Actor, Sword Master, Movie Icon (Please share with a friend)

Toshiro Mifune 1920 – 1997

Actor, Sword Master, Movie Icon.

Toshiro Mifune was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948-65) with filmmakerAkira Kurosawa in such works as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo. He portrayed Musashi Miyamoto in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, and Lord Toranaga in the NBC TV miniseries Shōgun.

Mifune first encountered director Akira Kurosawa when Toho Studios, the largest film production company in Japan, was conducting a massive talent search. Kurosawa was originally going to skip the event, but showed up when an actress he knew told him of one actor who seemed especially promising. Kurosawa later wrote that he entered the audition to see "a young man reeling around the room in a violent frenzy...it was as frightening as watching a wounded beast trying to break loose. I was transfixed." An exhausted Mifune finished his scene, sat down and gave the judges an ominous stare. He promptly lost the competition. Kurosawa, however, had found his man. "I am a person rarely impressed by actors," he later said. "But in the case of Mifune I was completely overwhelmed."

Korosawa’s martial arts instructor for the screenplay was Sensei Yoshio Sugino of the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū. He was respected worldwide as one of the elder statesmen in the world of Japanese Kobutso, and a respected player in the Japanese film industry. Sugino-sensei created the fight choreography for the Kurosawa films including the Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and others. Kurosawa is known to have instructed his actors to emulate Sugino’s movements and bearing, his fighting style and technique. His solid well-balanced personal deportment mirrored that of the samurai of old who spent their days with heavy swords at their waist, and were masters in the fighting arts.

Toshiro Mifune was the lead actor in many of Kurosawa’s films. Drafted into the Japanese Army in 1920, he enlisted in the Airforce Aerial Photography Unit for the duration of WW II. In 1947, he took a film test for Kajiro Yamamoto, who recommended him to director Senkichi Taniqueli. He then banded with Kurosawa, and the two became the most prominent actor-director pairing in all Japanese cinema. Beginning with Drunken Angel (1948), Mifune appeared in 16 of Kurosawa’s films, most of which were world renowned classics . Intensity, commitment, and an appreciation of Japanese culture and history is a requirement in portraying the Japanese philosophy of Budo, and in projecting the samurai culture of shiai –there is only one victor, and the loser meets death. Kurosawa’s visionary depiction of physical and emotional intensity in traditional samurai fighting wars clearly broke the limits of accepted Japanese filmmaking practices, in which elaborate painted screens were often used to depict battles. To accomplish this realism, Kurosawa insisted the primary human emotions:fear, jubilation, anger, defeat, and victory in battle, be portrayed in loud and clear terms. Mufine never let him down.

Mifune played the role of both hero and the ordinary man. His was an intense macho acting. He was noted for often playing gruff characters who claimed to despise others for shows of human weakness, but who ended up frequently displaying those same weaknesses. He was a unique actor, both bombastic and emotionally honest. He has been described as a dynamic and ferocious actor, excelling in action roles, but also able to exploit intricate and subtle dramatic parts. He played numerous characters, including that of Japanese warlord Admiral Isoroku Yamamato, the imaginative warlord Tojugawa Ieyasu, inJourney of Honour (1991), and his fictionalized counterpart Toranaga in “Shogun” (1986). Of his relationship with Kurosawa, Mifune stated: “That I am known both in America and in Japan is due mainly to the films of Akira Kurosawa. It was he who introduced me to myself as an actor. He taught me everything I know. He had this quality, this ability to bring things out of you that you never knew were present. It is enormously difficult work, but each film with him is a revelation.” A personal rift between Mifune and Kurosawa during filming of the “Red Beard” ended their collaboration. Mifune continued to perform leading roles in major films in Japan and in foreign countries. He was twice named Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for Yojimbo (1961), and “Akahige”. In 1961, he formed his own production company, directing and producing several films. His last years were plagued with illness, and he died in Tokyo in 1997, a few months before the death of the director with whose name he is linked.

Clint Eastwood was among the first of many actors to adopt this wandering warrior persona for foreign films, used to great effect in his Western roles, playing the Man with no name character in Spaghetti Westerns made with Sergio Leone, where he played a similar character to Mifune's no name Ronin in Yojimbo. Many say Mifune created the Japanese samurai films in the eyes of the westerner. In June, 2015, Toshiro Mifune was named an honoree for the 2016 Hollywood Walk of Fame.