Stray Dog (野良犬, Nora inu) is a 1949 Japanese film noir crime drama directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. I
t was Kurosawa's second film of 1949 produced by the Film Art Association and released by Shintoho. It is also considered a detective movie (among the earliest Japanese films in that genre) that explores the mood of Japan during its painful postwar recovery. The film is also considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres, based on its premise of pairing two cops with different personalities and motivations together on a difficult case.