Eiji Kusuhara, 63, Beguiling Japanese star of fringe theatre and popular television [guardian.co.uk]
Hoodoo
Beguiling Japanese star of fringe theatre and popular television
Hilary Westlake
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 May 2010 18.58 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/may/27/eiji-kusuhara-obituary
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/5/27/1274983047432/Eiji-Kusuhara-005.jpg
Eiji Kusuhara in his last stage performance as Takezo with Noriko Sakura
as Mitsue in The Face of Jizo (2007) Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The Japanese actor Eiji Kusuhara, who has died of cancer aged 63, played
the sadistic Lieutenant Sato in the television series Tenko (1981-85),
was one of the narrators on the cult show Banzai (2001) and appeared on
stages across the UK and Europe in a variety of beguiling roles. He was
one of the first professional Japanese actors active in London in the
1970s and enjoyed something of a monopoly on roles until he starred
alongside a fellow countryman, Togo Igawa, in The Man Who Shot Christmas
(1984). Eiji spent most of his adult life in Britain. He always seemed
relieved to have left his home country but was also perplexed by British
culture. A natural comedian, he thought he was a misfit and constructed
an endlessly playful persona for himself.
He was born in Tokyo shortly after the second world war, a time when
poor provisions and facilities meant that many babies died. Eiji was one
of four children born to Ryoichi and Yasuko Kusuhara. Their first son
died at three days old. Eiji was a weak, sickly baby and his parents
waited to see if he would survive before they registered his birth. When
Eiji was nine, his sister, Ikue, was part of a teenage suicide pact with
her boyfriend.
Eiji was brought up in Hokkaido, where his father had a jewellery shop.
He went to Iwamizawa East high school in Hokkaido before going on to
study acting at Tama Art University in Tokyo. After graduation, he was a
member of the Neo Literature Theatre company and then joined the Tokyo
Kid Brothers. This company, formed by Yutaka Higashi in 1968, was part
of the underground theatre movement and the style of rock music used in
its shows was profoundly anti-establishment.
I first met Eiji in 1972 when the Kid Brothers brought their show The
Moon Is East, the Sun Is West to London. The show appropriated western
music culture with a maniacal energy and felt both familiar yet utterly
strange. It was based on a 16th-century Chinese adventure story about a
monk travelling to India looking for enlightenment. The show opened at
the Oval House theatre in Kennington, then moved to the Royal Court and
the Hampstead theatre.
Eiji subsequently joined Stomu Yamashta's Red Buddha Theatre for The Man
from the East, a physical theatre show depicting episodes from Japanese
life, ancient and modern, real and fantastic, with accompaniment from
Yamashta and an ensemble playing electronic and traditional instruments.
This popular show originated in Paris, played for a month at the
Roundhouse in London, then toured Europe and the US.
In 1975 Eiji returned to Britain and joined my avant-garde theatre
group, Lumiere & Son. He appeared in The Sleeping Quarters of Sophia, a
play about split personalities, and delivered a succession of
disciplined but eccentric performances for the company over the next 10
years. He was serious and focused in rehearsal, yet could be
constructively unpredictable in performance. In Dogs (1976), Eiji played
Edgar, a hapless immigrant entrapped by a murderous couple who are in
thrall to Sadean aristocrats. The part required a comic but cowed
quality that contrasted strongly with the violence Eiji summoned in
Indications Leading to ... (1975), a tale of detection in which the
detectives enacted the roles of both perpetrator and prosecutor.
In 1977, he was in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of
Privates On Parade by Peter Nichols, playing a spying communist servant.
He worked for several other companies, including Oxford Playhouse,
Bristol Old Vic, Yellow Earth, Polka Theatre and Amazonia, and was one
of the founder members of Ichiza Theatre Company. His last stage
performance was in 2007, in Hisashi Inoue's comedy masterpiece of
Japanese postwar drama, The Face of Jizo, at the Arcola in east London.
The play comprised conversations between a young woman who survived the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the ghost of her father. The play shows
the daughter's anguish that she survived but her father did not.
On television Eiji appeared in Doctor Who, Inspector Morse and in 17
episodes of the much-praised BBC series Tenko. Set in 1942 in an
internment camp on a Japanese-occupied island, Tenko dramatised the
experiences of British, Australian and Dutch women captured after the
fall of Singapore.
During the 1990s, Eiji was a regular presenter on two Japanese TV
programmes, Hello London and Living in England, in which his
idiosyncratic, comic personality was given free rein. He had vast
experience as a voiceover artist in both Japanese and English in film,
TV, commercials and radio. He was the voice of the evil genius Dr
Kamikazi in the animated TV series Robotboy and was particularly well
known for his wild co-narration in the cult TV classic, Banzai, which
invited viewers to place their bets on bizarre challenges, such as how
long Mr Shake Hands Man would maintain a handshake with a procession of
bemused celebrities. Eiji's enthusiastic commentary highlighted the
programme's wackiness.
His film credits included small roles in The Elephant Man, Eyes Wide
Shut and Topsy-Turvy, as well as many student films in which he appeared
without taking a fee.
He is survived by his wife, the designer Kyoko Wainai, whom he married
in 1992, and his brother, Yuji.
� Eiji Kusuhara, actor, born 2 January 1947; died 23 April 2010
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