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, and Yojimbo — all undisputed masterworks of world cinema. The Emperor and the Wolf is an in-depth look at these two great artists and their legacy that brims with behind-the-scenes details, many never before known, about their 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.