Actor Takehiko Ono will appear with Kunio Murai on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which will air on January 27th at 1:00 p.m.
The two met in 1963 at Haiyuza's training school in Roppongi, Tokyo. Their classmates, including Chii Takeo, Natsuyagi Isao, Maeda Gin, Taichi Kiwako, and Kurihara Komaki, were known as the "Flower 15th Class" and went on to become actors who support the Japanese theater world. Ono, who dropped out of university to join the training school, had worked as an extra in films, inspired by actor Ishihara Yujiro. Murai, who traveled 23 hours from Kyushu to Tokyo to join the school, apparently saw Ono as the "city boy" he admired.
The two live in the same neighborhood, and Ono enjoys drinking and eating delicious home-cooked meals by Murai's wife, actress Mikiko Otonashi, and says he often ends up staying there for a long time. He sometimes gets jealous of the success of other actors, but it seems that it's different when it comes to the success of his peers, and they share the same joy as if they were family.
