Which Japanese writer co-wrote Drunken Angel with Kurosawa?

Keinosuke Uekusa co-wrote Drunken Angel with Akira Kurosawa.

Released in 1948, Drunken Angel is a postwar crime drama about an alcoholic doctor, Sanada, and his yakuza patient, Matsunaga. Uekusa and Kurosawa wrote the screenplay together, making the film an important early example of Kurosawa’s humanistic interest in people trapped by illness, poverty, violence, and social collapse.

Uekusa and Kurosawa had known each other since childhood in Tokyo. They also collaborated on One Wonderful Sunday, released in 1947, before writing Drunken Angel. Their partnership was not always smooth: while developing the yakuza character, Uekusa met with a real underworld figure for research and reportedly became unusually sympathetic to the criminal milieu, causing disagreements with Kurosawa.

Drunken Angel was the first of sixteen films to pair Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune, who played Matsunaga opposite Takashi Shimura’s doctor. It is often regarded as Kurosawa’s first major work and as an early postwar yakuza film. Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Ryuzo Kikushima were also notable Kurosawa collaborators, but none co-wrote this screenplay.