Life
Yūjirō grew up in Kobe, Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, in Otaru, Hokkaidō, and in Zushi, Kanagawa. His father, an employee of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, was from Ehime Prefecture, and his mother was from Miyajima, Hiroshima.
He attended Otaru Fuji Kindergarten (小樽藤幼稚園) and then Otaru City Inaho Elementary School (小樽市立稲穂小学校). During his elementary school years he participated in competitive swimming, and skied on Mt. Tengu (天狗山, tenguyama?). He then attended Zushi City Zushi junior High School (逗子市立逗子中学校, zushi shiritsu zushi chuugakkō?), where he began playing basketball. He aimed to enter Keio Senior High School (慶應義塾高等学校), but did not pass the entrance examination. He enrolled at Keio Shiki Boys' Senior High School (慶應義塾志木高等学校), but in 1951 was admitted to Keio Senior High School. Afterward he entered the political science department of the school of law at Keio University, associated with the high school, but reportedly spent all his time playing around.
Wanting to become an actor, he auditioned at Toho, Daiei Film and Nikkatsu, but did not pass any of his auditions. However, in 1956, with help from producer Takiko Mizunoe and his brother Shintaro, he got a bit-part in the film adaptation of Shintaro's Akutagawa Prize-winning Season of the Sun, making his film debut. Afterward, he withdrew from Keio University to work for Nikkatsu. He then played the main role in the film adaptation of Shintaro's novel Crazed Fruit, which was made after Season of the Sun.
He would go on to become one of the representative stars of the Showa Era with his career of acting and singing, but his life was one made harder by illness and injury.
His grave is a granite gorintō, at Sōji-ji temple in Tsurumi, Yokohama, Kanagawa.
Read more about this topic: Yujiro Ishihara
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Half life is over now,
And I meet full face on dark mornings
The bestial visor, bent in
By the blows of what happened to happen.
What does it prove? Sod all.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)