"Dodes'ka-den", Original Release Japanese Movie Poster 1970, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) H216
This is an original Japanese B2 poster printed in 1970 for the first theatrical release of Dodes'ka-den (どですかでん), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Based on Shūgorō Yamamoto’s A City Without Seasons (季節のない街), the film stars Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Toshiyuki Tonomura, Keiko Ogasawara, and Tanie Kitabayashi. It is one of the most important posters of Kurosawa’s later career, representing the director’s bold transition into colour cinema.
Film background
Released in 1970, Dodes'ka-den was Kurosawa’s first colour feature, and remains one of the most unusual and personal works in his filmography. Set in a Tokyo shantytown, the film weaves together the lives, fantasies, hardships, and fragile hopes of a community living on the margins of society. The title itself is an onomatopoeic rendering of a trolley sound—roughly equivalent to “clickety-clack”—and refers to the young boy who imagines himself driving a streetcar through the settlement.
Although the film was not a commercial success in Japan on its initial release, it has since come to be recognised as a significant and deeply distinctive work. Internationally, it was far better received and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Today it is valued not only as a key Kurosawa title, but also as a visually daring work that opened a new chapter in the director’s career.
Poster design
This is an extraordinary and highly artistic Japanese release design (artwork by Kurosawa himself!), entirely unlike the more conventional photographic posters of the period. The composition is rendered in a raw, painterly, almost childlike style, with a kaleidoscopic arrangement of figures, vignettes, and dreamlike scenes spread across the sheet. At the centre sits the wide-eyed, stylised figure associated with the film’s fragile imaginative world, encircled by a brilliantly coloured rainbow-like spiral that winds through the composition.
Around this central motif are numerous small episodes and characters, reflecting the film’s multi-stranded narrative structure and its movement between realism, fantasy, despair, and humour. The palette is bold and expressive, with blacks, pinks, yellows, greens, and blues used in a manner that feels closer to modern art than mainstream poster design. Particularly striking is the presence of Kurosawa’s own signature reproduced within the artwork, underscoring the intensely personal character of the piece. The large yellow text at lower left reading 監督 黒澤明 (“Directed by Akira Kurosawa”) anchors the sheet and gives it powerful visual authority.
For collectors, this poster is especially desirable because it captures Dodes'ka-den’s singular place in Kurosawa’s oeuvre: a film of hardship and imagination expressed through one of the most unconventional posters associated with the director.
Condition
Excellent. Please review the photos—they show the exact poster for sale.
It is over 56 years old!
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
