The creative heritage of the great filmmaker of the 20th century Akira Kurosawa is essentially connected with the Russian classical literature. In anticipation of the 110th anniversary of this master it is important to study his ideas, which grew up on the basis of Russian thought and absorbed its ideals. It is also important and useful to trace a reverse influence of his ideas and unsurpassed artistic discoveries on creative paths of Russian filmmakers, writers, artists; enter his name, his films into the visual field of Russian audience, thereby breaking, even for a brief time, the established Hollywood paradigm of cinematic language. In the article brought to attention of readers, the author focuses only on one - but extremely important for understanding the philosophical meaning of Kurosawa’s films - aspect: on the embodiment of holiness ideals in his works. Ideals of holiness exist as concepts of a whole nation’s consciousness in the world of ideas. Akira Kurosawa, with the help of F. Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy, was able to see through the barrier of external differences that so strikingly separate Eastern and Western cultures, that subtle and elusive similarity, which at the same time is something very significant and enduring, since it has a spiritual nature. This similarity lies in relation to the ideal of holiness, rooted in bowels of national collective consciousness. It discovers unexpectedly spiritual kinship, the joy of recognizing “one’s own”, despite even the difference in religious beliefs. Depicting the life of his people truely and realistically, Akira Kurosawa at the same time showed the universality of the holiness ideal for all people, and thereby posed to humanity the main questions of its existence.