Exactly a hundred years ago today, on February 25, 1915, the Japanese actor Toranosuke Ogawa (1915-1967) was born in what is today North Korea.
Ogawa, whose credits include close to 60 feature films, appeared in small roles in altogether five Akira Kurosawa films. The most memorable of his performances is in The Hidden Fortress (1958) where he plays the role of the magistrate at the bridge barrier and whom the film’s heroes, led by Toshiro Mifune’s Rokurota, trick into granting access while carrying the gold that everyone is looking for. The picture above is from the scene.
Ogawa’s other Kurosawa appearances were in Seven Samurai (grandfather of kidnapped girl), Ikiru (park section chief), Record of a Living Being (the lawyer) and Sanjuro. Ogawa had a role also in Ishiro Honda‘s original Godzilla (1954), as well as appearing in Kenji Mizoguchi‘s The Life of Oharu (1952) and Street of Shame (1956), and several samurai films.
