Do you think ‘Andrei Rublev’ inspired Kurosawa?

I just watched Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and noticed some visual themes similar to Ran and Kagemusha. I know that cavalry and wooden fortresses are not particularly unique but the scenes of horseback riders with banners fording a river (Kagemusha has that) and the burning wooden fortresses with gates majorly focused (Ran) were strongly reminiscent of Kurosawa’s later work. I feel like the end of Waiting for the Weather has a mention of Tarkovsky meeting Kurosawa, but I don’t have it on hand to check. Does anyone know of any other connections between Tarkovsky and Kurosawa? other than that the film was produced by Mosfilm, which Dersu Uzala also was.

Tarkovsky and Kurosawa greatly admired each other.

Check this out!

Akira Kurosawa on watching ‘Solaris’ with Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky was together with me then. He was at the corner of the studio. When the film was over, he stood up, looking at me as if he felt timid. I said to him, “Very good. It makes me feel real fear.” Tarkovsky smiled shyly, but happily. And we toasted vodka at the restaurant in the Film Institute. Tarkovsky, who didn’t drink usually, drank a lot of vodka, and went so far as to turn off the speaker from which music had floated into the restaurant, and began to sing the theme of samurai from Seven Samurai at the top of his voice.
—Akira Kurosawa

“As if to rival him, I joined in.

For I was at that moment very happy to find myself living on Earth.”

Thank you! That is a sweet anecdote.

I just found out that Mosfilm has about a thousand of its films available for free on Youtube! Including Dersu Uzala.