Kurosawa Museum

[Aaron Gerow]

Many years ago, on KineJapan, I wrote that an Akira Kurosawa Memorial  
Museum was being planned for the city of Imari in Saga Prefecture.  
Kurosawa himself had picked the location after visiting it during the  
production of Ran.

Well, the last straw has fallen and the Museum plan has gone kaput.  
The news services report that the city has demanded return of the  
money it paid to the Akira Kurosawa Foundation--the foundation in  
charge of creating the museum which is run by Kurosawa Hisao, Akira's  
son--for the initial rights to host the museum and use Kurosawa's  
memorabilia.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/money-paid-for-building-akira-kurosawa-museum-to-be-returned

This is the result of many months of problems with the Foundation,  
which has been accused of serious mishandling of money. The Foundation  
had been collecting donations to build the Museum, which was estimated  
to cost about 1.4 billion yen. It submitted some reports saying it had  
collected about 380 million yen, but when forced to submit official  
accounting it then became apparent it only had about 1.4 million yen  
in cash on hand: whatever money had been donated had been diverted  
into running a prefab "satellite studio" in Imari or to other  
purposes, but that had not been properly reported to the city or the  
prefecture. Other problems soon came to light: the Foundation had,  
contrary to law, not held a meeting of its board of directors for 5  
years, and thus had not created proper yearly accounting statements;  
the Foundation publicized that Spielberg, Lukas and Scorsese were  
official members of the board when they only agreed to be honorary  
members; etc.

In May, the Foundation announced that it was impossible to build the  
Museum as planned and suggested using the satellite studio as an  
alternative. The city, having by this time lost all trust in the  
Foundation, essentially rejected the suggestion and, by asking for the  
money back, is now basically washing its hands of the whole affair.

KineJapanners may remember back in May 2006 that a plan to start a  
Kurosawa Film School was abruptly scrapped when some less-than-kosher  
money issues surfaced. One wonders if this is not endemic to Kurosawa- 
related projects.

This year, by the way, is the centennial of Kurosawa's birth. This is  
not the best way to celebrate it.


Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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