59 Fun Facts About Toshiro Mifune

Which actor played the Man with No Name, a gunslinger modelled on Mifune's wandering ronin?

Clint Eastwood borrowed the silent, scruffy stranger Mifune had created for Kurosawa in 1961; the copy made the TV actor a film star and set off the spaghetti western boom.

Mifune was born in 1920 in which Chinese port city, famous for the beer Germans began brewing there?

Qingdao, long spelled Tsingtao like its beer, was where Mifune was born on 1 April 1920 to Japanese parents; he did not set foot in Japan until the army called him up.

In I Live in Fear (1955), Mifune plays an elderly factory owner terrified of what?

A nuclear attack so frightens the old man that he plans to move his whole family to a farm in Brazil; Mifune, playing a man decades older than himself, was only 35.

Where did Mifune serve during World War II?

The Aerial Photography section of Army Aviation took him for the camera skills he had learned in his father's studio; he spent the war in darkrooms and on airfields rather than in combat.

Mifune got into films through a new faces contest at which studio?

Toho ran the talent search in June 1946; an old army comrade on the staff steered Mifune into it, and he auditioned reluctantly, hoping for a studio job rather than stardom.

Which actress, a star since childhood, urged Kurosawa to come and watch Mifune's audition?

Hideko Takamine, who was at the studio that day, told the director one newcomer was worth seeing; he had meant to skip the auditions, and by his own account came away completely overwhelmed.

Kurosawa wrote that Mifune needed three feet of film where other actors needed ten, praising which quality?

His speed was what astounded the director: Mifune, he wrote, said in one movement what took ordinary actors three, and yet for all that quickness he had surprisingly fine sensibilities.

Which 1948 Kurosawa film gave Mifune his breakthrough as the tubercular gangster Matsunaga?

Drunken Angel takes its title from a hard-drinking slum doctor, but Mifune's doomed gangster so dominated the film that he pulled its focus away from the hero; Kurosawa chose not to rein him in.

In Stray Dog (1949), Mifune's detective has what stolen on a crowded bus?

His Colt pistol is lifted from Detective Murakami's pocket by a pickpocket, and he spends the film hunting it through sweltering post-war Tokyo as it is used in crimes.

Which character does Mifune play in Rashomon?

The bandit Tajōmaru is Mifune's role: he stands accused of killing a samurai and assaulting his wife, yet every witness, even the dead man speaking through a medium, tells a different story.

Rashomon won which top prize at Venice, becoming the first Japanese film to gain major international acclaim?

The Golden Lion went to Rashomon at Venice in 1951 although its own studio saw no point in entering festivals; Giuliana Stramigioli, an Italian film agent in Japan, picked it and got it there.

What animals did Mifune reportedly study on film to prepare for Rashomon and Seven Samurai?

Lions were the model: between rehearsals Kurosawa screened an old African safari film, pointed to a lion staring out of the brush and told Mifune that was his character.

What is the name of Mifune's wild, self-proclaimed samurai in Seven Samurai?

Kikuchiyo is the boisterous farmer's son carrying a stolen samurai genealogy; driven off at first, he is accepted as the seventh and dies in the final battle.

Kurosawa's 1954 epic about villagers hiring warriors was famously remade in 1960 as which Hollywood western?

The Magnificent Seven (1960) moved the story to a Mexican village defended by hired guns, and several of them, Steve McQueen and James Coburn among them, went on to become superstars.

Throne of Blood, in which Mifune plays Washizu, adapts which Shakespeare play?

Macbeth is moved to feudal Japan, where a forest spirit takes the witches' place; Kurosawa styled the film on Noh theatre and modelled Mifune's fierce expression on a warrior mask.

How was the famous death scene of Mifune's character in Throne of Blood staged?

Archers shot real arrows around him: skilled bowmen aimed live shafts close to Mifune, who said years later that the terror on his face was real and that he had been shaking as he dodged them.

Mifune plays General Makabe Rokurōta in which 1958 Kurosawa film that influenced Star Wars?

The Hidden Fortress (1958) tells its story through two bickering peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, whose viewpoint George Lucas borrowed for C-3PO and R2-D2.

In Yojimbo, Mifune's ronin invents his name after looking at what?

A mulberry field seen through the window gives him his surname, Kuwabatake (mulberry field), and he adds Sanjuro, meaning thirty years old, as a throwaway given name.

Which Sergio Leone film copied Yojimbo so closely that its makers were sued?

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) copied Yojimbo's plot so closely that the Japanese studio sued; the settlement gave it East Asian distribution rights and a share of the worldwide gross.

Mifune twice won which prize, the Venice Film Festival's award for Best Actor?

The Volpi Cup went to Mifune in 1961 for Yojimbo and again in 1965, both times for a Kurosawa film; fame never went to his head, and he stayed known for his kindness to the crews working behind the scenes.

In High and Low, Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, an executive in what industry?

Shoes are his trade: Gondo is an executive at National Shoes fighting for control of the company when a kidnapper seizes his chauffeur's son by mistake.

High and Low is based on King's Ransom, an 87th Precinct novel by which American crime writer?

Ed McBain, the pen name of Evan Hunter, published King's Ransom in 1959; Kurosawa kept its dilemma, a rich man asked to ransom another man's son, and moved the story to Yokohama.

Which 1965 film was the last Mifune-Kurosawa collaboration?

Red Beard (1965), with Mifune as the gruff clinic doctor Niide, kept him growing his own beard through a shoot so long that he had to refuse other work; the two fell out and never filmed together again.

In a 1970 crossover film, Mifune's bodyguard ronin met which other sword hero of Japanese cinema?

Zatoichi, the blind masseur and master swordsman played by Shintaro Katsu, faced him in Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo; Katsu produced the crossover himself to pair his long-running hero with Mifune's.

Mifune played which legendary swordsman in the Samurai Trilogy of the 1950s?

Miyamoto Musashi starts the trilogy as Takezo, a village wild man who runs off to war, lands on the losing side and has to be tamed into a swordsman; the first film won an honorary Oscar.

With which director of the Samurai Trilogy did Mifune make twenty films?

Hiroshi Inagaki directed Mifune twenty times, four more than Kurosawa did; their Rickshaw Man, the director's remake of his own wartime film, took the top prize at Venice in 1958.

Which admiral did Mifune portray in three different films?

Isoroku Yamamoto had argued against war with the United States, yet planned the Pearl Harbor attack once it was decided; Mifune played him in two Japanese films (1968 and 1970) and once for Hollywood.

Mifune learned his Spanish lines by ear to play a peasant in Ánimas Trujano, a film from which country?

Mexico's Ismael Rodríguez cast him as a villager in Oaxaca; Mifune memorised every line phonetically without knowing the language, only for a local actor's voice to be dubbed over his.

Which 1966 motor-racing film was Mifune's Hollywood debut?

Grand Prix (1966), John Frankenheimer's Formula One epic, was the job Mifune had already taken when a James Bond film came calling; he plays Japanese team owner Izo Yamura opposite James Garner.

Hell in the Pacific (1968) has only two actors: Mifune and whom?

Lee Marvin plays the American stranded with Mifune's Japanese officer on a Pacific island; both men had really served on opposite sides in that war, Marvin as a Marine wounded on Saipan.

In the 1971 Spaghetti Western Red Sun, Mifune starred alongside Alain Delon, Ursula Andress and which American?

Charles Bronson plays the outlaw Link, forced to ride with Mifune's samurai to recover a stolen ceremonial sword; Terence Young, director of Dr. No, made it.

Which character did Mifune play in the 1980 NBC miniseries Shōgun?

Lord Toranaga was Mifune's role: the scheming warlord takes in a shipwrecked English pilot and makes use of him in his own struggle for power.

Mifune's character in Shōgun is modelled on which real Japanese ruler?

Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the shogunate that ruled Japan until 1868, is the model for James Clavell's warlord; the real Ieyasu took the shipwrecked English pilot William Adams into his service as an adviser.

In Steven Spielberg's 1941, Mifune commands what?

A lost Imperial Japanese Navy submarine is his command: as Commander Mitamura he surfaces off the California coast hunting for Hollywood days after Pearl Harbor.

Which James Bond role did Mifune turn down in You Only Live Twice?

Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service, was the part offered to Mifune for the 1967 film; he was already committed to a Hollywood racing picture, so Tetsurō Tamba played it.

Mifune's daughter has said George Lucas offered him which two Star Wars roles?

Darth Vader or Obi-Wan Kenobi were the parts his daughter Mika said Lucas offered; Mifune declined, reportedly worried the film would cheapen the samurai image.

Rashomon, the film that made Mifune famous abroad, was adapted from stories by which Japanese writer?

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa wrote both stories Kurosawa used: the crime and its clashing testimonies come from In a Grove, while the one called Rashōmon lent only its title and the ruined gate.

Mifune's company had a 1968 hit, The Sands of Kurobe, about building what?

Dam: the film follows the building of the Kurobe Dam. Mifune and fellow star Yujiro Ishihara made it through their own companies, and first had to get past a pact among the big studios that tied each star to one of them.

Legacy of the 500,000, the only film Mifune ever directed, is a hunt for what, hidden in the wartime Philippines?

Gold coins hidden by General Yamashita's army are the prize: the former officer who buried them is kidnapped and forced back to find them. Mifune starred as well, and never directed again.

Between 1948 and 1965, which was the only Kurosawa film made without Mifune?

Ikiru (1952) follows a dying city clerk and had no part for him; Takashi Shimura, usually Mifune's partner on screen, carried it alone, and Mifune took a major role in the other sixteen.

Which Hollywood star narrates Mifune: The Last Samurai, the 2015 documentary about the actor?

Keanu Reeves narrates the English version of Steven Okazaki's film; when it reached Japanese cinemas in 2018, the narration was re-recorded by Akira, a performer from the pop group Exile.

Which Hollywood honour did Mifune receive in 2016?

A Walk of Fame star was unveiled for him on Hollywood Boulevard, in the motion pictures category, although he had died almost nineteen years earlier, in 1997.

How does the heroine go home to the moon at the end of Princess from the Moon (1987), which starred Mifune?

In a spaceship: director Kon Ichikawa turned Japan's old Tale of the Bamboo Cutter into science fiction, making the foundling an alien, with Mifune as the bamboo cutter who raises her.

Mifune starred in Kurosawa's The Idiot (1951), adapted from a novel by which Russian writer?

Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel was moved to snowbound Hokkaido, with Mifune as the brooding Akama; the studio cut the 265-minute film to 166 minutes, and the long version is lost.

Mifune died in 1997 on which day of the year?

Christmas Eve 1997 was the day he died, of organ failure in a Tokyo hospital; Kurosawa, the director who made him famous and then fell out with him, outlived him by less than nine months.

In Yojimbo, Mifune's ronin hires himself out to whom in a lawless town?

Both rival gangs get his services in turn: the stranger sells his sword to each side, plays them off against each other until they are wiped out, and walks away from the town.

Critic Danny Peary called Mifune the first Japanese actor with international fame since which star of The Bridge on the River Kwai?

Sessue Hayakawa was a silent-era Hollywood heartthrob decades before his Oscar-nominated camp commandant; Peary set that suave, romantic appeal against Mifune's unrefined, uninhibited masculinity.

Which American co-star of The Challenge (1982) said Mifune offered to be his tour guide in Japan?

Scott Glenn recalled that when the script was gutted, Mifune told him he could have his heart broken every day or let Mifune show him Japan instead; he took the tour and learned a great deal.

In 1993 the estranged Mifune and Kurosawa were reunited at the funeral of Godzilla's director: whose was it?

Ishirō Honda's funeral brought both men out: Honda had directed Mifune in his early films and, after the monster years, spent his last years working at Kurosawa's side.

Mifune's Last Song (1999), a comedy named after the actor, belongs to which film movement?

Dogme 95 certified Søren Kragh-Jacobsen's film as its third; in it the hero plays Mifune's samurai to amuse his brother, and the film won a special jury prize at the Berlin festival.

Which American star played the shipwrecked English pilot opposite Mifune in the 1980 miniseries Shōgun?

Richard Chamberlain played the pilot, John Blackthorne; NBC ran the series on five straight nights, about a third of American homes tuned in, and Mifune became a familiar face to a mainstream US audience.

In which Manchurian port city did Mifune grow up from the age of four?

Dalian, then a Japanese-leased port, was home from the age of four: he went to school there and, when his father fell ill, helped to run the family business while still a schoolboy.

Told to act out one emotion at his screen test, Mifune stunned Kurosawa by showing what?

Anger was the emotion he had to act, and he was already in a foul mood at being tested as an actor at all; Kurosawa walked in to find him raging round the room and said he was transfixed.

Which director, Kurosawa's own mentor, chaired the jury at Mifune's screen test?

Kajirō Yamamoto, who had trained Kurosawa, headed the panel; the following year both he and another of his pupils, in the mountain thriller Snow Trail, put the newcomer on screen.

Philip Kaufman wanted Mifune as Spock's nemesis in an unmade 1970s Star Trek film, playing a member of which alien race?

Klingon: Kaufman's script for Star Trek: Planet of the Titans pitted Mifune against Leonard Nimoy's Spock and sent the pair on a psychedelic trip through space, before Paramount cancelled the film in 1977.

Mifune appeared in which 1976 American war film about a Pacific naval battle?

Midway cast Mifune beside Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda, but many of its battle scenes were borrowed: the makers reused combat footage from earlier war films.

What was a hatamoto, the status of the family of Mifune's mother Sen?

A high-ranking samurai official: hatamoto, or 'bannermen', served the shogun directly, so the actor famous for playing masterless swordsmen came from the shogun's own retainers on his mother's side.

Mifune's final film, Deep River (1995), follows a group of Japanese tourists on a journey to which river?

The Ganges: the screen's most famous swordsman bowed out in a quiet drama about faith, adapted from Shūsaku Endō's novel about travellers who bring their private griefs to India's holy river.

Kurosawa once said the only weakness he could find in Mifune's acting was his what?

Rough voice was the one flaw the director admitted, and that gruffness suited the coarse samurai and ronin he played, inverting the stereotype of the genteel, clean-cut swordsman.