Background
Masayuki Mori was born on 13 January 1911 in Tokyo, Japan.
Masayuki Mori was born on 13 January 1911 in Tokyo, Japan.
Mori, the son of a novelist, attended Kyoto University and became a stage actor.
Throughout his career, both onstage and on-screen, his personal elegance was matched by the careful intelligence of his acting. He worked for Naruse eight times, most notably as the uncaring lover in Floating Clouds (55) and in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (60). He is the unhappy young brother in The Ball at the House of Anjo (Kozaburo Yoshimura, 47); the emperor in Mizoguchi’s Princess Yang Kwei Fei (55); the leading character in The Idiot (51) for Kurosawa; and with Mifune again in The Bad Sleep Well (60). Most important of all, he is Genjuro, the enchanted potter, in Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari (53).
It is appropriate that the two men in the triangle that is Rashomon (50) were Toshiro Mifune and Masayuki Mori—Mifune, the essential macho swaggerer, and Mori, the essential refined and sensitive aristocrat. They are the opposite masculine poles of fifties and sixties Japanese film.