Top Japanese actor dies

The Japanese film actor, Toshiro Mifune, has died in a Tokyo hospital at the age of seventy-seven.

Born in China in 1920, Mifune was one of a handful of Japanese actors to became well-known in English as well as Japanese-language cinema.

He became a star with his role in "Rashamon" in 1950, his fifth film under the director Akira Kurosawa.

Other notable appearances in a career encompassing more than a-hundred-and-thirty films were in "The Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo".

Mifune frequently appeared as a traditional Samurai warrior but also played many rugged, contemporary parts.

He was dubbed by some critics "the Japanese John Wayne".

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service