Emerging from a farming family in Minami, Saitama, he first studied painting at Tokyo University of the Arts, left after two years, and finished a culture-and-arts program at Bunka Gakuin; a coworker’s invitation to work on stage design sparked his shift from visual art to performance, eventually prompting him to join the Hyogenza theatre troupe in 1957 and later the Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Dram…
