Toshiro Mifune - Early Life

Early Life

Toshiro Mifune was born in Qingdao, China, to Japanese Methodist parents, and grew up in the Chinese city of Dalian with his parents and two siblings. In his youth, Mifune worked in the photography shop of his father Tokuzo, a commercial photographer and importer who had emigrated from northern Japan. After spending the first 19 years of his life in China, during which there is evidence that he worked as a Methodist missionary, as a Japanese citizen he was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army Aviation, where he served in the Aerial Photography (Ko-type) unit during World War II. He repatriated to Japan in 1946.