Bokuzen Hidari

In Seven Samurai (1954), Bokuzen Hidari's timid farmer Yohei makes the prospect of fighting seem properly frightening. We felt protective of him, because Hidari gives the fear enough weight that we cannot simply dismiss the man as a coward. His melancholy face helps us take that fear seriously in an adventure with plenty else to occupy us. Toshiro Mifune can be overemphatic here; Hidari's vulnerability gives us a quieter reason to care about what happens.

In Ikiru (1952), he plays Ohara, and his drunken performance brings humour and resignation to a drama led by Takashi Shimura. Shimura makes the fear of wasted time painfully ordinary, and Hidari's comic contribution belongs in that company. We value the way he lets a man seem ridiculous without making his sadness irrelevant. The film's satire sometimes keeps explaining what we have already understood, but the humour and pathos of this small part need no such assistance.

His film career began around 1949–1950 and remained centred on supporting comic and character parts. With Kurosawa, The Idiot (1951) gave him Karube, while The Lower Depths (1957) cast him as Kahei the Pilgrim, both within literary adaptations. By Red Beard (1965), the credit was simply Patient A. Kurosawa cast him seven times, and that continuing collaboration gives us a useful way into a much larger body of supporting work, without requiring us to treat every appearance as a major performance.

The reservation is how often the casting returns him to meek, bumbling or elderly men. That makes the work less varied than we might wish, and familiarity can encourage us to stop looking at what the actor is doing. Hidari deserves attention without our pretending that every small part is the film's secret centre. Start with Seven Samurai, and give its frightened farmer some of the attention usually reserved for the fighters.