Toshiro Mifune Trivia
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59 free Toshiro Mifune trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Toshiro Mifune trivia quiz covers the most famous Japanese actor of the twentieth century, from a photography studio in occupied China to a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The easy questions are ones any film fan can attempt: the director he made sixteen films with, the movie remade as The Magnificent Seven, the ronin who inspired the Man with No Name, the American miniseries that made him a household name and the Spielberg comedy he appeared in. From there it moves through the Kurosawa years: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, Rashomon at Venice, Throne of Blood's arrows, The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars, High and Low and the beard that ended the partnership. The harder end is for cinephiles: his birthplace in Qingdao, the wartime aerial photography unit, the Toho new faces audition, the lions he studied, his Spanish-language Mexican film, the two Volpi Cups, Hiroshi Inagaki's twenty films and the Samurai Trilogy, Hell in the Pacific's two-man cast, the Bond and Star Wars roles he declined, his martial arts teacher, Mifune Productions and Kurosawa's line about three feet of film. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Mifune, his films and his collaborators before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Akira Kurosawa, Japanese cinema and samurai films quizzes next.
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Q 01Which actor played the Man with No Name, a gunslinger modelled on Mifune's wandering ronin?
Clint Eastwood
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.
Q 02Mifune was born in 1920 in which Chinese port city, famous for the beer Germans began brewing there?
Qingdao
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.
Q 03In I Live in Fear (1955), Mifune plays an elderly factory owner terrified of what?
A nuclear attack
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.
Q 04Where did Mifune serve during World War II?
The Aerial Photography section of Army Aviation
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.
Q 05Mifune got into films through a new faces contest at which studio?
Toho
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.
Q 06Which actress, a star since childhood, urged Kurosawa to come and watch Mifune's audition?
Hideko Takamine
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.
Q 07Kurosawa wrote that Mifune needed three feet of film where other actors needed ten, praising which quality?
His speed
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.
Q 08Which 1948 Kurosawa film gave Mifune his breakthrough as the tubercular gangster Matsunaga?
Drunken Angel
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.
Q 09In Stray Dog (1949), Mifune's detective has what stolen on a crowded bus?
His Colt pistol
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.
Q 10Which character does Mifune play in Rashomon?
The bandit Tajōmaru
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.
Q 11Rashomon won which top prize at Venice, becoming the first Japanese film to gain major international acclaim?
The Golden Lion
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.
Q 12What animals did Mifune reportedly study on film to prepare for Rashomon and Seven Samurai?
Lions
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.
Q 13What is the name of Mifune's wild, self-proclaimed samurai in Seven Samurai?
Kikuchiyo
Q 21In High and Low, Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, an executive in what industry?
Shoes
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.
Q 22High and Low is based on King's Ransom, an 87th Precinct novel by which American crime writer?
Ed McBain
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.
Q 23Which 1965 film was the last Mifune-Kurosawa collaboration?
Red Beard
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.
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.
Q 14Kurosawa's 1954 epic about villagers hiring warriors was famously remade in 1960 as which Hollywood western?
The Magnificent Seven
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.
Q 15Throne of Blood, in which Mifune plays Washizu, adapts which Shakespeare play?
Macbeth
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.
Q 16How was the famous death scene of Mifune's character in Throne of Blood staged?
Archers shot real arrows around him
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.
Q 17Mifune plays General Makabe Rokurōta in which 1958 Kurosawa film that influenced Star Wars?
The Hidden Fortress
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.
Q 18In Yojimbo, Mifune's ronin invents his name after looking at what?
A mulberry field
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.
Q 19Which Sergio Leone film copied Yojimbo so closely that its makers were sued?
A Fistful of Dollars
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.
Q 20Mifune twice won which prize, the Venice Film Festival's award for Best Actor?
Volpi Cup
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.
Q 24In a 1970 crossover film, Mifune's bodyguard ronin met which other sword hero of Japanese cinema?
Zatoichi
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.
Q 25Mifune played which legendary swordsman in the Samurai Trilogy of the 1950s?
Miyamoto Musashi
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.
Q 26With which director of the Samurai Trilogy did Mifune make twenty films?
Hiroshi Inagaki
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.
Q 27Which admiral did Mifune portray in three different films?
Isoroku Yamamoto
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.
Q 28Mifune learned his Spanish lines by ear to play a peasant in Ánimas Trujano, a film from which country?
Mexico
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.
Q 29Which 1966 motor-racing film was Mifune's Hollywood debut?
Grand Prix
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.
Q 30Hell in the Pacific (1968) has only two actors: Mifune and whom?
Lee Marvin
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.