Stuart Galbraith IV is the author of seven books, including The Emperor and the Wolf (Faber & Faber, 2002), the joint-biography of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune director Martin Scorsese hailed as “a must read.” In December 2022, the screen rights to the book were renewed by a Los Angeles-based production company.

He also is a regular creator of audio commentary tracks, booklet essays, and documentary featurettes supplementing such releases as Imprint’s Dersu Uzala, Arrow Video’s Battles without Honor and Humanity and The Happiness of the Katakuris, the BFI’s Rashomon (including the documentary “Rashomon at 65” for that 1950 classic), AnimEigo’s Musashi Miyamoto – The Ultimate Samurai and Tora-san, and Criterion’s Seven Samurai. A commentary recorded (with Steve Ryfle) for Godzilla vs. Megalon but suppressed and recalled due to legal problems became an instant collector’s item.

He also served as a consultant/co-writer on Oscar-winning director Steven Okazaki’s documentary feature, Mifune – Last Samurai (2015).

International label credits include Red Beard, Rashomon, and Sanjuro for Spain’s A Contracorriente Films; and The Long Good Friday and Message from Space for Germany’s Subkultur.

Holding a Master’s Degree from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television, Galbraith worked as an archivist and researcher at both Warner Bros. and MGM. At Warner Bros., Galbraith implemented preservation projects and procedures at both its USC-Warner Bros. Archives and the Warner Bros. Corporate Image Archives. At MGM, Galbraith worked as a “film detective,” tracking down the original camera negatives to more than three dozen “lost” films.

Galbraith was a film critic for the Ann Arbor News, a daily newspaper, and from 2004-2009, he wrote a monthly home video column for Japan’s Daily Yomiuri. He has written for such film magazines as Filmfax, Outré, and the French film magazine HK Orient Extreme Cinema. Prior to joining The Digital Bits, Galbraith was a reviewer at DVD Talk, where he wrote more than 2,800 Blu-ray, DVD, and HD DVD reviews.

Earlier work by Galbraith includes the classic poolroom drama The Hustler and Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict. He provided audio commentary (with director Richard Fleischer) for Tora! Tora! Tora! (all for 20th Century-Fox), and interviewed Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond for his audio commentary track for The Sadist. Galbraith also contributed commentary tracks to The Horror of Hammer and Tales of Frankenstein, all for All Day Entertainment. Galbraith’s audio commentary for Classic Media’s Invasion of Astro-Monster was released in 2007 and nominated for a Rondo Hatton Award.

Galbraith’s other books include Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo: The Incredible World of Japanese Fantasy Films (Feral House, 1998), The Japanese Filmography (McFarland & Co., 1996), Motor City Marquees (McFarland, 1994), Japanese Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films (McFarland, 1994), The Toho Studios Story (Scarecrow, 2007), and Japanese Cinema (Taschen, 2009).

Since 2003 he has lived in Japan with his wife, Yukiyo, and their daughter, Sadie. Together they live in an historic minka (traditional farmhouse) in the mountains north of Kyoto and built in 1810, which Galbraith has been actively restoring and renovating. He is also the founder of Kominka Japan, a 2,700-member non-profit organization advocating the preservation of these architecturally significant structures and the producer-writer of the documentary The Minka of Gaijin Alley (2020).

You can follow Stuart on social media here: Facebook