I’ve been doing some browsing around your blog, and I must say there’s some pretty interesting stuff here.

I am afraid this book is not very relevant when you are specifically interested in Kurosawa. In my view, it has nothing new to offer in addition to what is written in the books on Kurosawa you already list up on your website.

As regards the samurai film, too, the book by Alain Silver I mention above delves deeper. Stray Dogs is not an academic treatment, but a popular introduction for the general public to the samurai film genre. It is a great guide when you are just starting on samurai films, but even when you have seen quite a lot of chambara flicks, as is my case, you still may find the odd film in it that you haven’t watched yet.

Finally the title – the author does not discuss his reasons for selecting this title, except the remark that the sixties when the samurai film was turned on its head were the pinnacle of the genre – it were the days of lonely, nihilistic samurai who indeed can be called “stray dogs” and “lone wolves.” I do not think there is a conscious reference to the film by Kurosawa!

As someone running an Akira Kurosawa website, I was wondering what your opinion is about how relevant the book would be for someone specifically interested in Kurosawa? What does the book have to offer for that part of the audience?

I was also wondering what the style of the book is actually like. You wrote that it is easy to read, and the publisher’s website describes it as a handbook giving “profiles” of films and directors. Does this mean that it is more of a reference guide than, say, an academic treatment of the samurai genre?

Just curious. :)

It is also interesting that they would use the word “stray dog” in the title, as it sounds like a reference to Kurosawa’s ‘Stray Dog’ which, of course, was not a samurai film at all (just like most of Kurosawa’s films actually weren’t).