Toshiro Mifune Trivia
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60 free Toshiro Mifune trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Toshiro Mifune trivia quiz covers the most famous Japanese actor of the twentieth century, from a photography studio in occupied China to a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The easy questions are ones any film fan can attempt: the director he made sixteen films with, the movie remade as The Magnificent Seven, the ronin who inspired the Man with No Name, the American miniseries that made him a household name and the Spielberg comedy he appeared in. From there it moves through the Kurosawa years: Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, Rashomon at Venice, Throne of Blood's arrows, The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars, High and Low and the beard that ended the partnership. The harder end is for cinephiles: his birthplace in Qingdao, the wartime aerial photography unit, the Toho new faces audition, the lions he studied, his Spanish-language Mexican film, the two Volpi Cups, Hiroshi Inagaki's twenty films and the Samurai Trilogy, Hell in the Pacific's two-man cast, the Bond and Star Wars roles he declined, his martial arts teacher, Mifune Productions and Kurosawa's line about three feet of film. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Mifune, his films and his collaborators before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Akira Kurosawa, Japanese cinema and samurai films quizzes next.
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Q 01With which director did Toshiro Mifune make sixteen films?
Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa directed Mifune in sixteen films between 1948 and 1965, and Mifune said the only acting he was proud of was the work he did for Kurosawa.
Q 02In which present-day Chinese city was Mifune born in 1920?
Qingdao
Qingdao, in China's Shandong province, was where Mifune was born on 1 April 1920 to Japanese parents; he grew up in China and did not live in Japan until adulthood.
Q 03What business did Mifune's father run, in which the young Toshiro worked?
A photography studio
A photography studio was the family business: Mifune's father worked as a commercial photographer in China, and the son learned darkroom work there before the war.
Q 04Where did Mifune serve during World War II?
The Aerial Photography section of Army Aviation
The Aerial Photography section of Army Aviation used his darkroom skills; conscripted as a young man, he spent the war as a photographer at army airfields rather than in combat.
Q 05Mifune got into films through a 1947 new faces contest at which studio?
Toho
Toho ran the 1947 new faces contest; a friend in the studio's photography department sent in Mifune's papers, and he was accepted although he had wanted a camera job.
Q 06Which actress told Kurosawa about a promising young man at the audition, prompting him to attend?
Hideko Takamine
Hideko Takamine, watching the new faces auditions, went to tell the director about a striking young man; he arrived to find Mifune reeling around the room like a wounded beast.
Q 07Kurosawa said Mifune could convey in three feet of film an emotion that took the average Japanese actor how much film?
Ten
Ten feet of film was what the director said an ordinary Japanese actor needed to convey what Mifune could put across in three feet.
Q 08Which 1948 Kurosawa film, considered the first yakuza movie, gave Mifune the role of the gangster Matsunaga?
Drunken Angel
Takashi Shimura played the alcoholic doctor Sanada who treats him.
Q 09In Stray Dog (1949), Mifune's detective has what stolen on a crowded bus?
His Colt pistol
His Colt pistol is lifted from Detective Murakami's pocket by a pickpocket, and he spends the film hunting it through sweltering post-war Tokyo as it is used in crimes.
Q 10Which character does Mifune play in Rashomon?
The bandit Tajōmaru
The bandit Tajōmaru is Mifune's role: he is accused of killing a samurai and assaulting his wife, and the four accounts of the crime contradict one another.
Q 11Rashomon won which top prize at Venice, becoming the first Japanese film to gain major international acclaim?
The Golden Lion
The Golden Lion went to Rashomon at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, and the film went on to receive an honorary Academy Award as the year's outstanding foreign-language picture.
Q 12What animals did Mifune reportedly study on film to prepare for Rashomon and Seven Samurai?
Lions
Lions were the model: Mifune studied film footage of lions in the wild to shape his prowling, feral Rashomon performance, and the same animal study fed his Seven Samurai role.
Q 13What is the name of Mifune's wild, self-proclaimed samurai in Seven Samurai?
Kikuchiyo
Q 21In High and Low, Mifune plays Kingo Gondo, an executive in what industry?
Shoes
Shoes are his trade: Gondo is an executive at National Shoes fighting for control of the company when a kidnapper seizes his chauffeur's son by mistake.
Q 22High and Low was loosely adapted from a novel by which American crime writer?
Evan Hunter
The 1959 novel was King's Ransom, written under his Ed McBain persona's 87th Precinct series.
Q 23Which 1965 film was the last Mifune-Kurosawa collaboration?
Red Beard
Red Beard (1965), with Mifune as the gruff clinic doctor Niide, ended a sixteen-film partnership; the two never made another film together.
Kikuchiyo is the boisterous farmer's son carrying a stolen samurai genealogy; driven off at first, he is accepted as the seventh and dies in the final battle.
Q 14Kurosawa's 1954 epic about villagers hiring warriors was famously remade in 1960 as which Hollywood western?
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, moved the story to a Mexican village hiring gunfighters against bandits.
Q 15Throne of Blood, in which Mifune plays Washizu, adapts which Shakespeare play?
Macbeth
Kurosawa later adapted King Lear as Ran.
Q 16How was the famous death scene of Mifune's character in Throne of Blood staged?
Archers shot real arrows around him
Archers shot real arrows around him: expert bowmen fired into the wooden walls beside Mifune, who waved his arms to signal where the next shaft should land and was reportedly terrified.
Q 17Mifune plays General Makabe Rokurōta in which 1958 Kurosawa film that influenced Star Wars?
The Hidden Fortress
The Hidden Fortress (1958) tells its story through two bickering peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, whose viewpoint George Lucas borrowed for C-3PO and R2-D2.
Q 18In Yojimbo, Mifune's ronin invents his name after looking at what?
A mulberry field
A mulberry field seen through the window gives him his surname, Kuwabatake (mulberry field), and he adds Sanjuro, meaning thirty years old, as a throwaway given name.
Q 19Which Sergio Leone film plagiarised Yojimbo, prompting a lawsuit by Toho?
A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) copied Yojimbo's plot so closely that the Japanese studio sued; the settlement gave it East Asian distribution rights and a share of the worldwide gross.
Q 20How many times did Mifune win the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at Venice?
Twice
Twice: Mifune won Venice's Volpi Cup for Best Actor in 1961 for Yojimbo and again in 1965, both for performances in films by the same director.
Q 24Why did the last Kurosawa film prevent Mifune from taking other roles during its two-year shoot?
He had to keep his natural facial hair the whole time
He had to keep his natural facial hair the whole time, because the doctor's beard was real and had to match across two years of shooting, so he could accept no other roles.
Q 25Mifune played which legendary swordsman in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy?
Miyamoto Musashi
Miyamoto Musashi is the role across all three films (1954–56), and the first, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, received an honorary Academy Award as best foreign-language film.
Q 26How many films did Mifune make with Hiroshi Inagaki, more than with Kurosawa?
Twenty
Twenty films paired Mifune with Hiroshi Inagaki, most of them period pieces, including the Samurai Trilogy and the 1958 remake of The Rickshaw Man.
Q 27Which admiral did Mifune portray in three different films?
Isoroku Yamamoto
Isoroku Yamamoto, the admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, was played by Mifune in two Japanese war films (1968 and 1970) and once for Hollywood.
Q 28For the Mexican film Ánimas Trujano, Mifune learned to deliver all his lines in what language?
Spanish
Spanish was learned phonetically for the part: Mifune delivered every line in it as the Oaxacan peasant Ánimas, and the film earned an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film.
Q 29Which 1966 motor-racing film was Mifune's Hollywood debut?
Grand Prix
Grand Prix (1966), John Frankenheimer's Formula One epic, cast Mifune as the Honda-like car builder Izo Yamura alongside James Garner and Yves Montand.
Q 30Hell in the Pacific (1968) has only two actors: Mifune and whom?
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin plays the American pilot stranded with Mifune's Japanese naval officer on a deserted island; John Boorman directed the two-man survival drama.