Chishu Ryu

Chishū Ryū was a Japanese actor who, in a career lasting 65 years, appeared in over 160 films and about 70 television productions. He was born in a rural area of Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu, the most southerly and westerly of the four main islands of Japan. His father was chief priest of a temple of the Pure Land Buddhism. Ryū attended the village elementary school and a prefectural middle school before entering the Department of Indian Philosophy and Ethics at Tōyō University to study Buddhism. His parents hoped he would succeed his father as priest of the temple, but Ryū had no wish to do so and in 1925 dropped out of university and enrolled in the acting academy of the Shōchiku motion picture company's Kamata Studios. Shortly afterwards, his father died and Ryū returned home to take on the role of priest. Within half a year or so, however, he passed the office to his older brother and returned to Kamata¹. For about ten years, he was confined to walk-on parts and minor roles, often uncredited. During this time he appeared in fourteen films directed by Yasujirō Ozu, beginning with the college comedy Dreams of Youth (1928). His first big part was in Ozu's College is a Nice Place (1936) and he made his mark as an actor in Ozu's The Only Son (also 1936), playing a failed middle-aged school-teacher in spite of the fact that he was only 32. This was his break-through role, and he now began to get major parts in other directors' films. He first played the lead in Torajirō Saitō's Aogeba tōtoshi (1937). His first leading role in an Ozu film was in the There Was a Father (1942). This was another "elderly" part: he played the father of Shūji Sano, who was only seven years his junior. He was by now undoubtedly Ozu's favourite actor: he eventually appeared in 52 of Ozu's 54 films. He had a role (not always the lead) in every one of Ozu's post-war movies, from Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) to An Autumn Afternoon (1962). He played his most famous "elderly" role in Tokyo Story (1953)¹. Ryū appeared in well over 100 films by other directors. He was in Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-four Eyes (1954) and played wartime Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki in Kihachi Okamoto's Japan's Longest Day (1967). From 1969 until his death in 1993, he played a curmudgeonly but benevolent Buddhist priest in more than forty of the immensely popular It's Tough Being a Man series starring Kiyoshi Atsumi as the lovable pedlar,conman Tora-san. Ryū parodied this role in Jūzō Itami's comedy The Funeral (1984). Ryū's last film was It's Tough Being a Man: Torajirō's Youth (1992)¹. Ryū was married to actress Shima Iwashita from 1959 until his death. They had two children, Teruhiko Aoi and Mariko Okada, who are also actors. Ryū died of cancer in Yokohama on March 16, 1993, at the age of 88¹. He was widely regarded as one of the greatest and most beloved actors in Japanese cinema history. He received many awards and honors for his work, including the Order of the Rising Sun, the Japan Academy Prize, and the Mainichi Film Award.