Mifune Toshiro is familiar to Western audiences primarily for his role in the film "Seven Samurai" by Akira Kurosawa. And in general, during his career (it lasted more than forty years), the actor starred in about 180 films. On the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one can see a single star, Mifune Toshiro. She appeared here in 2016.
The beginning of a film career and international recognition
The future film actor was born in 1920 in the PRC - his parents worked there (but they were not Chinese, but citizens of Japan). Mifune also received the citizenship of the Land of the Rising Sun. On this basis, he was drafted into the army during the Second World War. He served in the aerial photography department of the Japanese Air Force.
Demobilized, Toshiro got a job in Tokyo as an assistant cameraman at the Toho studio. And soon he already tried himself as an actor for the first time - he starred in the films Beyond the Silver Ridge and Time for New Fools (both of them were released in 1947).
At the same time, on one of the sets, he met director Akira Kurosawa. And his next work Mifune got exactly in the picture of Kurasawa called "The Drunken Angel". In general, this creative tandem turned out to be extremely fruitful: Mifune starred in 16 films by Kurosawa. Some of them have brought both the actor and the director international recognition. Here it is worth remembering such films as "Rashomon", "At the Bottom", "Idiot" (by the way, based on the novel by Dostoevsky), "Throne in Blood" and, of course, "Seven Samurai". This masterpiece tells the story of how seven impoverished samurai save the village and its ordinary people from a brutal gang. And Mifune played the impostor samurai Kikuchiyo here.
But, perhaps, the actor's dramatic talent was revealed to the fullest extent in the films Musashi Miyamoto (1954) and The Bodyguard (1961, Venice Film Festival prize), Red Beard (1965, Venice Film Festival prize). The role of the doctor Niide in Red Beard is considered the pinnacle of Mifune's work.
At a certain point, Mifune began to be invited to participate in international film projects, for example, in the films "Red Sun" (Alain Delon also starred here) and "1941" (directed by Steven Spielberg), in the series "Shogun". The British Film Institute even named Mifune the most famous Japanese actor in the Western world.
Personal life and career decline
In 1965, a quarrel broke out between Kurasawa and Mifune. And after that, they did not communicate with each other for almost thirty years! There were many different reasons for this spat. In particular, Kurosawa, as a very conservative person, was unhappy that Toshiro abandoned his wife Sachiko Yoshimin with two children and left the family after fifteen years of marriage.
In the seventies and eighties, Mifune participated mainly in TV series of the genre "jidaigeki" (historical dramas), which were filmed at his own studio "Mifune-Pro". But Toshiro could no longer come close to his former success, gradually he was losing his status as an actor of the first magnitude.
After 1992, due to health problems, Toshiro practically stopped working. In 1995, he renewed his relationship with his ex-wife. And it was Sachiko who courted Mifune in his last days. He eventually made up with Kurosawa as well. It happened in 1993 at a funeral - two old people saw each other, hugged and shed tears. The actor died in 1997.
It should be noted that, in fact, Mifune Toshiro became the founder of a professional dynasty. His children - Shiro and Mika - continued the work of the famous father. Toshiro's grandson, Rikia, also became an actor.
