Toshiro Mifune (Rashomon) Rashomon

Mifune was thirty when he played Tajomaru. He had worked with Kurosawa on four previous films and would continue through sixteen total, but Rashomon was the performance that made him an international figure -- the bandit with volcanic energy who scratches, swats at flies, and erupts into wild laughter while testifying about murder.

Kurosawa valued Mifune's speed above all else

What set Mifune apart from every other Japanese actor Kurosawa had worked with was not intensity but velocity. Kurosawa measured the difference in film stock:

"Mifune had a kind of talent I had never encountered before in the Japanese film world. It was, above all, the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding. The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression; Mifune needed only three." — Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography (1982) (book, not available online)

That speed is visible in every Tajomaru scene. Where his co-stars hold positions and deliver lines with theatrical precision, Mifune is already moving to the next gesture before the current one lands. The effect is of a man whose body cannot contain what he feels.

He studied animal movement to build the character's physicality

Mifune reportedly studied the movements of a lion at the zoo to develop Tajomaru's physical vocabulary -- the restless pacing, the sudden explosive turns, the way the character seems unable to hold still even when seated. The preparation was characteristic of Mifune's instinctive, body-first approach to character. (wikipedia)

"Toshiro Mifune has a fierce energy that seems scarcely contained; in many of his roles, he is like a wild animal pacing in a cage." — Brian Eggert, Deep Focus Review

The animal quality serves the narrative. Tajomaru in his own testimony is a force of nature -- desire triggered by a breeze, twenty-three sword strokes of heroic combat. In the woodcutter's version, the same man is groveling on the forest floor, begging a woman to marry him. The physical language Mifune invented had to accommodate both extremes.

The performance draws from silent-film expressionism, not naturalism

Mifune and Machiko Kyo both deliver what Brian Eggert calls "exaggerated, expressionistic performances influenced by silent cinema." The wild facial expressions, the grandiose gestures, the way Tajomaru's laughter fills the frame -- these are deliberate choices calibrated to Kurosawa's stated goal of restoring silent-film beauty to sound cinema.

"Both Machiko Kyo and Toshiro Mifune deliver exaggerated, expressionistic performances influenced by silent cinema." — Brian Eggert, Deep Focus Review

The contrast with Takashi Shimura's quiet woodcutter and Masayuki Mori's restrained samurai is part of the design. The two witnesses who narrate most extravagantly -- Tajomaru and the wife -- perform most extravagantly. The woodcutter, whose version strips everyone of heroism, is the most physically contained.

Director John Boorman compared him to a guided weapon

The difficulty of working with an actor whose instincts move faster than direction was captured by John Boorman:

"Impossible to direct Mifune. All you can do is point him like a missile." — John Boorman, as quoted in Kate Blowers Substack

Kurosawa embraced this rather than fighting it. He gave Mifune creative freedom within the structure of each scene, trusting that instinct would produce something no amount of direction could manufacture.

He played four different versions of Tajomaru without breaking character

The film's structure requires Mifune to play not one bandit but four: Tajomaru as he sees himself (brave, passionate, honorable in combat), Tajomaru as the wife sees him (cruel, boastful, a rapist who mocks his victim), Tajomaru as the dead samurai sees him (a man appalled by the wife's treachery, capable of offering solidarity to the husband), and Tajomaru as the woodcutter sees him (a coward groveling on the forest floor). Each version is internally consistent. The shifts between them are the film's most visible demonstration that identity is a story people tell about themselves.

Mifune did not know the film had been submitted to Venice

The film's international triumph caught Mifune off guard:

"Rashomon was a failure in Japan. We had no idea that it had been submitted to Venice. Kurosawa didn't go to the festival, neither did I. And hardly anyone knew it won the grand prize." — Toshiro Mifune, as quoted in IMDb

The Venice win transformed Mifune from a domestic star into a globally recognized actor. His subsequent collaborations with Kurosawa -- Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress -- all benefited from the international audience that Rashomon had created.