Actor Ken Mitsuishi appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on June 25th. He talked about how he got his start at the age of 16 and shared anecdotes about his appearance in a famous scene in the nationally popular NHK Asadora drama "Oshin" (1983-84).
Born in Kitakyushu City, at the age of 16, she auditioned for the movie "Hakata-kko Junjo" (Hakata Girl's Innocence), which was looking for someone from Fukuoka, after being invited by a friend. She was immediately cast as the lead and made her debut. During filming, the staff would occasionally take her out to Tokyo from the Ofuna Studio (Kamakura City, Kanagawa Prefecture), and she thought she wanted to live in this city. "Tokyo was shining," Mitsuishi recalls.
He said that he enjoyed filming so much that "when I graduated from high school, I decided I wanted to become an actor and came to Tokyo." As an only child, he lived a carefree life and didn't often talk about his future dreams, so his parents were delighted when he suddenly appeared in a movie and declared that he wanted to become an actor.
He was introduced to someone and "was able to join the agency that Ken Ogata belonged to." He made his debut, but said, "Tokyo was wonderful and glamorous, but becoming an actor was tough. At that time, even though I had debuted, I was still an amateur, so I realized how difficult it is to become a professional."
He actually appeared in "Oshin." He played the boatman in the famous scene where Oshin leaves her family home on a raft. Oshin's mother, played by Pinko Izumi, came to see her off, and he recalls, "I was the one who put her on the raft."
Izumi said, "She was very kind to me." They even went on location shoots together by train. Although they haven't worked together much since then, he revealed that when he goes to say hello to Izumi when she's in the studio next door, she "reminisces about us."
