In the late 60's, Akira Kurosawa's contract to Toho came to an end, and desiring change, he sought work outside of Japan. This would eventually lead to him 'working' on stuff like "Runaway Train" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!". As you can probably guess by the quotations, these didn't exactly work out for Kurosawa and that's putting it lightly.
So what if, in this ATL, Kurosawa got tapped to write/direct a Western instead? By this point in time, there had been TWO major westerns made (Fistful of Dollars and Magnificent Seven) that were pretty much adaptations of two of his most well-known works (Yojimbo and Seven Samurai). So would it be too much of a stretch to give the man who had written THOSE movies (which had a huge influence on the Western genre) a chance to write a Western himself? Italy had proven itself capable of making Westerns (despite early derision from Hollywood, which coined the term "Spaghetti Western"), so is it too much out of the realm of possibility to give a Japanese director a chance??
Secondly I guess, would Kurosawa even agree to the offer? Supposedly he was quite fond of the genre, and it would give him something different to work with, which he was apparently striving for.
So is this a plausible ATL or just too ASB??