Born in 1923 to a modest family in Shizuoka Prefecture, Mikuni left school as a teenager, wandered through China and Korea, and endured frontline service in World War II before returning to Japan and taking odd jobs. A chance photograph submitted to Shochiku led to his discovery in 1950, and he debuted the following year as a newspaper reporter in Keisuke Kinoshita’s The Good Fairy, adopting the s…
