Monthly Archives: January 2004

This is turning out to be a good year for samurai movies. Watanabe Ken (43) has added to his Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actor for “The Last Samurai” with an Oscar nod. And “Tasogare Seibei,” a multi-award winner in Japan last year has been given a surprise nomination as Best Foreign Film. Released in the US as “The Twilight Samurai” it stars Sanada Hiroyuki (43) – who also appears in “The Last Samurai” – and Miyazawa Rie (photo, 30). The Yamada Yoji period feature is the first Japanese movie to be nominated in the category for 22 years.

• It was announced yesterday that former Fuji TV announcer Kondo Sato (35) remarried on December 24 and is expecting a baby in the summer. It is her second marriage. She divorced kabuki actor Bando Yasosuke (47) in 1999 after less than two years, citing differences over having children. Her partner this time is event producer Imaoka Hirokazu (42).

Actor Matsudaira Ken (50) and actress Daichi Mao (47) announced recently that they divorced at the end of December, saying that they had grown apart. Daichi, one of Japan’s most beautiful actresses, retains the huge and luxurious Minato Ward, Tokyo home they shared. Residents of the area said they had heard rumors of the couple living apart for several years. Daichi was a former star of the famous all-female Takarazuka theater troupe. Matsudaira made his debut under the legendary Katsu Shintaro in his Zatoichi TV series in 1975. His most famous role is that of the Abarenbo Shogun in the series of that name, a part he played 830 times between 1978 and 2003.

Pop idol group Morning Musume said goodbye to one of its few surviving original members yesterday. The Hello! Project concert at the Yokohama Arena was the final appearance as an MM member for Abe Natsumi (22). Younger member Tsuji Nozomi (16) was so overcome by the situation that she collapsed. Thanking the 12,000 fans for their support over the last six and a half years, “Natchi” asked for them to help make her solo career just as successful. As perhaps the most popular member of the group, her future success is all but guaranteed.

• Yesterday, Watanabe Ken (43) didn’t manage to become the first Japanese actor to win a Golden Globe award, for Best Supporting actor in “The Last Samurai.” The award went to Tim Robbins for his role in “Mystic River.”

Actor Watanabe Ken (43) headed off for Los Angeles yesterday to attend Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, to be held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. He is the first Japanese actor in 47 years to be nominated for an award. Watanabe co-starred alongside Tom Cruise and Sanada Hiroyuki in “The Last Samurai,” a fictional epic tale of honor lost and found in the early Meiji era. By coincidence, he shared first class with several of the cast of “Lord of the Rings,” in Japan on a PR trip. The final episode in that movie saga opens here on February 14.

It was announced yesterday that actress Nakayama Miho (photo, 33) gave birth to her first child on the 17th of this month in Paris. She and her husband, musician Tsuji Jinsei (43), have named their new son Juto. Nakayama is said to be planning to return to work within the year.

• Veteran actor Nishida Toshiyuki (54) was a first-time winner at this year’s Blue Ribbon movie awards. He won for his lead roles in “Tsuri Baka Nikki 14” (Diary of a Fishing Fool) and “Geroppa” (think of James Brown’s hit Sex Machine to work out the ‘meaning’). You may remember Nishida as Pigsy in the classic TV series Monkey. Other Blue Ribbon winners were actress Terajima Shinobu, who also starred in the Best Film “Akame Shijuyataki Shinjumisui,” and flavor of the month Watanabe Ken, who won a special award for “The Last Samurai.”

The family of the late Kurosawa Akira are suing NHK over last year’s hit taiga drama series Musashi. They claim that the story and eleven scenes from the first episode of the yearlong period drama were lifted directly from Kurosawa’s 1954 classic film “Shichinin no Samurai” (Seven Samurai) and are demanding ¥150 million in compensation. Musashi was yet another tale of the life of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, perhaps Japan’s most famous samurai. It starred kabuki actor Ichikawa Shinnosuke (photo, 26) in the lead role.

Oscar winning actress Jennifer Connelly (33) is to star in a Hollywood remake of the Japanese horror movie “Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara” (From the Depths of the Gloomy Water). In “Dark Water” she will have the role, played by Kuroki Hitomi (photo, 43) in the 2001 original, of a mother protecting her young daughter from an evil spirit. Other names associated with the project include Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite. Filming of the movie was scheduled to start in Toronto this week.

South Korean pop singer BoA (17) has been invited to perform at the MTV Asian Awards as a representative of Japan, where she is based and hugely successful, as well as her home country. The double invitation is unprecedented, especially given the long-standing ban in Korea on Japanese pop culture. It has only been in the last couple of years, and more so since the World Cup was co-hosted in 2002, that there has been a thaw in Korea’s stance. BoA has been something of an ambassador between the longtime rivals. She is also considered to have a good chance of being invited to perform at the US MTV Awards. The Asian awards show will be broadcast from Singapore on February 14.

Former TV personality Mukai Aki (39) is the proud mother of baby twin boys. But she may not be recognized as such under Japanese law. Mukai and her husband, former pro wrestler Takada Nobuhiko (41) last weekend announced the names of their boys, Banri and Yuta, born to a surrogate mother in the US (named simply as Cindy) last November. The family recently returned from the US and must register the births at their local city office. The US birth certificates name Mukai as the mother but the new parents said at a press conference that they were unsure how the local bureaucracy would deal with the issue of surrogate birth, not legally recognized in Japan. Having been born in the US, the children are also entitled to American citizenship, a right they might not be granted in Japan.

Singer Hajime Chitose (25) is six months pregnant and married. Hajime, who is from the southern island of Amami Oshima and sings in the unique style of the region, made her name with the 2001 hit Wadatsumi no Ki. She met her husband – named only as TK (27) and also from Amami Oshima – several years ago in his dining-bar in Tokyo. They were rumored to be going out two and a half years ago, but Hajime was soon romantically linked with singer Yamazaki Masayoshi (32). But it seems her heart was with TK and they registered their marriage yesterday. She is said to want to be a full-time mother, meaning she will have to put her blossoming carer on hold.• Meanwhile actress Hirosue Ryoko (23) and her designer husband Okazawa Takahiro (28) are to hold a small wedding ceremony tomorrow at a Tokyo wedding hall. The couple married in December and are expecting a baby in May.