Tag: obits

March 23, 2020 · 0 comments

Mariko Miyagi, who died on Saturday from malignant lymphoma, supposedly left her acting career behind in the 1980s, but remained prominent in the public eye for many further decades. A teenage vaudeville performer in the dying days of the Second World War, she swiftly rose to media stardom in the post-war era, initially as the […]

February 22, 2020 · 0 comments

Hisashi Katsuta, who died yesterday, provided one of the most recognisable voices in anime, but only came to that career after a decade in radio. He was one of the teenagers drafted to work in military factories in the last, desperate days of the Second World War, but was just young enough to avoid military […]

January 21, 2020 · 0 comments

Jo Shishido, who died yesterday in Tokyo, will be remembered as the charismatic moon-faced star of many a Nikkatsu Action film from the 1960s. He is best-known in the West for his iconic turn as the cold-hearted contract killer of Seijun Suzuki’s cult classic Branded to Kill (1967).

May 11, 2019 · 0 comments

Makoto Ogino, who died of renal failure on 29th April, spent his whole life preoccupied with the wheel of karma. On the day of his very first sale, his father, an education officer responsible for censuring unsuitable books, pleaded with him not to become the sort of manga creator whose works would get denounced in […]

April 19, 2019 · 0 comments

Kazuo Koike, who died on 17th April, was a man of many names. Born Yuzuru Tawaraya in what is now Daisen, Akita Prefecture, he died as Seishu Tawaraya, a Buddhist name, and wrote song lyrics as Fumihiko Azuma. But as a writer, it is the Koike pen-name that found him the greatest fame, in a […]