Akira Kurosawa

Kurosawa’s Paradox of Sanity in Chaos

Kurosawa’s aphorism pivots on a paradox: when the world itself is deranged—morally, politically, or epistemically—the people who refuse to adapt can appear unhinged. In such climates, conformity masquerades as sanity while clear-sighted dissent is mislabeled as madness. Francisco Goya’s etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799) visualizes this inversion: when reason nods off, nightmares pass for the ordinary. This framing invites a deeper question: if standards are warped, who decides what counts as sane? The line suggests that sanity may be less about fitting in and more about perceiving reality without the filters a sick society enforces. With that, we turn to Kurosawa’s own films, where characters marked as fools or obsessives often see the most clearly. [...]

Cultivating the Seeds of Change Into Possibility

Continuing, Kurosawa merges artistry with progress. Just as a film director melds disparate elements into a cohesive story, change requires imagination, deliberate choice, and adaptability. His films, like ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954), showcase individuals leveraging what little they have to protect their future—a cinematic mirror of real-life transformation fueled by resourcefulness and hope. [...]