71-year-old actress Atsuko Takahata appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on April 28th. She talked about feeling the effects of aging in her 70s and shared memories of Toshiyuki Nishida.
Now in her 70s, Ms. Takahata is experiencing a decline in various functions. When she was younger, she wondered why older actors had trouble memorizing their lines during rehearsals in a theater troupe, but recently she says, "I've become like that myself." "No matter how many times I practice, the lines just slip out of my head." She started writing her lines down and sticking them on the curtains as a countermeasure, but she ended up writing and sticking them down so much that the curtains in her dining room are in tatters.
On another occasion, she went to the bank to withdraw money, but left without taking any cash. Later, she went to the police station and was shown surveillance camera footage, which showed her withdrawing money, taking her passbook, and leaving the bank while staring at it. "There must have been something in the passbook that caught my eye. I left the money behind," she said. "These kinds of unexpected things happen." "I'm scared of myself too. That's why I live carefully," she added.
Back when I was traveling with Nishida-san, there weren't as many convenience stores as there are now, so we drank alcohol in our hotel rooms. When we ran out of alcohol, I and another person would run out into the city at night to procure more. We would go into sushi restaurants and other shops with the lights on and ask, "Excuse me, we're traveling with Nishida Toshiyuki, could you sell us some alcohol?" and we would be able to buy one bottle each of "Old" (whiskey) and sake. When we ran back to the hotel, our seniors were waiting for us. However, the moment I said, "We've procured it," I smashed the bottle of Old to pieces.
I was so thirsty from running around looking for alcohol that I drank more sake than anyone else and got terribly drunk. Mr. Nishida was the only one who "took care of me until the end because he said I got drunk in a way very similar to his wife." He recalled, "When I woke up in the morning, Mr. Nishida, the girl in the same room as me, and I were all sleeping with our feet in the same heated table." "I caused them nothing but trouble."
