Sorry this is belated but…

Remembering the Birthday of Mifune-sama. April 1, 1920.

Oh, I didn’t know, thanks for the reminder!

Indeed! Also, Kurosawa would have been 102 a couple of weeks ago, on March 23.

A couple of week before that, on March 12, Takashi Shimura would have turned 107.

Quite a string of birthdays celebrations they must have had back then!

And since we are talking about birthdays of the Kurosawa group, let me also mention that Takao Saitô, who worked as an assistant cameraman on several Kurosawa films starting with One Wonderful Sunday, and later as a cinematographer from Sanjuro onwards, turned 92 on on March 5. Or at least I think he’s still alive. He was born in the same year as Mifune.

A slightly sadder note – just looking at imdb, it seems that Chikage Awashima, the actress who played Aya (Noriko’s cute best friend) in this months film Early Summer, only died 2 months ago at age 87. It seems she was working up to two years ago.

That’s interesting. Also, if IMDb is to trust, Awashima was in altogether 96 films, which is quite impressive especially considering that there were long periods when she didn’t appear in any: no films in 1969-1975, 1977-1982, 1985-1993, and 1997-2004.