KÅji Yakusho
Koji Yakusho (Japanese役 所 広 司}, Yakusho Koji; actually桥本 広 司, Koji Hashimoto, born January 1, 1956 in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese actor. He works for cinema, theater and television.
Biography
Training and entry into the film business
Koji Yakusho was born in 1956 as the youngest of five brothers as Koji Hashimoto, Isahaya. After graduating from high school for technology of Nagasaki Prefecture in 1974, he began working for the municipal office of the Municipality of Chiyoda in Tokyo (Japanese Chiyoda -ku Yakusho ). His stage name he took this job.
When he a production of Maxim Gorky's play saw the petty bourgeoisie in 1976, he decided to become an actor. In the spring of 1978, he spoke at Mumeijuku drama studio, the actor Tatsuya Nakadai conducted before and was discontinued. There he met the actress Kawatsu Saeko, whom he married in 1982 and in 1985 gave birth to their son.
Yakusho was known by various roles in television series. In 1983 produced by NHK TV drama Tokugawa Ieyasu, he embodied the warlord Oda Nobunaga ( 1534-1582 ), the samurai Miyamoto Musashi ( 1584-1645 ) he played from 1984 to 1985 in an eponymous television series.
Initial success and breakthrough
In the comedy Tampopo (1985 ), whose real action is the acquaintance of a noodle soup restaurants, he had the role of the white-clad yakuza. He had his second major feature film role in the Soviet-Japanese co-production The White Wolf of 1990, for which he was first nominated for the Japanese Academy Award. He, however, had to concede defeat Ittoku Kishibe, who was awarded the Cannes winning the Grand Prize of the Jury Film Shi no toge.
The final breakthrough in Japan he succeeded in the years 1996 to 1997. Masayuki In Suos Dance Film Shall we dance? ( 1996), he played Shohei Sugiyama. The film was very successful in Japan in both film awards as well at the box office and sparked a dance boom. Later originated in the U.S. under the title Shall We Dance? a remake of the film in which Richard Gere played his original role. For his role in Shall We Dance? Koji Yakusho won, among others, the Japanese Academy Award, the Blue Ribbon Award, the Kinema Junpo Award and the Hochi Film Award. In addition to starring roles in Tatsuoki Hosonos Shabu Gokudo (1996) and Yoshimitsu Morita Shitsuraken ( 1997), he was the lead actor in Shohei Imamura melodrama The eel, which in 1997 won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. For Shitsuraken and The Eel won the actor his second Japanese Academy Award, for which he was nominated six times between 1999 and 2005.
He had another success with the thriller Cure, for which he was honored at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 1997 as Best Actor. With the director of Kyua, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, he worked in the following years, several more times - including at Qurei (2000) and doubles (2003) - together ( " The people in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films never look as though they would get enough sleep. " - The New York Times). The second collaboration with director Shohei Imamura took place in 2001 with the film of water games, where he is an unemployed Sarariman who meets a strange woman in search of a treasure.
Projects abroad
Koji Yakusho 2005 had a minor role in the American romantic drama Memoirs of a Geisha, where Zhang Ziyi and Ken Watanabe took over the lead roles. The film, which is based on the novel by Arthur Golden, won three Oscars and grossed over $ 157 million dollars. His second American film was Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel film, which premiered in May 2006 at the Film Festival of Cannes. In Babylon he played, among others, alongside Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal. He embodies (played by Rinko Kikuchi ), who gave up his work as a big-game hunter and gave his rifle to his former Moroccan hunting guide in the film Yasujiro, the father of deaf adolescents Chieko.