Actors - Toshiro Mifune

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	Actors - Toshiro Mifune

Toshiro Mifune (三船敏郎 Mifune Toshirō) (1 April, 1920 - 24 December, 1997) was a popular Japanese actor who appeared in almost 170 feature films. To this day he is easily the best-known Japanese actor in the history of film.

Childhood

Mifune was born 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.

Although the young Toshiro spent the first 19 years of his life in China, and could even speak Mandarin, as a Japanese citizen he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Air Force, where he served in the Aerial Photography (Ko-type) unit during the Second World War. He repatriated to Japan in 1946.

Entry into show business

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 union. Mifune was doubly an outsider, being a non-Buddhist as well as a native Manchurian (Manchuria being associated with misfits and eccentrics by mainland Japanese). His choice of profession also made him suspect, as actors were generally assumed to be irresponsible and financially incapable of supporting a family.

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 1982.

Popularity

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 about 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, in the case of Yojimbo, 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.

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 Rashōmon
, 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
.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Toshiro Mifune ]

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Actors - Toshiro Mifune

Childhood

Entry into show business

Marriage

Popularity

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