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Part of the consideration is that Kurosawa was not widely known to the international audience before Rashomon, so it's impossible to say that Kurosawa was pandering to western audiences.
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Just to clarify things (without taking sides on
Rashomon since I do think it's a strong Kurosawa film, irrespective of its influences or possible compromises), Kurosawa may not have been known in the West, but Japan at the time (1945-1952) was under American occupation and films made by the Japanese were subject to scrutiny and censorship by the Americans.
Several filmmakers found their artistic integrity and cultural identity so severely compromised that they decided to stop working completely. Even the very prolific and highly regarded Kenji Mizoguchi was only able to create a few films during this time, and he even acknowledges that films like
Utamaro and His Five Women "played" to American ideals of an egalitarian, class structure-less society. Kurosawa certainly was no exception, and one could argue that his acceptance in in the West is because of his progressive, "Western" outlook (which is not the same as deliberately "pandering") that was conducive to what the US and the postwar, non-monarchy Japanese government were
allowed to show the outside world as representative images of the "new" Japan.
Anyway, I guess I'm saying that I don't completely agree with the TA, but he does raise some valid points.
