suspicious farmer Manzō (万造) in Seven Samurai, the deranged former mayor in Yojimbo, the spidery treasure-seeking farmer in The Hidden Fortress, and the drunken Kabuki actor in The Lower Depths. Apart from working with Kurosawa, he worked with the director Yasujirō Ozu in Tokyo Twilight, playing the role of Chin Chin Ken at the Ramen bar, and also voiced the role of daddy in the movie version of the long-running anime Sazae San. He had difficulty remembering lines. When Arthur Penn, the American film director of Bonnie and Clyde, and Little Big Man, needed a Japanese actor for his film Mickey One, Penn was so impressed with the performance of Kamatari Fujiwara as the peasant who tries to disguise his daughter as a boy in Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Seven Samurai that he hired him to play the deaf-mute character simply known as "the artist" in his own film surrealist movie. Manzo Fujiwara's perhaps most famous role abroad was as the character of Manzo in Seven Samurai, a paranoid peasant who protected his daughter from the attentions of the samurai by dressing her as a little boy. The character's story is part of the key plot. Manzo, like many of the characters that Fujiwara portrayed, is low-class and disheveled. Manzo is typical of the villagers, and his character often represents their interests. His smiling face is significant at the end of the film as it indicates that the villagers themselves are the real winners in the plot. Kurosawa and Fujiwara disputed over how Manzo should be portrayed. Kurosawa wanted him played seriously while Fujiwara wanted to make his paranoia comical. Fujiwara won and when he saw the film again, Kurosawa found that Fujiwara made the right decision. Hidden Fortress One of his largest roles was in the Kurosawa epic Hidden Fortress, playing a comic grotesque opposite Mifune. His annoying peasant character Matashichi gave inspiration to George Lucas for R2D2, although R2D2 is the complete opposite to Matashichi in personality. The taller fellow lead character, Tahei, played by Minoru Chiaki served as the inspiration for C-3PO. Additionally, the characters and general plotline involving a princess fleeing an evil empire formed the basis for Lucas's movie Star Wars. Despite the influence, Fujiwara received no money from Lucas, and Lucas never personally thanked Fujiwara. Fujiwara may or may not have seen the Star Wars films, but he did not comment on what he thought