Hagiwara Akira is a Japanese film director and screenwriter born in Nishi-ku, Osaka. Film director Hagiwara Ryo is his older brother.

After graduating from the former Dalian Municipal Business School built by Japan in Dalian, a city at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula, he entered Kyoto with his brother. In 1938, he became a historical drama club member of the Nikki Kyoto Studio. He studied under Miyagawa Kazuo as a shooting assistant but transferred to be an assistant director at Toho Film Kyoto Studio, where his brother was working.

During the war in the 1940s, the number of productions dropped drastically. Without a chance to be promoted to director, he moved to Toho's Tokyo studio and continued being an assistant director. He studied under Kinugasa Teinosuke, Kumagai Hisatora, Shimazu Yasujiro, Imai Tadashi, and others.

After World War II, he participated in Toho's anti-union Shintoho and was an assistant director of Saeki Kiyoshi and Nakagawa Nobuo. After that, in 1950, he co-wrote the script of "Atariya Kinpachi Sensei: Senri no Tora," in collaboration with Saeki Kiyoshi. The following year, in 1951, he participated in the establishment of "Takara Production" and continued to work as the chief assistant director. In April of 1951, he finally made his debut as a director. Edit Biography