Toho produced Akira Kurosawa’s 1948 film Drunken Angel.
Drunken Angel was made and released by Toho during a turbulent period of labor disputes at the studio. Kurosawa was able to make the film with relatively little interference from studio management and the union, helping him shape it as a personal postwar drama.
The film stars Takashi Shimura as an alcoholic doctor and Toshiro Mifune as his yakuza patient. It is often regarded as Kurosawa’s first major work and began his long creative partnership with Mifune; they eventually collaborated on 16 films.
Production ran from late 1947 into March 1948, and the film reached Japanese cinemas on April 27, 1948. Its story of illness, crime, poverty, and moral responsibility unfolds around a polluted sump, a striking image of postwar social decay. Drunken Angel also marked Kurosawa’s first collaboration with composer Fumio Hayasaka.