<P> From the beginning, Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet quite distinct from it . Kurosawa was extensively involved with every aspect of film production . He was also a gifted screenwriter, and would usually work in close collaboration with his co-writers from the beginning of the development of a film to ensure a high - quality script, which he insisted was the absolute foundation of a good film . He frequently served as editor of his own films and was regarded by his production team as "the greatest editor in the world". Though it was common in the Japanese film industry of that time for established directors to assemble around them a team, or "- gumi", with people drawn from the same pool of creative technicians, crew members and actors working from film to film (for example, the director Hiroshi Inagaki, who worked at Toho during the same period as Kurosawa, had such a team), Kurosawa's team, known as the "Kurosawa - gumi" (Kurosawa group)--including, for example, the cinematographer Asakazu Nakai, the production assistant Teruyo Nogami and the actor Takashi Shimura--was remarkable for its loyalty to the director and the consistent quality of its work . </P> <P> Kurosawa's style is marked by a number of devices and techniques which Kurosawa introduced in his films over the decades . In his films of the 1940s and 1950s, Kurosawa frequently employs the "axial cut", in which the camera moves closer to, or further away from, the subject, not through the use of tracking shots or dissolves, but through a series of matched jump cuts . Another stylistic trait which scholars have pointed out is Kurosawa's tendency to "cut on motion": that is, to edit a sequence of a character or characters in motion so that an action is depicted in two or more separate shots, rather than one uninterrupted shot . </P> <P> A form of cinematic punctuation very strongly identified with Kurosawa is the wipe . This is an effect created through an optical printer, in which, when a scene ends, a line or bar appears to move across the screen, "wiping" away the image while simultaneously revealing the first image of the subsequent scene . As a transitional device, it is used as a substitute for the straight cut or the dissolve (though Kurosawa often used both of those devices as well). In his mature work, Kurosawa employed the wipe so frequently that it became a kind of signature . For example, one blogger has counted no fewer than 12 instances of the wipe in Drunken Angel . Kurosawa by all accounts always gave great attention to the soundtracks of his films, especially with an emphasis on sound - image counterpoint, in which the music or sound effects would ironically comment upon the image rather than merely reinforcing it . (Teruyo Nogami's memoir gives several such examples from Drunken Angel and Stray Dog .) He was also involved with several of Japan's outstanding contemporary composers, including Fumio Hayasaka (who died in 1955) and the internationally famous Tōru Takemitsu . </P> <P> Kurosawa employed a number of recurring major themes in his films . These include: (a) the master - disciple relationship between a usually older mentor and one or more novices, which often involves spiritual as well as technical mastery and self - mastery; (b) the heroic champion, the exceptional individual who emerges from the mass of people to produce something or right some injustice; (c) the depiction of extremes of weather as both dramatic devices and symbols of human passion; and (d) the recurrence of cycles of inexorable savage violence within history . According to Stephen Prince, the latter theme began with Throne of Blood (1957), and recurred in Kurosawa films of the 1980s . Mr. Prince calls this theme "the countertradition to the committed, heroic mode of Kurosawa's cinema". </P>

When did the independent director come to prominence