Numata Yoichi

[Aaron Gerow]

The news services reported a few days ago that the actor Numata Yoichi 
died on April 29 at the age of 81. Numata got his start at Toyoko 
appearing in such films as Kike wadatsumi no koe, but worked most 
consistently at Shintoho, appearing in both their nationalistic war 
films and the eroguro line (he plays the Mephistopheles character in 
Nakagawa Nobuo's masterpiece Jigoku). After Shintoho went under, he 
moved to Toei to appear in their yazuka films, but he is probably most 
famous abroad for playing Sadako's father in the Ring films. He is one 
individual who directly links those films to Shintoho.

He was also very interested in folk oral storytelling and traveled the 
country telling such stories as "Okori Jizo" about the bombing of 
Hiroshima.

Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

For list commands, send "information kinejapan" to
listserver at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Kinema Club: http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Welcome.html