Yoshio Tsuchiya(1927-2017)
- Actor
Yoshio Tsuchiya grew up in his ancestral home in the countryside of
Japan--the very grounds where Akira Kurosawa would later film KAGEMUSHA
(1980). Tsuchiya's father was a professor of literature at the
prestigious Waseda University in Tokyo, and Tsuchiya grew up hearing as
bedtime stories the works of William Shakespeare, of which Tsuchiya's
father was the Japanese translator. Such a theatrical childhood no
doubt stayed with Tsuchiya, who studied to be a doctor, and did indeed
complete medical school. But he still felt drawn to acting, and so
joined the highly regarded Hayuza theater group. He intended to do
stage work entirely at first, until Akira Kurosawa persuaded him to
audition for SHICHININ NO SAMURAI in 1952. Though reluctant at first,
Tsuchiya acted his audition with such vigor that Kurosawa was bowled
over. So was the public at large when Tsuchiya's fiery Rikichi, the
most passionate of all the farmers in SEVEN SAMURAI, made his mark upon
the film's release in 1954. Toho began to groom Tsuchiya as a star in
the making, but he was less interested in fame than in the quality of
roles he played. Kurosawa, too, was intensely protective of his
discovery, counseling the young actor to work only with directors of
quality. Early in 1957, Kurosawa introduced Tsuchiya to one such
director, his close friend Ishiro Honda, whose classic GOJIRA had made
its mark in the same year as SEVEN SAMURAI. Tsuchiya and Honda took to
each other immediately--in later years he would call Kurosawa and Honda
"my other two fathers"--and the actor, an avid UFO buff, impressed the
director by insisting on the role of the Mysterian commander in their
first science fiction collaboration, EARTH DEFENSE FORCE (1957). Since
the Commander's face was never to be seen, Honda had had no illusions
of getting a first-rate actor to play the part, and actually tried to
talk Tsuchiya out of it. Toho, too, wanted him to play a role with a
face the audience would get to see. But the iconoclastic Tsuchiya
prevailed, and Honda was very touched by his persistence. He acted in
numerous pictures for Honda through 1970, when he largely retired from
movies in favor of the stage. After appearing in nearly every Kurosawa
film after 1954, their collaboration came to an end with RED BEARD in
1965. (The two-year shoot had cost Tsuchiya a role in Honda's popular
monster picture EARTH'S GREATEST BATTLE, 1964.) Kurosawa attempted to
cast Tsuchiya in both KAGEMUSHA and RAN, but Tsuchiya's stage schedules
would not permit. He did, however, narrate as well as appear in a 1991
TV documentary on the making of SEVEN SAMURAI. That same year, he made
his first appearance in a monster film in over 20 years, playing the
self-important magnate Shindo in GOJIRA VS. KING GHIDORA, which became
one of his very favorite acting jobs. Tsuchiya's fierce but controlled
persona has not dulled with age, and he remains more in demand than his
schedule can handle. He still prefers the stage to films or TV, and
usually does at least one stage tour a year. He is also a noted
essayist, on subjects ranging from his work with Kurosawa to his
interest in UFOs; several books of his work have been published.
