Yamamoto Ren

Supporting actor working for Toho during the 1950s and 1960s. Yamamoto Ren had lead roles in his early films for director Makino Masahiro, but he transitioned to supporting roles after appearing in the original Godzilla (1954), playing Masaji, the fisherman whose house is crushed when Godzilla attacks his island home.

He had close brushes with monsters in the eerie opening of War of the Gargantuas (1966), in which he’s accosted by both an octopus and one of the eponymous monsters at sea. He’s also recognizable as the small-time crook set up to take the fall for the title character in The Human Vapor (1960) and the mischievous cripple who summons the monster Gango in an episode of Ultraman (1966).