From actors to scientists, authors to critics, Japan misplaced some main figures in numerous fields. A take a look at a number of the individuals who handed away in 2021.
January 12
Handō Kazutoshi (90): Nonfiction author
In his 1965 Nihon no ichiban nagai hello (trans. Japan’s Longest Day), Handō offered an in-depth take a look at the conferences on August 14 and 15, 1945, the place Japan’s leaders met with Emperor Hirohito (posthumously Emperor Shōwa) to resolve that Japan would give up to the Allies and finish World Warfare II. This work secured his fame, being made into a well-liked movie in addition to receiving tutorial approval for being primarily based on painstaking interviews with individuals who had been concerned. Handō graduated from the College of Tokyo earlier than getting into the writer Bungei Shunjū, the place he edited works by Matsumoto Seichō and Shiba Ryōtarō as he pursued his private curiosity within the historical past of the Pacific Warfare and the Shōwa period (1926–89) as an entire. In 1995 he retired from modifying work and turned to writing full-time. Additionally recognized for works like Nomonhan no natsu (Summer time of the Nomonhan Incident) and Bakumatsu-shi (Historical past of the Finish of the Shogunate).
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March 24
Koga Toshihiko (53): Jūdōka
The gold medalist within the males’s 71-kilogram class jūdō competitors on the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Koga was hailed as “the Sanshirō of the Heisei period” for his daring seoi shoulder throws and drops. His presence helped outline the game for Japan throughout his period. Born in Saga Prefecture, he got here to Tokyo as a younger teenager, coaching on the legendary Kōdōgakusha dōjō by means of his highschool years. He additionally competed within the 1988 Seoul video games and at Atlanta in 1996, when he received silver within the 78-kilogram class, and was the winner on the world championships 3 times, in 1989, 1991, and 1995. Grew to become a coach and coach after retiring in 2000, main the Kogajuku dōjō and serving to to teach the ladies’s nationwide crew.
Koga Toshihiko, at proper, grapples with France’s Djamel Bouras within the gold-medal match on July 23, 1996, on the Atlanta Olympics. (© Jiji)
Tanaka Kunie (88): Actor
After constructing a reputation for himself in domestically widespread movies just like the Wakadaishō (Younger Ace) collection, he burst into true stardom together with his function as Kuroita Gorō, the protagonist of the Kita no kuni kara (From the Northern Nation) tv drama that went on the air in 1981. Born in Gifu Prefecture, he realized appearing at a coaching faculty for the Haiyūza troupe earlier than making his big-screen debut within the 1957 Tōei function Jun’ai monogatari (Story of Pure Love). He was a comical foil to Takakura Ken within the Abashiri bangaichi (Abashiri Jail) collection of movies that started in 1965 and confirmed a grittier facet in his roles within the Jingi naki tatakai (Battles With out Honor and Humanity) string of yakuza movies in 1973–74.
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April 1
Akasaki Isamu (92): Semiconductor engineer, Nobel laureate in physics
One of many three Japan-born winners of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, offered “for the invention of environment friendly blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled vibrant and energy-saving white mild sources.” Born in 1929 in Kagoshima Prefecture, he earned his science diploma from Kyoto College earlier than getting into Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. (immediately’s Panasonic), the place he did LED analysis on the Tokyo laboratories. Within the late Nineteen Eighties, whereas he was a professor at Nagoya College, he and Amano Hiroshi, one in all his former college students, succeeded in growing high-quality gallium nitride crystals, an important element for his or her LED breakthroughs to return. Akasaki was a pacesetter within the subject of utilized physics in Japan for a few years; in 2011 he acquired the Order of Tradition.
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April 3
Tamura Masakazu (77): Actor
Recognized first in roles that took benefit of his beauty and nihilistic air, Tamura gained fame for his function, performed with a light-weight comedic contact, because the titular character within the Furuhata Ninzaburō detective drama collection that ran on TV from 1994 by means of 2006. Born in Kyoto because the son of Bandō Tsumasaburō, star of the prewar and early postwar silver display screen, Tamura made his personal movie debut within the 1961 Eien no hito (Immortal Love). Within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties he turned to the small display screen, showing in quite a few hit dramas.
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April 30
Tachibana Takashi (80): Journalist and critic
Within the November 1974 difficulty of the month-to-month Bungei Shunjū, Tachibana revealed “Tanaka Kakuei kenkyū: Sono kinmyaku to jinmyaku” (A Research of Tanaka Kakuei: His Cash and Private Connections). This expose of the prime minister’s soiled monetary dealings—primarily based on the gathering and evaluation of giant quantities of firm data and political funding studies, specializing in the sitting prime minister’s household companies and political group—compelled the resignation of your complete Tanaka cupboard, bringing down the federal government. Born in 1940 in Nagasaki. Joined the writer Bungei Shunjū as a reporter after graduating from the College of Tokyo, however left simply two years later to go freelance. His reporting on the Japanese Communist Occasion, the nation’s basic buying and selling companies and agricultural cooperatives, and different political and societal matters earned him excessive reward as a forerunner within the subject of Japanese investigative journalism.
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July 23
Maskawa Toshihide (81): Particle physicist, Nobel laureate in physics
One in every of three Japan-born scientists to share the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the invention of the origin of the damaged symmetry which predicts the existence of at the least three households of quarks in nature.” His 1973 work with Kobayashi Makoto, one in all his co-laureates, constructed on earlier analysis by Nicola Cabibbo to supply the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix explaining the interactions amongst quarks contained in the atom. The predictions of their paper had been borne out by the invention of six forms of quarks by 1995, shedding new mild on their contributions. His March 1945 expertise of the air raids on Nagoya as a younger baby impressed a lifelong pacifism; he was energetic within the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, by means of which scientists sought to abolish atomic weapons and battle, and was a vocal opponent of revisions to Japan’s “peace structure” till his late years.
August 19
Chiba Shin’ichi (82): Actor
The motion star, recognized internationally as Sonny Chiba, made a reputation for himself in Japan within the 1968–73 TV drama Kī hantā (Key Hunter). His motion movie outings within the Seventies earned him fame and recognition in Hollywood as nicely. Born Maeda Sadaho in Chiba Prefecture, he entered Nippon Sport Science College and skilled to be an Olympic gymnast till harm stored him from that path and he went into appearing as a substitute. Within the 1979 Sengoku Jieitai (G.I. Samurai), he did double obligation as main actor and the primary “motion director” to be so credited in a Japanese film. The Japan Motion Membership he based produced a lot of future Japanese motion stars. He handed away from pneumonia introduced on by COVID-19.
Sonny Chiba seems on the Hawai’i Worldwide Movie Pageant in October 2005. (© Reuters/Kyōdō)
September 7
Irokawa Daikichi (96): Historian
Irokawa’s analysis targeted on the historical past of widespread thought in early fashionable and fashionable Japan. His painstaking fieldwork and doc surveys established the style of “widespread historical past,” specializing in the plenty who had not figured largely in historic analysis to this point. In 1968 he made the celebrated discovery of the “Itsukaichi Draft Structure,” a doc displaying the unfold of the Freedom and Folks’s Rights Motion in Meiji Japan, in a storehouse within the city of Itsukaichi (now Akiruno), Tokyo. Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1925, he entered the Tokyo Imperial College solely to be assigned to a naval air squadron as a part of the wartime mobilization of the nation’s college students. He returned to his historic research after the battle ended, graduating and changing into a junior highschool trainer whereas additionally changing into concerned in social actions. In 1967 he turned a professor at Tokyo Keizai College. His work within the late Seventies on Minamata, the Kumamoto Prefecture metropolis that noticed large-scale mercury poisoning on account of industrial air pollution, culminated in his 1980 Minamata: Sono sabetsu to fūdo no rekishi (Minamata: A Historical past of Discrimination and Cultural Local weather).
September 24
Saitō Takao (84): Manga creator
Author of the extremely widespread Golgo 13, a manga collection concerning the titular hitman that went on for greater than 50 years. Typically referred to as Duke Tōgō, the mysterious ace sniper first appeared in Huge Comedian in 1968. In July 2021, when the 201st ebook quantity was revealed, it earned Saitō a Guinness World Report for longest-running manga title. Born in Wakayama Prefecture, he initially took over the household enterprise, a hairdresser’s store, however discovered himself unable to stroll away from manga, which he had been drawing since his pupil days. In 1955 he made his debut as a creator of manga for the rental ebook enterprise in Osaka. In 1960 he established Saitō Productions, hiring a workers of artists to divide the labor of storyboarding, format, drawing, and different duties. Produced many different works, together with Onihei hankachō (Onihei’s Crime Recordsdata), an adaptation of Ikenami Shōtarō’s collection.
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October 14
Moriyama Mayumi (93): Former chief cupboard secretary
Quickly after becoming a member of the cupboard of Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki as head of the Setting Company in 1989, Moriyama was tapped to function Japan’s first feminine chief cupboard secretary after her predecessor in that spot, Yamashita Tokuo, stepped down following revelations of his extramarital affair. Born in Tokyo in 1927, Moriyama graduated from the Tsuda Juku coaching school (immediately Tsuda College) and matriculated on the College of Tokyo. In 1950, she turned the primary lady employed as a senior-track official on the Ministry of Labor. There she rose to develop into head of the bureau answerable for ladies’s and youth points earlier than getting into politics in 1980, securing election to the Home of Councillors from the Tochigi Prefecture district. Throughout her three phrases within the higher home and 4 phrases within the Home of Representatives, she additionally served as minister of schooling and minister of justice.
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October 24
Tsuboi Sunao (96): Hibakusha and peace activist
As head of each the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Victims Organizations and the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-bomb Victims Organizations, Tsuboi labored for the eradication of nuclear weapons. On August 6, 1945, as a 20-year-old pupil on the Hiroshima Greater Technical College (now Hiroshima College), he was uncovered to the atomic bomb blast on his approach to lessons at a spot round 1.2 kilometers south of floor zero. He suffered extreme burns on his face and higher physique and spent greater than 40 days on the sting of demise earlier than recovering. Following the battle, he taught math at junior highschool till his retirement in 1986, after which he engaged energetically in anti-nuclear-weapons advocacy. A frequent customer to america to induce adoption of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he met with Barack Obama when the US president got here to Hiroshima on Could 27, 2016.
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November 9
Setouchi Jakuchō (99): Writer and Buddhist nun
At age 51, the bestselling creator Setouchi Harumi shocked the nation when she abruptly took the tonsure and have become a Buddhist nun in 1973. She continued writing, although, and her translation into fashionable Japanese of The Story of Genji, which she undertook at age 70, sparked a “Genji increase” within the Nineties. By her essay-writing and numerous speeches and sermons, she continued to current her pondering on “the best way to stay a human life.” She was born in 1922 in Tokushima Prefecture. Whereas a pupil at Tokyo Girl’s Christian College she married a lecturer; they moved to Beijing, the place she gave start to their daughter. Returning to Japan after the battle, she fell in love with one in all her husband’s college students and left her household behind to stay with him in Kyoto. In 1950, after her divorce was finalized, she headed to Tokyo to start her writing profession. She wrote for Niwa Fumio’s literary journal Bungakusha and in 1956 revealed her debut novel, Itai kutsu (Painful Footwear); within the following yr she received the primary of many literary awards she would garner, together with the Girls’s Literature Prize for the 1963 Natsu no owari (trans. The Finish of Summer time), an exploration of her personal romantic relations with males. Her 1963 Kashin (Heart of a Flower) was decried as pornographic, however all through her profession she by no means shied away from frank remedies of sexuality. In 2006 she acquired the Order of Tradition. To the top of her life she remained politically energetic, opposing the demise penalty and urging Japan to desert nuclear energy.
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December 18
Kanda Sayaka (35): Actress
Born in 1986 to the actor Kanda Masaki and the celebrity singer Matsuda Seiko. In 1999, whereas a pupil on the Japanese faculty in Los Angeles, she auditioned for a kid function in David Greenspan’s quick movie Bean Cake, which received a Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2001. After writing a track for her mom’s 1999 album Eien no shōjo (Everlasting Woman) below the pen title Alice, she made her official debut in Japanese present enterprise in 2001. She launched quite a few albums as a singer and appeared in musicals. In 2014 she offered the Japanese voice for Anna within the vastly widespread animated Disney function Frozen. Her demise was as a consequence of huge accidents suffered in a fall from a lodge room window in Sapporo, Hokkaidō; police are investigating it as a potential suicide.
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(Initially written in Japanese. Banner picture: Actor Tanaka Kunie, left, in April 1999 © Kyōdō, and Setouchi Jakuchō in January 2018. © Jiji.)
