Where did Akira Kurosawa grow up and live?

📍7-chome Omori-kita, Ōta City, Tokyo 143-0016, Japan

1910 – 1936

“I was born on the 23rd of March 1910 in the Omori district of Tokyo, the son of a sake merchant, and grew up in a family proud of its samurai heritage. My father insisted all his children learn to swim, ride horses, and practise kendo. The discipline of those early physical training sessions — the attention to form, the patience with imperfection — translated directly into the way I worked with actors throughout my career. I was a painter before I became a filmmaker, and the Tokyo neighbourhood of my childhood, with its mixture of traditional and modern Japan, gave me the visual education that made my films look the way they do.”

👍 LovedMy father's insistence on physical discipline and the patience it built. The painter's eye that Tokyo's visual richness developed. The samurai heritage that gave me both a subject and an ethic.

👎 DislikedThe radical transformation of Japan during my childhood that made the world unstable. The 1923 earthquake that destroyed much of Tokyo. The difficulty of reconciling tradition and modernity.

Map showing where Akira Kurosawa lived — 7-chome Omori-kita, Ōta City, Tokyo 143-0016, Japan

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Akira Kurosawa's home at 7-chome Omori-kita, Ōta City, Tokyo 143-0016, Japan

📍 Street view today

Sources: Kurosawa, A. Something Like an Autobiography (1982, translated Audie Bock), Knopf; Richie, D. The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965), University of California Press