Toshiro Mifune (三船 敏郎,Mifune Toshirō; 1 April 1920 – 24 December 1997) was a Japanese actor and producer. The recipient of numerous awards and accolades over a lengthy career,[1] he is widely considered one of the greatest actors of all time.[2] He often played heroic characters and was noted for his commanding screen presence in theJapanese film industry.[3]
Toshiro Mifune was born on April 1, 1920, inSeitō, Japanese-occupiedShandong (present-day Qingdao,China), the eldest son of Tokuzo and Sen Mifune.[9] His father Tokuzo was a trade merchant and photographer who ran a photography business inQingdao andYingkou, and the son of a physician from Kawauchi,Akita Prefecture.[10] His mother Sen was the daughter of ahatamoto, a high-rankingsamurai official.[9] Toshiro's parents, who were working asMethodistmissionaries, were some of the Japanese citizens encouraged to live in Shandong by theJapanese government during its occupation before the Republic of China took over the city in 1922.[11][12] Mifune grew up with his parents and two younger siblings inDalian,Fengtian from the age of 4 to 19.[13]
In his youth, Mifune worked at his father's photo studio. After spending the first 19 years of his life inChina, as a Japanese citizen, he was drafted into theImperial Japanese Army Aviation division, where he served in the Aerial Photography unit duringWorld War II.[14]
In 1947, a large number of Toho actors, after a prolonged strike, had left to form their own company,Shin Toho. Toho then organized a "new faces" contest to find new talent.
Nenji Oyama, a friend of Mifune's who worked for the Photography Department ofToho Productions, sent Mifune's resume to the New Faces audition as the Photography Department was full, telling Mifune he could later transfer to the Photography Department if he wished.[15] He was accepted, along with 48 others (out of roughly 4,000 applicants), and allowed to take a screen test forKajirō Yamamoto. Instructed to mime anger, he drew from his wartime experiences. Yamamoto took a liking to Mifune, recommending him to directorSenkichi Taniguchi. This led to Mifune's first feature role, inShin Baka Jidai.
Mifune first encountered directorAkira Kurosawa whenToho Studios, the largest film production company in Japan, was conducting a massive talent search, during which hundreds of aspiring actors auditioned before a team of judges. Kurosawa was originally going to skip the event, but showed up whenHideko Takamine 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." When Mifune, exhausted, finished his scene, he sat down and gave the judges an ominous stare. He lost the competition but Kurosawa was impressed. "I am a person rarely impressed by actors," he later said. "But in the case of Mifune I was completely overwhelmed."[16] Mifune immersed himself into the six-month training and diligently applied himself to studying acting, although at first he still hoped to be transferred to the camera department.[17]
His imposing bearing, acting range, facility with foreign languages and lengthy partnership with acclaimed directorAkira Kurosawa made him the most famous Japanese actor of his time, and easily the best known to Western audiences.[peacock prose] He often portrayedsamurai orrōnin who were usually coarse and gruff (Kurosawa once explained that the only weakness he could find with Mifune and his acting ability was his "rough" voice), inverting the popular stereotype of the genteel, clean-cut samurai. In such films asSeven Samurai andYojimbo, he played characters who were often comically lacking in manners, but replete with practical wisdom and experience, understated nobility, and, in the case ofYojimbo, unmatched fighting prowess.Sanjuro in particular contrasts this earthy warrior spirit with the useless, sheltered propriety of the court samurai. Kurosawa valued Mifune highly for his effortless portrayal of unvarnished emotion, once commenting that he could convey in only three feet of film an emotion for which the average Japanese actor would require ten feet.[18] He starred in all three films ofHiroshi Inagaki'sSamurai Trilogy (1954–1956), for which the first film inSamurai I: Musashi Miyamoto was awarded an HonoraryAcademy Award. Mifune and Inagaki worked together on twenty films, which outnumbered his collaborations with Kurosawa, with all but two falling into thejidaigeki genre, most notably withRickshaw Man (1958), which won theVenice Film Festival Golden Lion.[19]
He was also known for the effort he put into his performances. To prepare forSeven Samurai andRashomon, Mifune reportedly studied footage oflions in the wild. For the Mexican filmÁnimas Trujano, he studied tapes of Mexican actors speaking so that he could recite all of his lines inSpanish. Many Mexicans believed that Toshiro Mifune could have passed for a native ofOaxaca due to his critically acclaimed performance. When asked why he choseMexico to do his next film, Mifune quoted, "Simply because, first of all, Mr. Ismael Rodríguez convinced me; secondly, because I was eager to work in beautiful Mexico, of great tradition; and thirdly, because the story and character of 'Animas Trujano' seemed very human to me". The film was nominated for both aGolden Globe and anOscar. Mifune gave a Japanese pistol as a gift to then-Mexican presidentAdolfo López Mateos when they met in Oaxaca.[20]
Mifune has been credited as originating the "roving warrior" archetype, which he perfected during his collaboration with Kurosawa. His martial arts instructor wasYoshio Sugino of theTenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū. Sugino created the fight choreography for films such asSeven Samurai andYojimbo, and Kurosawa instructed his actors to emulate his movements and bearing.
Mifune may also be credited with originating theyakuza archetype, with his performance as a mobster in Kurosawa'sDrunken Angel (1948), the firstyakuza film.[citation needed] Most of the sixteen Kurosawa–Mifune films are considered cinema classics. These includeDrunken Angel,Stray Dog,Rashomon,Seven Samurai,The Hidden Fortress,High and Low,Throne of Blood (an adaptation ofShakespeare'sMacbeth),Yojimbo, andSanjuro.
Mifune and Kurosawa finally parted ways afterRed Beard. Several factors contributed to the rift that ended this career-spanning collaboration. Mifune had a passion for film in his own right and had long wanted to set up a production company, working towards going freelance. Kurosawa and Taniguchi advised against it out of concern they would not be able to cast Mifune as freely.[21] Most of Mifune's contemporaries acted in several different movies in this period. SinceRed Beard required Mifune to grow a natural beard — one he had to keep for the entirety of the film's two years of shooting — he was unable to act in any other films during the production. This put Mifune and his financially strapped production company deeply into debt, creating friction between him and Kurosawa. AlthoughRed Beard played to packed houses in Japan and Europe, which helped Mifune recoup some of his losses, the ensuing years held varying outcomes for both Mifune and Kurosawa. After the film's release, the careers of each man took different arcs: Mifune continued to enjoy success with a range of samurai and war-themed films (Rebellion,Samurai Assassin,The Emperor and a General, among others). In contrast, Kurosawa's output of films dwindled and drew mixed responses. During this time, Kurosawa attempted suicide. In 1980, Mifune experienced popularity with mainstream American audiences through his role as Lord Toranaga in the television miniseriesShogun, which Kurosawa criticised for its historical inaccuracy.[22] Mifune spoke respectfully of Kurosawa and loyally attended the premiere ofKagemusha.[23]
Mifune himself was always professional, memorizing all of his lines and not carrying scripts on set.[27] He was seen as unusually humble for an international star, and was known for treating his co-stars and crew generously, throwing catered parties for them and paying for their families to go toonsen resorts.[28][29] When American actorScott Glenn was asked about his experience of filmingThe Challenge (1982) alongside Mifune, Glenn recalled disappointment that the original script (about "a surrogate father and son finding each other from completely different cultures") lost its "character-driven scenes" and was reduced to "a martial arts movie" but stated, "...I remember Mifune came to me, and he said, "Look, this is what's happening. I'm disappointed, and I know you are, but this is what it is. So you can either have your heart broken every day, or you can use this experience as an opportunity to be spending time in the most interesting time in Japan and let me be your tour guide." So it wound up with me learning an awful lot of stuff from Toshirô."[30]
The relationship between Kurosawa and Mifune remained ambivalent. Kurosawa criticized Mifune's acting inInterview magazine and also said that "All the films that I made with Mifune, without him, they would not exist".[citation needed] He also presented Mifune with the Kawashita award which he himself had won two years prior. They frequently encountered each other professionally and met again in 1993 at the funeral of their friendIshirō Honda, but never collaborated again.[31][32]
Among Mifune's fellow performers, one of the 32 women chosen during the new faces contest was Sachiko Yoshimine. Eight years Mifune's junior, she came from a respected Tokyo family. They fell in love and Mifune soon proposed marriage.
In November of the same year, their first son, Shirō was born. In 1955, they had a second son, Takeshi. Mifune's daughterMika [ja] was born to his mistress, actress Mika Kitagawa, in 1982.[35]
In 1992, Mifune began suffering from a serious unknown health problem. It has been variously suggested that he destroyed his health with overwork, suffered aheart attack, or experienced astroke. He retreated from public life and remained largely confined to his home, cared for by his estranged wife Sachiko. When she died frompancreatic cancer in 1995, Mifune's physical and mental state declined rapidly.[citation needed]
Of Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune said, "I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him".[43]
Mifune had a kind of talent I had never encountered before in the Japanese film world. It was, above all, the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding. The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression; Mifune needed only three. The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express. He put forth everything directly and boldly, and his sense of timing was the keenest I had ever seen in a Japanese actor. And yet with all his quickness, he also had surprisingly fine sensibilities.
"Since I came into the industry very inexperienced, I don't have any theory of acting. I just had to play my roles my way."[45]
"Generally speaking, most East–West stories have been a series of cliches. I, for one, have no desire to retellMadame Butterfly."[46]
"An actor is not a puppet with strings pulled by the director. He is a human being with seeds of all emotions, desires, and needs within himself. I attempt to find the very center of this humanity and explore and experiment."[46]
Of Toshiro Mifune, in his 1991 bookCult Movie Stars, Danny Peary wrote,
Vastly talented, charismatic, and imposing (because of his strong voice and physique), the star of most of Akira Kurosawa's classics became the first Japanese actor sinceSessue Hayakawa to have international fame. But where Hayakawa became a sex symbol because he was romantic, exotic, and suavely charming (even when playing lecherous villains), Mifune's sex appeal – and appeal to male viewers – was due to his sheer unrefined and uninhibited masculinity. He was attractive even when he was unshaven and unwashed, drunk, wide-eyed, and openly scratching himself all over his sweaty body, as if he were a flea-infested dog. He did indeed have animal magnetism – in fact, he based his wild, growling, scratching, superhyper Samurai recruit inThe Seven Samurai on a lion. It shouldn't be forgotten that Mifune was terrific in Kurosawa's contemporary social dramas, as detectives or doctors, wearing suits and ties, but he will always be remembered for his violent and fearless, funny, morally ambivalent samurai heroes for Kurosawa, as well as in Hiroshi Inagaki's classic epic,The Samurai Trilogy.[47]
Peary also wrote,
Amazingly physical, [Mifune] was a supreme action hero whose bloody, ritualistic, and, ironically, sometimes comical sword-fight sequences inYojimbo andSanjuro are classics, as well-choreographed as the greatest movie dances. His nameless sword-for-hire anticipatedClint Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' gunfighter. With his intelligence, eyes seemingly in back of his head, and experience evident in every thrust or slice, he has no trouble – and no pity – dispatching twenty opponents at a time (Bruce Lee must have been watching!). It is a testament to his skills as an actor that watching the incredible swordplay does not thrill us any more than watching his face during the battle or just the way he moves, without a trace of panic, across the screen – for no one walks or races with more authority, arrogance, or grace than Mifune's barefoot warriors. For a 20-year period, there was no greater actor – dynamic or action – than Toshiro Mifune. Just look at his credits.[47]
In an article published in 2020 byThe Criterion Collection in commemoration of the centenary of Mifune's birth, Moeko Fujii wrote,
For most of the past century, when people thought of a Japanese man, they saw Toshiro Mifune. A samurai, in the world's eyes, has Mifune's fast wrists, his scruff, his sidelong squint... He may have played warriors, but they weren't typical heroes: they threw tantrums and fits, accidentally slipped off mangy horses, yawned, scratched, chortled, and lazed. But when he extended his right arm, quick and low with a blade, he somehow summoned the tone of epics.
There's a tendency to make Mifune sound mythical. The leading man of Kurosawa-gumi, the Emperor's coterie, he would cement his superstar status in over 150 films in his lifetime, acting for other famed directors —Hiroshi Inagaki,Kajiro Yamamoto,Kihachi Okamoto — in roles ranging from a caped lover to a Mexican bandit.
Mifune's life on-screen centers solely around men. Women, when they do appear, feel arbitrary, mythical, temporary: it's clear that no one is really invested in the thrums of heterosexual desire... Toshiro Mifune cemented his reputation as an icon of masculinity right alongside Hollywood narratives of neutered Asian manhood. In 1961, Mifune provoked worldwide longing by swaggering around inYojimbo, the same year thatMickey Rooney played the bucktoothed Mr. Yunioshi inBreakfast at Tiffany's. Looks-wise, he's the opposite of his predecessor, the silent film star Sessue Hayakawa — often christened the "first Hollywood sex symbol" — with his long, slim fingers andYves Saint Laurent polish. But Mifune represents a development beyond Hayakawa's Japanese-man-on-screen, who, despite his huge white female fanbase, was always limited to roles of the "Oriental" villain, the menace, the impossible romantic lead: in 1957,Joe Franklin would tell Hayakawa in his talk show, "There were two things we were sure of in the silent movie era; the Indians never got the best of it, and Sessue Hayakawa never got the girl."
Mifune never wants the girl in the first place. So the men around him can't help but watch him a little open-mouthed, as he walks his slice of world, amused by and nonchalant about the stupor he leaves in his wake. "Who is he?," someone asks, and no one ever has a good answer. You can't help but want to walk alongside him, to figure it out.[48]
Mifune appeared in roughly 170 feature films.[49] In 2015,Steven Okazaki releasedMifune: The Last Samurai, a documentary chronicling Mifune's life and career.[50][51] Due to variations in translation from the Japanese and other factors, there are multiple titles to many of Mifune's films (see IMDb link). The titles shown here are the most common ones used in the United States, with the original Japanese title listed below it in parentheses. Mifune's filmography mainly consists of Japanese productions, unless noted otherwise (see Notes column).
All programs originally aired in Japan except forShōgun which aired in the U.S. onNBC in September 1980 before being subsequently broadcast in Japan onTV Asahi from March 30 to April 6, 1981.
^Mifune's appearance onIt's 8 O'Clock! Everybody Gather 'Round was to promote the upcoming New Year's broadcast ofSekigahara. Mifune appeared on stage in a comedic samurai sketch wearing his Sakon Shima armor from the mini-series. In addition, Mifune sang with the "Little Singers of Tokyo" in another segment
^Ten Duels of Young Shingo Part 3, which did not feature Mifune but which concludes the story, aired on July 30, 1982
^Galbraith IV, Stuart (2001).The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. USA: Faber and Faber. pp. 67–68.ISBN0-571-19982-8.
^Tatara, Paul."Rashomon".Turner Classic Movies. Archived fromthe original on 25 December 2008. Retrieved29 April 2022.
^Galbraith IV, Stuart (2001).The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. USA: Faber and Faber. pp. 69–70.ISBN0-571-19982-8.
^Kurosawa, Akira.Something like an autobiography. Translated by Audie Bock. p. 161.
^Galbraith IV, Stuart (2001).The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. USA: Faber and Faber. p. 362.ISBN0-571-19982-8.
^Galbraith IV, Stuart (2001).The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. USA: Faber and Faber. p. 556.ISBN0-571-19982-8.
^Field, Matthew (2015).Some kind of hero : 007 : the remarkable story of the James Bond films. Ajay Chowdhury. Stroud, Gloucestershire.ISBN978-0-7509-6421-0.OCLC930556527.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Boorman, John (2004).Adventures of a Suburban Boy. Farrar, Strous and Giroux. p. 216.
^Galbraith IV, Stuart (2001).The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. USA: Faber and Faber. pp. 291–292,539–540.ISBN0-571-19982-8.
^Nogami, Teruyo (2006).Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press Inc. p. 246.ISBN978-1-933330-09-9.
^Richie, Donald (1970). "Preface".The Films of Akira Kurosawa (2nd ed.). University of California Press. Retrieved9 January 2020.the films of Akira Kurosawa... I am proud of other than with him.
^Galbraith IV, Stuart (2001).The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. USA: Faber and Faber. p. 70.ISBN0-571-19982-8.
^abGambol, Juliette (Winter 1967). ""Toshiro Mifune: An Interview"".Cinema Magazine: 27.
^abPeary, Danny (1991).Cult Movie Stars. Simon & Schuster. p. 372.ISBN978-0671749248.
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