The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune

"Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune made sixteen feature films together, including Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and High and Low--all undisputed masterworks of world cinema. Kurosawa's films have inspired blockbuster remakes and influenced directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. Meanwhile, Mifune virtually invented the roaming warrior rogue, a character adapted with great success by Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Bruce Willis, Chow Yun-Fat, and countless other actors. Their impact on the international film world is indisputable, yet at the very height of their abilities, Kurosawa and Mifune went their separate ways. After Red Beard in 1965 they never worked together again--nor did they ever achieve the same level of success apart as they did together. The Emperor and the Wolf is an in-depth look at these two great artists and their cinematic legacy that brims with behind-the-scenes details, many never before known, about Kurosawa's and Mifune's tumultuous lives and stormy relationships with the studios and with one another. More than just a biography, though, The Emperor and the Wolf is also an impromptu history of Japanese cinema--its development, filmmakers, and performers--and a provocative look at postwar American and Japanese culture and. the different lenses through which two great societies viewed each other."--Jacket.