Kōji Yakusho (役所 広司,Yakusho Kōji?) is a Japanese actor.
Born Kōji Hashimoto (橋本 広司,Hashimoto Kōji?) on January 1, 1956, in Isahaya, Nagasaki, Japan. He is the youngest of five brothers.
After graduation from the Nagasaki Prefectural High School of Technology in 1974, he took employment at the Chiyoda municipal ward office (the Chiyoda-Ku Yakusho) in Tokyo, hence the screen name "Yakusho," a Japanese word meaning "public office." In 1976, he saw a production of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths and was inspired, first to take in as many plays as possible, later to take part in as many plays as possible.
In the spring of 1978 he auditioned, and was 1 of 4 chosen out of 800 applicants to the Mumeijyuku acting studio. While at the school he met actress Kawatsu Saeko, whom he would marry in 1982. The couple's son was born in 1985.
In 1983 he landed the role of Oda Nobunaga in the year-long NHK drama Tokugawa Ieyasu and was catapulted to (moderate) fame. He has also appeared in a TV version...
Created by dipity on Jan 24, 2008
Last updated: 11/13/09 at 12:33 PM
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Silk is the film adaptation of Italian author Alessandro Baricco's novel of the same name. It will be released in 2007 through New Line Cinema, directed by the Red Violin director, Francois Girard.The American actor Michael Pitt will star in the lead role of the French silkworm smuggler Hervé Joncour and the British actress Keira Knightley will appear as the Hélène, wife of Hervé. Japanese actors Miki Nakatani and Koji Yakusho have also been cast. Exterior Japanese scenes were filmed in the city of Sakata. Keira's scenes were filmed in Italy, exactly in Sermoneta, a small medieval village near Latina.The novel is the story of a married silkworm smuggler named Hervé, in 19th century France, traveling to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out their African supply. During his stay in Japan, he becomes obsessed with the unnamed concubine of a local baron, Hara Jubei.Hervé's love remains secret, and he travels to Japan, ostensibly for silkworms, for many years,...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0494834
Babel is a Golden Globe-winning and Academy Award-nominated 2006 film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga, starring an ensemble cast. The multi-narrative drama completes González Iñárritu's "death trilogy," which also consists of Amores Perros and 21 Grams.Babel weaves together stories taking place in Morocco, Japan, Mexico and the United States. It was an international co-production among production companies based in France, Mexico and the USA. The film was first screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and was later shown to audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Zagreb Film Festival. It opened in selected cities in the United States on October 27, 2006, and went into full release on November 10, 2006. On January 15 2007, it won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama. It was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and two nominations for Best Supporting Actress and won...,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449467
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (赤い橋の下のぬるい水,Akai Hashi no Shita no Nurui Mizu?) is a 2001 Japanese film by director Shōhei Imamura. This was Imamura's last feature film.
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge focuses on the troubles of a Japanese "everyman" who finds a new life with an unusual woman in a small fishing village. Imamura's last film contains considerable commentary on the search for happiness.
This romantic comedy tells the story of a salary man who has been laid off from his job at an architectural firm in Tokyo and is undergoing marital difficulties. When his old friend dies, he travels to the small fishing town of Tokoyama to find a treasure that the old man had hidden in a house there decades before. He does not find what he expects, but takes a job with local fishermen and becomes romantically involved with a woman with an exaggerated proclivity towards female ejaculation.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289054
Shall We Dance? (Shall We ダンス?,Shall We Dance??) is a 1996 Japanese film directed by Masayuki Suo. It was extremely popular in Japan upon its release and won many awards, including the 1996 Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture. It subsequently performed strongly in American art-house theaters when it opened there in 1997, becoming for a time the top-grossing foreign movie in American cinema history. It earned roughly $9.7 million in its US release [1].
The movie is named after the song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King and I.
A successful but unhappy accountant begins to secretly take ballroom dance lessons after seeing a beautiful woman staring out from a dance studio. Too embarrassed to tell his wife, his secretive nature leads his wife to think he's having an affair — so she hires a private detective to follow him (and the detective winds up becoming a devoted fan of ballroom dancing).
The accountant, who finds himself in beginner's class with a group of misfits —...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117615
Koji Yakusho was born
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