Career
He also produced several of Kurosawa"s early 1960s films. In addition to his work with Kurosawa, screenplays he wrote or co-wrote include Tora! Tora! Tora!, Hiroshi Inagaki"s Arashi and The Birth of Japan, and Mikio Naruse"s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, on which he also served as producer. In 2013, Kikushima and frequent screenwriting collaborators Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni were awarded the Jean Renoir Award by the Writers Guild of America West.