The most popular Toshiro Mifune samurai character you haven’t heard of

Hello! Recently, I saw ’’Exhuma’’ from 2023 — a standard contemporary Korean horror, yet containing an interesting reference. The plot is about excavating a grave of a spirit that haunts people. As the story folds out, the modern shamans begin to understand that it actually belongs to a samurai. We as viewers have an opportunity to see a few-second scene from his life and guess what. It’s black and white, windy, and incredibly 7-samurai-like.

It reminded me of a particularly huge reference that I’m not sure our community is broadly aware of. In Naruto, a fantasy teenage ninja tale being one of the very most popular anime series and mangas of all time (for instance, the r/Naruto subreddit has over 1.2 million members as of 2025), one of the dozens of side characters is a samurai called Mifune, whose katana’s name is Kurosawa, even written ’’Black Swamp’’. The character appears both in the original comic books and the show, being quite intensively detailed, as I see from an article of a page that claims to be ’’Narutopedia’’. It’s perhaps useful to note that Mifune’s visual features are unique in such a way that he looks the most historically accurate of all other ninjas and magical warriors.

https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/Mifune

My anime knowledge is minimal, but I enjoy learning about these references and tributes to AK. Thank you for sharing.

Interesting! You do find Kurosawa references in some of the most unexpected places, don’t you? Last summer, I was in France and randomly came across the comic book series Yojimbot. It features a robot that’s quite similar to Mifune’s character. The story also starts with a clear nod to Yojimbo, and perhaps also Sanjuro.