Actress Tomoko Ikuta appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which aired on January 16th. Her husband is former Japanese national soccer team player Masashi Nakayama. She spoke about the final interaction between her father, who passed away in January last year, and Nakayama.
When he received the news that his father was critically ill, Ikuta was in snowy Toyama filming a drama. If he returned to Tokyo, he might not be able to return to the set due to transportation issues.
When she told her husband, he took the Shinkansen from Shizuoka to Tokyo in the evening, and spent about an hour in my father's hospital room until the last Shinkansen train back home. My father was no longer able to speak, so my husband talked to him the whole time. The next day, my father passed away. "I think he died in peace after hearing my husband's story," she says with emotion.
They got married in 1996 and will celebrate their 30th anniversary this year. Due to work commitments, they have been living long distance between Shizuoka and Tokyo since they first met. "Surprisingly, (my husband) never forgets our wedding anniversary. He's great. I tend to forget quite a lot though," she says.
She majored in dance at Japan Women's College of Physical Education. "I wasn't good at physical education, so I'd been dancing since I was little, and that's why I majored in dance," she says. At school, she learned basic things like flamenco. She wanted to learn flamenco properly someday, so she later studied under a junior instructor.
His only daughter, who is now a university student, revealed that she is good at drawing.
