07 · 19 · 23

Toshiro Mifune, the Japanese Actor who Conquered Mexico

Aura Resendiz

Aura Resendiz

Translator, Andrea Cabrera

An iconic Japanese film actor starred in a Mexican film in the early 1960s. We're talking about Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997), one of the most recognized personalities in Japan for his work with directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Steven Spielberg, as well as for being the face of the jidaigeki, a term that refers to Japanese "period" films, in the Tokugawa period or Edo period (1600-1868), based mainly on the life of the samurai.

Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954) and Throne of Blood (1957), all by Kurosawa, are some of the more than 150 works in which Mifune participated. During his career, the actor born in Qingdao, China, collaborated with prominent Japanese filmmakers such as the aforementioned Akira Kurosawa (The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo), Masaki Kobayashi (Samurai Rebellion,  The Human Condition), Mikio Naruse (Ukigumo, A Wife's Heart), Kihachi Okamoto (Chi to suna, Akage), among others.

However, after 15 years working in his native country, Mifune made the decision to venture abroad and it was precisely a Mexican production that marked his great debut outside the land that saw him born as a star, and his first step before entering Hollywood.

Toshiro Mifune in Mexico

Mifune 's debut on the big screen was Snow Trail (1947), by Senkichi Taniguchi, at the age of 27, a role for which, the following year, Akira Kurosawa would choose him to star in Drunken Angel (1948). Such a film would represent the beginning of an extensive working relationship with the Japanese director, with at least 16 feature films.

His first approaches in international ceremonies came from Kurosawa. In 1956 he received his first nomination at a foreign award ceremony, at the British Academy Award for Best Actor for Seven Samurai. But it would be in 1961 when he would get his first award as Best Male Actor at the Venice International Film Festival for Yojimbo (1961).

It was in that same year when the Japanese actor would star in his first production abroad: Ánimas Trujano: El hombre importante (1961), by Ismael Rodríguez (Nosotros los pobres, Dos tipos de cuidado), one of the most emblematic filmmakers of the Mexican golden age, who was behind Pedro Infante's most successful titles.

The film is based on the novel La mayordomía, written in 1951 by Rogelio Barriga Rivas. The cast of the film also included Columba Domínguez (Maclovia, Un día de vida), Flor Silvestre (¡Viva la soldadera!, El ojo de vidrio), Antonio Aguilar (La cucaracha, Los Hermanos Del Hierro), Titina Romay (Huracán Ramírez, Píntame angelitos blancos), Amado Zumaya (María Isabel, La novicia), among others.

But how did Mifune get to Mexico? It was Rodríguez who took the first step. The director was already interested in adapting Barriga Rivas' work to the big screen. After seeing the interpretation of the Japanese actor in the film The Rickshaw Man (1958), by Hiroshi Inagaki, he thought that "that was his Ánimas Trujano", as the Mexican filmmaker confessed in an interview with the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE) in 1993.

In Ánimas Trujano: El hombre importante, Toshiro Mifune plays an indigenous man from an Oaxacan village who wants to become the village's butler. However, his reckless and lazy character, added to his taste for alcohol, plays against him in his quest to obtain a degree which, apparently, only those with prestige and purchasing power can aspire. 

The Japanese actor learned his dialogues without knowing Spanish, only by phonetic memorization. However, it was Narciso Busquets (Pedro Páramo, Cadena Perpetua) who ended up dubbing Mifune and voicing the character. "It's my voice but in Japanese," Rodríguez told IMCINE in 1993, about Busquets' reaction after hearing the protagonist's pronunciation of Spanish.

The film had an outstanding performance at international awards ceremonies. In 1961, it won a Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival for Best Film. In 1962, it won a Silver Globe for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, and receive a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film at the 34th Academy Awards. This last recognition made Ánimas Trujano: Un hombre importante the second Mexican film to be nominated for this category in the Academy Awards after Macario, by Roberto Gavaldón, in 1960.

In Japan, Mifune was also recognized at the Blue Ribbon Awards as Best Actor, an award he also received for Yojimbo, (1961) by Akira Kurosawa.

After finishing his first work abroad, the protagonist of Ánimas Trujano launched his production company Mifune Productions in 1962, with which he would create his only film as a director: Legacy of the 500,000 (1963). John Frankenheimer 's Grand Prix (1966) was his Hollywood debut.This film would be followed by Hell in the Pacific (1968), by John Boorman, and 1941 (1979) directed by Steven Spielberg.

Toshiro Mifune died on December 24, 1997, at the age of 77. Although Kei Kumai's Deep River (1995) was the last film of his career, his legacy continued to be recognized, posthumously, on multiple occasions.

On April 1, 2020, to commemorate 100 years since his birth, a Japanese television channel broadcast the film Ánimas Trujano.