Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited by Russell Catherine

Author:Russell, Catherine
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781441107770
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing
Published: 2011-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

In many other films, one has to squint to find Shimura within the groups of men that circulate around Mifune. But there he is, in Throne of Blood and The Bad Sleep Well, playing secondary characters, along with a number of other key actors who appear over and over again. In all the enthusiasm over Mifune, the rest of Kurosawa’s stable of actors tend to get overlooked. Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara, for example, the two rascals in The Hidden Fortress, can be found in quite a few films. Chiaki plays one of the seven samurai, the priest in Rashomon, and Mifune’s pal in Throne of Blood (the Banquo character in this adaptation of Macbeth). Fujiwara, a Toho stalwart, appears in every film from Ikiru to Kagemusha. Before Mifune, Susumu Fujita played the judo-wrestling protagonist in both parts of Sanshiro Sugata (1943, 1945) (with Shimura as the paternal figure in part one), and also had leading roles in The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail and No Regrets for Our Youth. The detail that Galbraith’s book provides on these and other members of the Kurosawa-kumi (the production team) provides a fascinating insight into how the director was reliant on, and supported by, the structures and practices of the Japanese film industry and its star system. In one of Kurosawa’s first films, it was the popular comedian Enoken who had star status as the porter-cum-guide in Tiger’s Tail.

Fig. 29 Misa Uehara, Toshiro Mifune, Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara in The Hidden Fortress (Kurosawa, 1958).

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