as numerous large format posters, whose detail and scale are impressive.
At the end of the book, we have an essay from Kurosawa scholar Toshifumi Makita, who highlights some of the more surprising discoveries found in the book. One curious example that he draws your attention to is the appearance of a proto-Godzilla figure in a poster for The Idiot—a full three years before Ishiro Honda’s first Godzilla film.
Following this, the editor and author Yoshikazu Inoue also offers his own reflections. Inoue, a film distributor and passionate poster collector, has previously published poster collections devoted to filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, as well as iconic figures like Audrey Hepburn and Steve McQueen.
Akira Kurosawa Original Movie Poster Collection is currently available from the publisher’s web store as well as from Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.co.uk. From what I understand, the physical copy comes packaged with five B4-sized poster reprints for Seven Samurai, Stray Dog, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo and Red Beard.
For fans, researchers, collectors, or anyone fascinated by Kurosawa’s work, I would say that this volume is both a visual feast and an invaluable historical resource.
