Chiaki Minoru

Chiaki Minoru aspired to be an actor since childhood and debuted in theater in 1936 at age 19. He served in the army from 1939 through 1942, stationed at Sakhalin.

His performance in the play Dataii inspired Kurosawa Akira to cast him in Stray Dog (1949). Chiaki went on to appear in eleven Kurosawa films, including Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and High and Low (1963).

In Seven Samurai, he played the good-natured samurai Heihachi. Ironically, he outlived all his co-stars from the film, despite being the first casualty on screen. His and Fujiwara Kamatari’s peasant characters in The Hidden Fortress were cited as direct inspirations for R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars (1977).

Outside of his work with Kurosawa, Chiaki played the pilot Kobayashi Kôji in Godzilla Raids Again (1955).

Later in his career, he won the Best Actor award at the Japan Academy Prizes for his performance in Gray Sunset (1985), where he played a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.