1930) 1997 Toshiro Mifune, Chinese Japanese actor and producer (b.

It marked the debut of the intense young actor Toshiro Mifune.

In 1997, he died in Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan, of multiple organ failure at the age of 77.

Also featured are Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Toshirō Mifune, and Richard Roundtree.

Also, for reasons never adequately explained, Red Beard would be his final film starring Toshiro Mifune.

Mifune's Last Song ( in North America and Swedish Mifune ), 1999, is the third film to be made according to the Dogme 95 group rules.

Early life Toshiro Mifune was born on 1 April 1920 in Qingdao, Shandong, China, to Japanese parents.

A grittily realistic story of a doctor who tries to save a gangster (yakuza) with tuberculosis, it was also the director's first film with Toshiro Mifune, who would proceed to play either the main or a major character in all but one ( Ikiru ) of the director's next 16 films.

Mifune also states that Maeda was one of the most vigorous promoters of judo, although not by teaching the art, instead generating recognition of judo through his many combats with contenders from other disciplines.

A conceited and materialistic, foreign trained young doctor, Yasumoto, is forced to become an intern at the clinic under the stern tutelage of Doctor Niide, known as Akahige ( Red Beard ), played by Mifune.

The Quiet Duel starred Toshiro Mifune as an idealistic young doctor struggling with syphilis, a deliberate attempt by Kurosawa to break the actor away from being typecast as gangsters.

Kyuzo Mifune registered at the Kodokan in 1903 and attracted the attention of Maeda, who commented, you are strong and competent, therefore, you will certainly leave your mark in the Kodokan ... Mifune went to learn under Sakujiro Yokoyama and later, already a celebrated judoka, Mifune said that Maeda's words were a great incentive, as he regarded Maeda with the greatest admiration, even though Yokoyama was his sensei (instructor).

It was Kurosawa who, with his mentor Yamamoto, had intervened to persuade Toho to sign Mifune, during an audition in which the young man greatly impressed Kurosawa, but managed to alienate most of the other judges.

However, Kurosawa did not want to smother the young actor's immense vitality, and Mifune's rebellious character electrified audiences in much the way that Marlon Brando's defiant stance would startle American film audiences a few years later.

According to Mifune, in 1904 Maeda lost to Yoshitake Yoshio by Hane Goshi, after defeating three adversaries in succession, but in a following tsukinami shiai defeated eight adversaries in a row and was awarded the rank of 4th dan ( yondan ).

Virtually all critics agree that the strongest period of Kurosawa's career was the one between 1950 and 1965 bookended by Rashomon and Red Beard and that it is not a coincidence that this phase corresponds almost exactly to the time that he and Mifune worked together.

While Mifune was not cast as the protagonist in Drunken Angel , his explosive performance as the gangster so dominates the drama that he shifted the focus from the title character, the alcoholic doctor played by Takashi Shimura, who had already appeared in several Kurosawa movies.

The story concerned an elderly factory owner (Toshiro Mifune) so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that he becomes determined to move his entire extended family (both legal and extra marital) to what he imagines is the safety of a farm in Brazil.

The most celebrated of Kurosawa's works from this period, it is a detective movie (perhaps the first important Japanese film in that genre) that explores the mood of Japan during its painful postwar recovery through the story of a young detective, played by Mifune, and his obsession over his handgun, stolen by a penniless young man who proceeds to use it to rob and murder.