Mifune, Toshiro [key], 1920–97, Japanese actor, b. Qingdao, China. Mifune was a versatile actor, noted for a wide range of roles in more than 120 films. He appeared in more than a dozen films for director Akira Kurosawa, including Stray Dog (1949), Rashomon (1950), and Throne of Blood (1957). After he broke with Kurosawa in 1965, he appeared occasionally in American films, most notably the television miniseries Shogun (1980), and continued to appear in Japanese films, most successfully as the wandering samurai Yojimbo, first introduced in the 1960 Kurosawa film of that name.
See S. Galbraith 4th, The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune (2002).
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