Tamura Takahiro

[Aaron Gerow]

The news services report that the actor Tamura Takahiro died on the 
18th at the age of 77. Tamura was the eldest son of the great jidaigeki 
actor Bando Tsumasaburo and the older brother of the actors Tamura Ryo 
and Tamura Masakazu (TV's Furuhata Ninzaburo). After graduating from 
Doshisha and working as a salaryman for a while, he debuted in 
Kinoshita Keisuke's Onna no sono in 1954 (interestingly Kinoshita also 
directed Masakazu's debut film). He was a Shochiku contract player for 
the first decade of his career, appearing in many of their melodrama, 
until he moved to Daiei, where he played the intellectual soldier 
teamed up with Katsu Shintaro in the popular Heitai yakuza series (I 
particularly liked him in this role). From the 1970s on, he has been 
one of the most distinguished character actors in Japanese cinema, 
appearing in films by directors such as Oshima, Imai, Obayashi, Kumai, 
Ogawa, Fukasaku, Koyama, Sato, and Oguri (playing the lead in Doro no 
kawa). The JMDB lists 163 films under his name, but he surely was in 
more than that.

Aaron Gerow
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Film Studies Program
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu