Actor Yukiya Kitamura appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) broadcast on April 4th. He talked about his memories of his late father, actor Kazuo Kitamura.
His debut was in a film directed by Shohei Imamura. Director Imamura told him to "come to the set early and watch and learn from the acting of the seniors," and when he went, he was tasked with carrying lighting equipment, organizing spectators, catching cicadas, and other tasks for days on end. When Director Imamura passed away, at the farewell ceremony, a production staff member from that time told him, "I'm Kazuo Kitamura's son, but Imamura told me to be strict with everyone." Director Imamura and my father had been friends since elementary school.
In the NHK Asadora"Omusubi," he played a parent-child quarrel with Ken Matsudaira, who played the father. "I've never had a parent-child quarrel with my father, so I thought that the reason we're having this kind of parent-child quarrel is because we fully acknowledge each other's existence."
Even if his father finished filming early, he would make a detour somewhere. One time, he was walking towards me in a small bar area in a local shopping district. When I tried to call out to him, "He seemed to be wondering which store to go into and didn't notice me at all. I followed him with my eyes and he went into a yakitori restaurant a little further ahead," he revealed.
His wife is actress Takano Shiho. They have two sons, ages 10 and 5, and the siblings get along very well. Every day is noisy, and Takano is an only child, so she complains that she "doesn't understand the lifestyle of a man." "They seem to have a hard time. I'm one of them. At times, they treat me like the third son," he says, laughing. His eldest son forgets and loses things a lot, so he sometimes scolds him, but he thinks to himself, "I don't want to be told that by you." He blushes and says, "I wonder why we're so similar in our bad ways."
