The Japanese director Kurosawa Akira has been internationally celebrated as one of the most important filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa’s career started when he joined the Photo Chemical Laboratories (P.C.L., which later became the Toho studio) in 1936 and worked under Yamamoto Kajiro among other senior directors. Kurosawa has been often labelled as a director of jidaigeki (period drama), though he also directed a number of gendaigeki (contemporary drama) films concerned with the predicaments of immediate postwar Japan. In his later years, Kurosawa remained extremely influential, directing ambitious international projects. In 1990, he received a lifetime achievement Oscar at the Academy Awards.