Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The careers of Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune were so intertwined -- each did much of his very best work with the other -- that it is hardly possible to think of one without the other. It was entirely fitting that a dual bio be attempted, and Galbraith is to be applauded for taking on the job and making good work of it.

Though _The Emperor and the Wolf_ looks intimidatingly thick, only 650 of its 825 pages are actual narrative (the rest is taken up by an impressively detailed filmography of the two principals which scholars will love, and extensive notes and index), and that narrative reads easily and fairly swiftly.

The emphasis is clearly on the FILMS rather than the lives of these extraordinary artists. Galbraith moves calmly over such developments as Kurosawa's 1971 suicide attempt and Mifune's mistress Mika Kitagawa. He doesn't avoid, but he doesn't dwell, either.

On the other hand, assuming the Western reader's basic ignorance of such matters (and rightly so), he takes care to summarize the work of other directors, writers, and actors whenever they crossed paths with our two heroes. Descriptions of even really bad and forgettable films that have never made it to the U.S. sometimes make one yearn to see them, never mind the many decent ones.

There are plenty of quotes from American film reviewers -- good, bad, and ugly. (I was surprised that among my favorites, Stanley Kauffmann missed the boat a few times, and John Simon utterly dismissed "Ran.") Kevin Thomas of the LA Times seems to have done the best, most consistent job of grasping what these two geniuses were doing, each time a new film came out.

Galbraith gets overly defensive about Kurosawa's final two projects, "Rhapsody in August" and "Madadayo," but is harsh with "Dreams" and doesn't hesitate to disagree with famed Japan and Japanese film expert Donald Richie on some judgments, or to point out where other commentators have missed the boat (such as in the role William Holden played in championing Japanese films -- in particular, Inagaki's "Samurai" -- in the United States).

He's not a great prose stylist -- he regularly treats "none" and "each" as plural nouns, as in "none ... have been," "each ... have been" -- and I scratched my head over the conclusion "as lightweight films go, it is something of a masterpiece" (of "Sanjuro," p. 331), as well as the meaningless "infinitely more transcendent" (p. 558).

The book includes 44 b&w photos. Most are merely okay (perhaps Richie got most of the great ones for his books), although the one of Mifune in full costume driving off the set of "Yojimbo" in his MG is priceless.

One comes away from this largely reverent book with increased respect for both its subjects (yes, that is possible!), particularly the actor, about whose modesty and professionalism there are endless testimonials.

Even as a world famous star and head of his own production studio in his 40s, Mifune would clean bathrooms and ashtrays, spray the sidewalk, fetch chairs for others. He always knew his lines, and was unfailingly kind to new, young actors. Because he acted as his own agent, he rarely received top dollar for his work, which usually meant greater gate receipts for even truly bad films after the mid 1950s.

I snapped this book up as soon as I ran across it, just over a week ago, and I'm glad I did.

I think many reviewers didn't read the subtitle of the book, "Lives and Films of....." I don't think this book was meant to be a complete kiss and tell biography of Kurosawa and Mifune, this is a book which chronicled their cooperative efforts together in making films that became great classics and their relationship with and against each other. This is a book on relationship between two giants of the Japanese film industry. It was not meant to be a total biography as so many reviewers seem to have wanted.

The book gives very good background material to both men but its always about the relationship between the two. After both men split up after Red Beard, the author took pains to how see each one of them dealt with their careers afterward. Kurosawa continued to have success while Mifune drifted into period films, TV shows and his achievements suffered greatly. The book also gives a great understanding on how Japanese film industry worked, how it declined and basically how it fell apart in the face of Hollywood. Even the author expressed mixed surprised how waves of American films in a foreign nation like Japan, completely converted the Japanese audience into their own as they abandoned their own film industries into Third World status.

I thought the book was well written, well researched and explained the relationship and the films made by both Kurosawa and Mifune. But for anyone looking for a true biography, look some place else, for film historians like myself, this book is a must read.

This book suffers from two major failings: 1) it is completely lacking in focus 2) the author is too timid to set his own stamp on the material.

The title suggests it's about the films that director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune made together, including a well-known string of masterpieces (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, etc.); in fact it details, chronologically and in parallel, the life and films of Kurosawa and those of Mifune. As the work they did together was only part of each man's career, the result is a lot of jumping around from one to the other, with lots of description but almost no analysis. In particular the author gives only the most minimal interpretation of the relationship between the two, either on screen or off, its obvious importance in making their masterpieces possible, or why it abruptly ended, apparently devastating the careers of both. Instead we get this happened then that happened, quotes of variable interest from people who knew one or the other, and plot summaries of every film that either Kurosawa or Mifune had anything to do with in any capacity.

Kurosawa manages to come through all this with his dignity and status as one of the greatest-ever directors more or less intact. After the break with Mifune he remained true to his talent and overcame severe financial and personal difficulties to make films such as the grand-but-dry Ran and the subtly profound Madadayo. Mifune's standing is however sadly undermined by the author's approach. His extraordinary work with Kurosawa disappears in a wealth of detail about all the other hundred or so films he appeared in and/or produced - almost all of which it would be kinder to forget - punctuated by accounts of his messy and rather pathetic private life and many business failures. The man who played Kikuchiyo in Seven Samurai - for example - deserves better than this.

The saddest thing is that Galbraith obviously wanted to write a really good book, but has mistaken quantity for quantity. For example, with all this material he could have written an interesting biography of Mifune, exploring the question of how it was that a man so apparently lacking in good sense and confidence managed to turn out performances oozing both that rank among the finest in world cinema. Or he might have written a book that really did concentrate on the films Mifune and Kurosawa made together, shedding greater light on their relationship, its creative force and its rise and fall. As for the thousands of plot summaries of lost films that Galbraith feels are so important, they could have gone to an archive to moulder harmlessly.

However to write these or other books of his choosing Galbraith would have had to put aside his disabling respect for his subjects, which makes him avoid passing any kind of judgment or opting for any particular interpretation, prefering instead just to dump undigested on the page as many versions of `what happened' as he has been able to find. (Ironically this fault resembles Kurosawa's hands-off approach to Dostoyevsky in his film of The Idiot, whose disastrous results Galbraith notes.)

Ultimately I blame the editor at Faber. On receiving the manuscript this person should first have read it and then sent it back with a covering letter saying, `great research, now write me two or three great books.' In failing to do either they did a great disservice to Galbraith and his readers - not to mention Kurosawa and Mifune.

This is a filmography, not a biography. This book focuses almost entirely on Kurosawa's and Mifune's films, giving almost no insight into what their lives were like, or what they were like as people. The first half of this 800-page book is an interminable series of synopses of their early works -- films of significance today only as harbingers of much greater things to come. (Particularly annoying is the author's endless quoting of contemporary reviews from "Variety.") The second half still focuses primarily on the films and the minutiae of their production, but provides some substance about K&M's personal lives. However, it is not nearly enough to get a clear picture of Mifune and Kurosawa as real-life people. We, the readers, always feel like fans still observing the two legends from a distance, learning almost nothing of their personal lives. For instance, barely half a page is spent on Mifune's wedding, and essentially nothing is written about his wife, Sachiko.

In addition, although this is a dual biography-the justification being that Mifune and Kurosawa did their best work together-Mr. Galbraith fails to convey what kind of relationship, whether personal or professional, the two had. Rather, the book's focus alternates from one to the other between chapters. A glaring omission in this regard is a failure to examine their famous falling out. The overly cautious author only hints that it was due to Mifune's reluctance to be tied down by the perfectionist director's lengthy shoots ("Red Beard," their last film together, took 2 years to film), that Mifune, once he gained fame, preferred quick, easy-money projects to support his luxurious lifestyle. However, almost no anecdotes are given to illustrate this or any other aspect of their relationship.

In summary, the definitive English-language biographies of Mifune and Kurosawa have yet to be written.

Galbraith's combined biography of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune has a wealth of knowledge, or, more accurately, a lot of data. Though Emperor/Wolf has reams (848 pages at close to 3 pounds) of information, what it doesn't have is a life of its own. The material covered by Galbraith could have been assembled by researching web sites, magazine and newspaper articles. You read much about Kurosawa and Mifune but you never come to know the men as living beings. Everything is written just outside of any emotional involvement. I never felt their rage or joy and so I was never enraged or joyful. I never felt any emotional contact with the protagonists. It was as though Kurosawa and Mifune were being disected in an operating theatre and I was high above behind glass. I couldn't smell the blood of battle, hear the applause, cry at their deaths. The book was soulless; a compendium that could be used as an overview for further, smaller more intimate writings. Though it seems obvious to connect these two cinema powerhouses, on second thought, it is a failed premise because of the bodies of work by each man exclusive of the other, and dooms the effort.

Galbraith should be applauded for his research and tireless pursuit of information (you could anchor a battleship with this book!) Each Kurosawa film is analyzed in every way possible and I found out more about each film than I could have ever imagined. I have since re-watched eight of the films and, despite having seen them at least a half-dozen times before, almost felt like I was watching each for the first time due to the influence of this great book.

The coverage of most of Mifune's films is not quite as in-depth but this is probably because Mifune was over-used by Toho to lend star-power to almost everything the studio released (or so it seems from reading this book.) Mifune's larger films away from Kurosawa are analyzed with great care and detail. Outside of the Samurai Trilogy, I have never really sought out Mifune films but have certainly gained a much clearer image of him as an actor from reading this book.

My major complaint is that Galbraith overstates in the title. Calling this "The Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune" would be closer to the truth (not a literal suggestion as Donald Richie's book is called "The Films of..." but you get the point.) Aside from the occasional biographical note here or there, I did not find out much about either of these men's personal lives. I don't want trashy rumors or tabloid garbage but I did want a little more information about who these men were. While Galbraith, as I stated before, does shed a lot of light on the films themselves, there are already a number of fine studies of Kurosawa's films in print. I was glad to read Galbraith's as well but I think the title may be misleading to people who are not quite as into film analysis as some of the rest of us are.

Galbraith also assumes that the reader is a fan of Japanese cinema in general. I say this because the book is filled with mini-biography blurbs about so many actors and actresses who appeared in the films of these two men that I found myself absolutely lost at times among the long lists of names and directors and other films, etc. I respect the need for intense research in books of this nature and the fact that information is the essence of non-fiction, but I felt the book got side-tracked detailing the careers of all of these people and by discussing the inner-workings of the industry to a much greater extent than the inner-workings of the two men. I enjoyed the information on the actors Kurosawa continually used in film after film but the book just went too far in many cases. Also, the inclusion of a complete credit sheet for every film (located in the back of the book) makes restating much of the minutiae in the body of the text very redundant.

Overall, I am glad I bought this book and I will use it as a reference for years to come. I just wish it was more focused and was truer to its own title by delving deeper into the actual lives of these two great men.

This is a good not excellent book. I would rather call it a filmography than a biography. Galbraith spends much to much time on critics re-hashed reviews and incomplete and sometimes inaccurate facts that do nothing but leave the reader wondering. One comes away with the feeling that perhaps Galbraith does not particularily like either of these two great men. Most of the positive comments on Mifune and Kurosawa come from other people. Galbraith seems to take pleasure in pointing out each mans short comings and skimming over their accomplishments. His writing style is rather plebian and I wonder if perhaps he got in over his head with this book. Hopefully someone will write a true biography on both these great men one day. I for one cannot wait! These two luminaries deserve much better!

Akira Kurosawa is generally regarded as one of the (handful of) greatest directors that have ever worked in the medium (alongside such luminaries as Sergei Eisenstein, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir). Francis Ford Coppola has said that, of all film directors, Kurosawa is the only one whose films you can divide into masterpieces and "the simply very, very good." Inspired by Japanese history (a whole sub-genre of Japanese cinema known as jidai-geki, what we would call period costume), French policier noir, Italian neo-realism, American westerns, Shakespeare and Russian literature, amongst many others, Kurosawa's work - whilst difficult to exactly pigeonhole - is informed by a devout humanism and a sense that a single individual can achieve and affect much larger change. Starring in over half of Kurosawa's output, and making many of the films that now regularly find themselves in `best-ever' lists (such as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Red Beard, Yojimbo, Stray Dog and High and Low), Toshiro Mifune (pronounced mi-foo-nee) is perhaps best thought of as the John Wayne to Kurosawa's John Ford (or the De Niro to Kurosawa's Scorcese).

With The Emperor and the Wolf, Stuart Gilbraith IV has fashioned a huge and scholarly book that will act, for successive generations, as something of a monument to a specific time and place (in that, for example, many of the films discussed herein - particularly with regard to Mifune - are either no longer available or are extremely difficult to find). Furthermore, much of the academic information Gilbraith has rooted out (such as the cast lists that populate his exhaustive filmography of Kurosawa and Mifune's work) has previously never been noted, not even on the films themslves. Furthermore, although the title indicates that this is primarily a work of filmic biography centring on Kurosawa and Mifune, The Emperor and the Wolf is also deeply rooted in the history of Japanese cinema (touching on Ozu and Mizoguchi and countless others, many of whom have rarely been discussed outside of Japan).

In terms of the specifics, the pattern of exposition is quite curious. For example, Gilbraith examines each of Kurosawa's films with masterful detail - there are summaries, opinions (from Gilbraith), often hilarious contemporary reviews, potted biographies of individual cast members and occasionally surprising reappraisals of films (for example, Gilbraith rates Red Beard above Rashomon, as many Japanese do). The majority of Mifune's films, on the other hand, are not given anywhere near as much attention (although part of the reason for this must be to do with the fact that (a) Mifune starred in well over a hundred films and (b) many of them are of passing interest, seeing as how, towards the end of his career, Mifune was little more than a jobbing actor playing war heroes - often the SAME war heroes - and samurai - themselves 2-D reruns of Yojimbo - willy-nilly). Conversely, where Gilbraith rarely offers much in the way of biographical dissection (we don't know get to really develop a picture of what kind of people Kurosawa and Mifune are), we end up with a far better idea of the kind of man Mifune was (energetic actor, gentle man offscreen, something of a drinker, intimidated by the way his name and fame were constantly linked to Kurosawa) than we do with Kurosawa (referred to as `the Emperor' by the majority of people he worked with, had a tendency to fly off the handle at his star names, was eccentrically thorough when it came to the construction of his sets etc). Part of the reason for this can be linked to an admission Kurosawa himself made in the introduction to his book Something like a Biography: "Take `myself', subtract `movies' and the result is `zero'."

Gilbraith's unwillingness to dissect the men themselves gradually becomes something of a minor problem. As such, crucial moments in this book read like mere reportage. We don't really grasp why Kurosawa and Mifune cease working together (for example, Gilbraith refers to the acrimony that developed between Kurosawa and Mifune without delving into what the nature of that acrimony was). Similarly, the coverage of Kurosawa's suicide attempt (he cut his throat eight times and his wrists six) at the age of 62 following the disastrous Tora! Tora! Tora! and the perceived failure of Dodes-kaden is brief and unrewarding. (Gilbraith passes on an anecdote from Kurosawa's nephew: "I asked the question `Why did you do it?' You know what my uncle said? `A man who commits suicide always has a reason he wants to take to his grave, so don't try to dig it up. Don't ask me that question.' That was the end of the conversation." The nephew might as well be Gilbraith.)

Still, it is a slight complaint to make of a book that otherwise more than justifies the price of admission. The Emperor and the Wolf is a joy to read (a joy that does what all great film books should), sending you back to watch the films you have seen countless times before with new eyes and a keener understanding of the context in which they originally appeared.

An absolute must for students of Kurosawa, Mifune, Japanese film or, I must hasten to add, the history of cinema. Highly recommended.

First of all, let me say, this is a well written and fascinating book that I would recommend to anyone interested in Japanese cinema. It is informative and easy to read for a book in which the main text is 650 pages and the Filmography is 100 pages.

Particularly with the Kurosawa films, Galbraith gives a good feel for the origins, problems and successes of the movies although sometimes, I feel, his obvious respect for the director causes him to praise too highly some of the flawed works. However, this book is a valuable addition to the already excellent "The Films of Akira Kurosawa" by Ritchie. Galbraith's discussion on the non-Kurosawa films that Mifune made is much more superficial, perhaps because of their greater volume.

So, why don't I rate it a 5 star book? The book is subtitled "The Lives and Films of" but this is a book largely about the films. Maybe for two men whose lives were obviously their work some of that is unavoidable. However, at the end, I was left with a feeling of frustration that I had learned so little about them as human beings. Even the famous rift between the two men is not handled in any satisfactory manner. Although it is refered to at a number of points in the book, Galbraith at some points makes it a relatively extended "drifting apart" and at others a major rift. This is such a major event in both individuals's careers,particularly Mifune's, that I would have expected a detailed and cohesive discussion on this issue.

Still, overall, definitely a book I would recommend but not one that I can call a definitive, or even satisfactory, biography of these two important artists.

Other people have summed up the content quite nicely, so I won't
go into that. Everything you ever wanted to know about Kurosawa and Mifune's films is here... except:
Maybe it's just me (and I doubt I'm the only one who thinks this way) but I couldn't help feeling that while this massive tome
explores ALMOST every possible aspect of both mens lives and films, the one thing that seems totally lacking is a solid exploration of the WORKING METHODS that prevailed on Kurosawa's sets, and how he and Mifune approached MAKING FILMS. There is dicussion on the on financing, politics of the Japanese film industry, even Kurosawas monthly butcher tab... but when you get to the actual production of the films, you get a few anecdotes from the cast and crew (and occasionally from Kurosawa and Minfune), and then the date that the production wrapped.

If you take into consideration Kurosawa's famous quote,
"Myself, minus film, equals nothing...", then I would like to think that in a book this huge SHOULD have devoted some if it's length to a more in-depth discussion on Kurosawa's working process. And since Kurosawa rarely discussed such matters (at least in the material that is currently in print), it would have been really nice to have had more quotes from the likes of his camera men, sound men... in short, his CREWS... who might have revealed some insight to his craftsmanship and methods, rather than long, gushing quotes from minor actors that reveal little, except that Kurosawa was tall and Mifune would bring you tea.

I guess what I'm driving at is this: the book is over 800 pages in length. You would think that somewhere in all that material, Galbraith could have found the space to tell us something about how K & M worked together to develop Mifune's characters, how Kurosawa chose his shots and executed his scenes, his decisions in the editing room... I could go on. Perhaps I have been spoiled by Donald Richie's OZU, an excellent work that breaks down Ozu's working process and TELLS you how the man CREATED his films. Richie did it in just over 200 pages, and still included an excellent filmography.

Yes, some may argue that Galbraith's work was intended as a BIOGRAPHY. But this book reads more like an introduction to the Japanese film industry from 1930-present, using Kurosawa and Mifune as anchors to explore everyone and everything they came in contact with, but with little depth.

I gave it 5 stars because I appreciate the work that went into it, and it is a great read if Kurosawa and Mifune are to you what Scorsesse and DeNiro are to the unschooled. But for my [money], I expected more...

Someone tell Donald Richie to pen KUROSAWA, and do it exactly the way he did OZU. That book, if and when it appears, will be the perfect companion to Galbraith's work. As it stands now, we only have half the story. But it's a great half...