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A former child actor, Hiroshi Inagaki began directing movies in 1928, and over the next 42 years established himself as one of Japan's leading filmmakers, particularly where large-scale historical epics were concerned. He shot his Samurai Trilogy, based on the novel Musashi Miyamoto, two separate times, once in black-and-white during World War II, and again, in color, from 1954 thru 1956. The second version of the trilogy found great popularity in the west, with the first film in the cycle, Samurai I, earning an Academy Award as the Best Foreign Film of 1954. His subsequent hits included The Rickshaw Man and The Forty-Seven Ronin.