A Tokyo native who graduated from the municipal junior high school, he co-founded the Bungakuza theatre troupe in 1937 and earned the Mainichi Theater Award in 1949 for his stage work. Transitioning to cinema in 1945, he quickly became a respected supporting actor, appearing in Akira Kurosawa’s landmark Seven Samurai, for which he received the Mainichi Film Concours Best Supporting Actor prize in…
