Matsunosuke Onoe
| Matsunosuke Onoe | |
|---|---|
Matsunosuke Onoe during the filming of Chushin-gura (1910)
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| Born |
September 12, 1875 Okayama, Japan |
| Died | September 11, 1926 (aged 50) Kyoto, Japan |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1880–1926 |
Matsunosuke Onoe (尾上 松之助 Onoe Matsunosuke?, September 12, 1875 – September 11, 1926), sometimes known as Medama no Matchan ("Eyeballs" Matsu), was a Japanese actor. His birth name is Tsuruzo Nakamura. He is sometimes credited as Yukio Koki, Tamijaku Onoe, or Tsunusaburo Onoe, and as a kabuki artist he went by the name Tsurusaburo Onoe. He gained great popularity, appearing in over 1,000 films, and has been called the first superstar of Japanese cinema.
Onoe was initially an actor with an itinerant kabuki troupe. In his autobiography, he claimed that he had made his stage debut as early as 1880, in a performance given by the Tamizo Onoe company. Fascinated by the stage, he left his home by the age of 14 to travel with a troupe, and by 1892, he was acting under the stage name Tsurusaburo Onoe. In 1905, he adopted the more prestigious name Matsunosuke Onoe.
His troupe regularly performed at a theater in Kyoto owned by Shozo Makino, and as a kabuki actor, he was known for his extravagant stage tricks. In 1909, Makino was approached by Yokota Shōkai, a film import and exhibition company, to produce movies, and he began to film scenes from the theater's performances. Onoe made his movie debut in Goban Tadanobu (Tadanobu the Fox, drawn from the famous kabuki play Yoshitsune Sembon Zakura) that year. Onoe's troupe proved consistently popular, and Makino chose Onoe to star in his future movies.
Onoe starred in hundreds of films; the 1925 Araki Mataemon was advertised as his 1,000th film. He played the lead characters in almost all dramatizations of stories published by Tachikawa Bunko, which at the time was a best-selling publisher. He and his troupe also remained closely associated with Makino for over a decade, and Makino directed Onoe in 60 to 80 films per year, ultimately accounting for about half Onoe's total output. In addition to films based on kabuki, he and Makino pioneered the jidai-geki (historical film) genre. Onoe also popularized the subgenre of ninja films.
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