Toshiro Mifune

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Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo

Toshiro Mifune (三船 敏郎 Mifune Toshirō) (April 1, 1920 - December 24, 1997) was a charismatic Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films.

Contents

Childhood

Mifune was born on April 1 1920 in Tsingtao (now Qingdao) China to Japanese parents, and he grew up in Dalian with his parents and two siblings. In his youth, Mifune worked in the photography shop of his father Tokuzo, a commercial photographer and importer who had emigrated from northern Japan. Tokuzo was a Methodist, and there is evidence that he was also a missionary, ministering to the ethnic Japanese in Dalian.

Young Toshiro was raised in a sheltered Japanese enclave and had virtually no contact with the external Chinese society. In 1939, at the age of 20, he was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Air Force, where he served in the Aerial Photography unit during the Second World War. He repatriated to Japan in 1946.

Entry into show business

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Toshiro Mifune at the beginning of his career

In 1947, one of Mifune's friends who worked for the Photography Department of Toho Productions suggested Mifune try out for the Photography Department. He was accepted for a position as an assistant cameraman. However, the union was affiliated with the Communist party, which made Mifune, a religiously conservative man, very uncomfortable.

At this time, a large number of Toho actors, after a prolonged strike, had left to form their own company. The studio organized a "new faces" contest to find new talent. Mifune's friends submitted an application and photo, without his knowledge. He was accepted, along with 48 others (out of roughly 4000 applicants), and allowed to take a screen test for Kajiro Yamamoto. Instructed to mime anger, he drew from his wartime experiences, delivering such a powerfully authentic performance that the testers feared he would be too arrogant and troublesome to work with. Fortunately, however, Yamamoto took a liking to Mifune, recommending him to director Senkichi Taniguchi. This led to Mifune's first feature role, in Shin Baka Jidai.

Marriage

One of 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.

Yoshimine's parents were strongly opposed to the idea of marriage. Mifune was doubly an outsider, being a non-Buddhist as well as coming from Manchuria (which, to mainland Japanese, was associated with misfits and eccentrics). His profession also suggested financial instability and overall irresponsibility.

Director Senkichi Taniguchi, with the help of Akira Kurosawa, convinced the Yoshimine family to allow the marriage. It took place in February of 1950. In November of the same year, their first son Shiro was born. In 1955, they had a second son, Takeshi. Mifune's daughter Mika was born in 1981.

Popularity

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Toshiro Mifune in Yojimbo, playing the classic roving ronin character

His imposing bearing, acting range, facility with foreign languages and lengthy partnership with acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa made him the most famous Japanese actor of his time, and easily the best known to Western audiences. He often portrayed a samurai or ronin, who was usually coarse and gruff (Kurosawa once complained that Mifune's "rough" voice), inverting the popular stereotype of the genteel, clean-cut samurai. In such films as The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, he played characters who were often comically lacking in manners, but replete with practical wisdom and experience, understated nobility, and unmatched fighting prowess. Sanjuro in particular contrasts this earthy warrior spirit with the useless, sheltered propriety of the court samurai. Kurosawa highly valued Mifune for his effortless portrayal of unvarnished emotion, once commenting that he could convey in only three feet of film an emotion that would require the average Japanese actor ten feet.

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DVD cover of Hell in the Pacific (1968), co-starring Lee Marvin

Mifune was famous for his self-deprecating sense of humor, which often found its way into his film roles. He was renowned for the effort he put into his performances. To prepare for The Seven Samurai and Rashomon, Mifune reportedly studied tapes of lions in the wild; for Ánimas Trujano, he studied tapes of Mexican actors speaking, so he could recite all his lines in Spanish. In his earliest film roles in English like Grand Prix, made in 1966, he learned his lines phonetically. This met with limited success and his voice was often dubbed by Paul Frees. By the time he made Red Sun in 1971 he had become somewhat more proficent in the language and his voice is heard throughout this multinational western. He was always disappointed that he did not have a larger career in the West. His most prominent English-language role was probably playing Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in Midway.

Early in the development of Star Wars, director George Lucas reportedly considered Mifune for the role of Obi Wan Kenobi. He had played an analogous role (General Rokurota) in The Hidden Fortress, a film greatly admired by Lucas. Its plot and characters have many parallels in Star Wars: A New Hope.

Mifune has been credited as originating the "roving warrior" archetype, which he perfected during his collaboration with Kurosawa. Clint Eastwood was among the first of many American actors to adopt this persona, which he used to great effect in his Western roles, especially the spaghetti westerns made with Sergio Leone. Incidentally, A Fistful of Dollars is an uncredited scene-for-scene remake of the Kurosawa–Mifune movie Yojimbo. Kurosawa successfully sued Leone for appropriating the story without permission.

Most of the sixteen Kuroswa–Mifune films are considered cinema classics. These include Rashomon, Stray Dog, The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood (an adaptation of Shakespeare's MacBeth), Yojimbo, and Sanjuro. (See filmography, below)

Mifune and Kurosawa finally parted ways after the movie Red Beard. Most Japanese actors of the time played roles in several different movies throughout the year; for Red Beard, since he had to keep the natural beard that he grew, for the entire two years of shooting, Mifune was unable to act in any other films during this time. This put Mifune and his financially strapped production company deeply into debt. Red Beard played to packed houses in Japan and was popular in Europe, but failed to find commercial success in America.

Later life

In a 1984 magazine poll, Mifune was voted the "most Japanese Man among men. The One whose face expressed the Best of Japanese Pride, Power & Virility." In his native land and overseas, he is still often viewed as the epitome of Japanese manhood, and a prototypical oyaji.

Early in the 1980s, Mifune founded an acting school, Mifune Geijutsu Gakuin (三船芸術学院). The school failed after only three years, due to mismanaged finances.

Mifune received wider audience acclaim in the West than he had ever had before after playing Toranaga in the 1980 miniseries Shogun. However, the series' historical inaccuracy and somewhat simplified view of Japan meant that it was not as well received in his homeland. It deepened the rift with Kurosawa, virtually ensuring that they would not work together again.

Kurosawa seems to have made various uncharitable comments about Mifune, and Mifune about Kurosawa, and on many occasions they openly expressed feelings of resentment toward one another. They finally made something of a reconciliation in 1993 at the funeral of their friend Ishiro Honda. After making tenuous eye contact, they tearfully embraced one another, ending nearly three decades of mutual avoidance. Sadly, they would never collaborate again, nor would they have a chance to truly restore their friendship. Within five years, both men would be dead.

In 1992, Mifune began suffering from a serious health problem, the exact nature of which is not fully known. It has been variously suggested that he destroyed his health with overwork, suffered a heart attack, or experienced a stroke. For whatever reason, he abruptly retreated from public life and remained largely confined to his home, cared for by his wife Sachiko. When she succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1995, Mifune's physical and mental state began to decline rapidly. He died December 24, 1997, in Mitaka, Japan, of organ failure.

Filmography

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 titles used in the United States.

Television Appearances

All shows aired in Japan except for Shogun which aired in the U.S.

External links

Further Reading

  • Stuart Galbraith IV. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. Faber & Faber, 2002. ISBN 0571199828de:Toshiro Mifune

es:Toshirō Mifune nl:Toshiro Mifune ja:三船敏郎 pl:Toshiro Mifune pt:Toshiro Mifune

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