MIFUNE, 77, JAPANESE ACTOR; STAR OF `RASHOMON,' `YOJIMBO'.

Byline: Rick Lyman The New York Times

Toshiro Mifune, the most internationally celebrated of Japanese film actors, whose work, particularly for director Akira Kurosawa, galvanized generations of performers in America and around the world, died Wednesday at a hospital in Mitaka, Japan, near his home in Tokyo. He was 77.

The Kyodo News Agency reported that Mifune died of organ failure.

In more than 120 films, 16 of them for Kurosawa, Mifune displayed both screen-idol magnetism and an astonishing range stretching from classical tragedy to light comedy.

But he was best known for his emblematic role as the down-on-his-luck samurai, sometimes arrogant, sometimes bemused, who wanders into a lawless village and sets matters right, much in the fashion of the American westerns that both Mifune and Kurosawa admired.

In ``Rashomon,'' ``Yojimbo,'' ``Sanjuro'' and particularly in Kurosawa's epic ``Seven Samurai,'' Mifune's complicated, scraggly loner was one of the chief archetypes for nearly three decades of screen heroes in Japan and around the world.

His screen persona had deep roots in classical Japanese drama. It was a cinematic expression of a longstanding dramatic figure known as the tateyaku, a heroic leading man emerging from medieval samurai tales and epic military romances. In contrast to the nimaime, who is a more soft-spoken and romantic hero, the tateyaku is courageous, iron-willed and self-sacrificing. To this, Mifune brought a sense of ironic self-knowledge and intense sexuality.

He appeared in relatively few films outside of Japan, and might be best known to many Americans as the warlord Toranaga, in the 1980 television mini-series adaptation of James Clavell's ``Shogun.''

But he also played a Japanese sailor stranded on a tropical island with an American sailor, played by Lee Marvin, in John Boorman's ``Hell in the Pacific'' (1968), an industrialist sponsoring a racing team in John Frankenheimer's ``Grand Prix'' (1966) and a bumbling submarine commander in Steven Spielberg's ``1941'' (1979).

Born to Japanese parents in the Chinese province of Manchuria, Mifune joined the Japanese Imperial Air Force in 1939 and later recounted a less than sterling military career that he said was dominated by fear and drudgery. ``These big laborer's hands of mine are my unwanted souvenir of that time,'' he once told an interviewer.

Yet like many Hollywood stars who had spotty military careers during World War II but who went on to play gallant screen heroes, Mifune also specialized in portraying Japanese military heroes. In particular, he played Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, in several films, including ``Storm Over the Pacific'' (1960) and the American-made ``Midway'' (1976).

After the war, Mifune found his way to Tokyo where he showed up with several hundred other aspiring actors at Toho Studios, Japan's largest film production company, which was conducting a nationwide talent search it called ``Wanted: New Faces.''

Mifune played small roles in two films in 1946 and 1947 before Kurosawa cast him in ``Drunken Angel'' (1948), a neo-realist drama about an alcoholic doctor struggling to save slum dwellers from the ravages of poverty and squalor. Mifune played a cocky gangster stricken with tuberculosis.

The film established the director as one of the most promising in Japan and made Mifune an instant star. Between 1948 and 1965, Kurosawa made 17 films; all but one starred Mifune.

In ``The Quiet Duel'' (1949), Mifune played a wartime doctor who accidentally contracts syphilis while operating on a soldier; in ``Stray Dog'' (1949), he is a detective searching for his lost revolver; in ``Scandal,'' an indictment of yellow journalism, he is a painter whose innocent meeting with a famous singer is sensationalized by gossip sheets.

It was in 1950 that Mifune first put on a sword for Kurosawa in ``Rashomon,'' the frequently imitated film about the elasticity of truth that made both of their international reputations and earned Kurosawa the Oscar for best foreign film.

In ``Seven Samurai'' (1954), Mifune played the role that was always his favorite: Kikuchiyo, the preening samurai who rises to heroism in the film's climactic battle.

Mifune also starred in Kurosawa adaptations of three foreign classics - Dostoyevsky's ``Idiot'' in 1951, Gorky's ``Lower Depths'' in 1957 and ``Throne of Blood,'' a breathtakingly atmospheric adaptation of ``Macbeth'' in 1957.

George Lucas has credited Kurosawa's ``Hidden Fortress'' (1958) with being one of the inspirations for his ``Star Wars'' films. In it, Mifune plays a general trying to lead a young princess through enemy territory.

Mifune returned to samurai roles with Kurosawa's ``Yojimbo'' in 1961, a somewhat comic adventure about a samurai with no name who pits two rival gangs against each other in a small village. It was remade by director Sergio Leone as ``A Fistful of Dollars,'' starring Clint Eastwood.

``Yojimbo'' was such a huge success in Japan that Kurosawa followed it up by having Mifune play another similar scraggly samurai in ``Sanjuro'' (1962).

Mifune was chosen best actor of the year at the Venice Film Festival for his role in ``Yojimbo,'' and won the award again in 1965 for playing a medieval medical administrator in ``Red Beard,'' the last film he made with Kurosawa.

Mifune married Takeshi Shiro in 1950, and they had two sons.

Though Mifune is best known for his work with Kurosawa, he also worked for other leading Japanese directors. In 1952, he was in Kenji Mizoguchi's ``Life of Oharu.'' And he acted for Hiroshi Inagaki in ``Miyamoto'' (1954) and ``The Rickshaw Man'' (1958), among others.

In 1963, Mifune formed his own company, Mifune Productions, and directed its first effort, ``The Legacy of the 500,000.'' He never directed again, though his company continued to produce films and television programs and later established an acting school.

Through the 1960s and '70s, Mifune appeared in numerous samurai films, and his character was sometimes darker than it had been in Kurosawa's epics.

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PHOTO Toshiro Mifune

Acted in over 120 films