When I heard about the Christmas Eve death of the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, the 77-year-old star of over 120 international films, including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, The Bad Sleep Well and High and Low, I was angered and saddened. Well, let me explain why I was furious: I first learned about Mifune's death on the Web, three days after it happened. The American press didn't give a crap about this international-cinema icon; they were more upset over the demise of Seinfeld (which, by the way, deserves to end this year). That's a reason why I go to the Web for news instead of switching on the tube.
And now comes the saddened part. I thought Mifune, an icon for aspiring Asian American actors and filmmakers everywhere, was going to live forever. I recall reading a 1992 San Jose Mercury News interview that said Mifune looked younger than his age and was the picture of health (it was published during the release of Shadow of the Wolf, that widely panned Eskimo flick he did with Lou Diamond Phillips and Jennifer Tilly). According to countless press releases, the ex-soldier-turned-actor died of "multiple organ failure," perhaps related to a 1993 heart attack.
Like almost everyone else from my generation, I first saw Mifune in Shogun. I watched this 1980 miniseries based on James Clavell's bestseller about an American sailor-turned-samurai in a high-school history class. I thought the man was amazing; in a culture filled with Asian stereotypes, I was glad to see this was one Asian guy who didn't f--- around. I wanted to become like him; sometimes I'd walk around the halls with Mifune-like swagger. I could see why John Belushi idolized him; he admired the ballsy, sweaty, laconic bravado in his samurai roles so much that he created the Samurai character on Saturday Night Live as a homage to Mifune.
While most of the other history-class students were barking racial slurs at the screen, I admired the authority and quiet dignity of Mifune's Lord Toranaga. Like Brando in The Godfather, his screen time isn't very long, yet his presence permeates the film, and he leaves you thirsting for more. I didn't give a damn about Richard Chamberlain's American hero in the film; I related more to Toranaga, his boss. Shogun, of course, isn't the definitive Mifune film, because it misuses him and drowns out his dialogue with Orson Welles' intrusive narration (NBC didn't think subtitles would play well in Peoria).
One of my favorite Mifune performances was in 1961's Yojimbo (one of 16 films he did with director Akira Kurosawa), where Mifune played Sanjuro the loner samurai to laconic, supercool perfection. Together, Mifune and Kurosawa reinvented the western genre, making what people called "Eastern Westerns." Their infusion of darker tones and dark-humored bleakness into westerns influenced Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone's Man with No Name westerns (1964's A Fistful of Dollars is a remake of Yojimbo), films that made John Wayne wince.
But almost everyone can agree that Mifune's greatest performance was the funny and poignant one he gave as Kikuchiyo, the boozing, impish samurai in 1954's Seven Samurai. I can count on my hand five great Mifune scenes from that film, including a devastating, emotional monologue in which he lashes out at both his samurai comrades and the peasant farmers that they're protecting from bandits. In that classic scene, Kikuchiyo reveals he's a farmer's son who ended up becoming the very type of person he despised — a samurai.
Mifune played a wide range of roles, from swordsmen to modern-day cops and businessmen, and infused into his performances a combination of intense fury and authority unlike any other previous film actor from his country. Kurosawa once said, "The ordinary Japanese actor might need 10 feet of film to get across an impression; Mifune needed only three. The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express."
When James Stewart and Robert Mitchum died in the same week last July, everyone said, "We'll never see the likes of those actors again." The same could be said of Mifune.