Much of the film was filmed from the slum streets of post war Japan. These were filmed under chief assistant director
Ishirô Honda, who had gone with camera operator
Kazuo Yamada into some dangerous, even yakuza run, territory. Many of the scenes of
Toshirô Mifune's character from the waist down are actually Honda standing in. In his book, Something Like an Autobiography,
Akira Kurosawa described Honda's role stating, "I had Honda do mainly second-unit shooting. Everyday I told what I wanted and he would go out into the ruins of postwar Tokyo to film. There are few men as honest and reliable as Honda. He faithfully brought back exactly the footage I requested, so almost everything he shot was used in the final cut of the film. I'm often told that I captured the atmosphere of postwar Japan very well in Stray Dog, and if so I owe a great deal of that success to Honda."
