page_title: Ichikawa Raizō VIII
section_title: Parallels and Comparison to Shintarō Katsu
hierarchical_section_title: Ichikawa Raizō VIII / Parallels and Comparison to Shintarō Katsu
caption_attribution_description: Studio still for 1959 Japanese movie The Badger Palace: Happy New Year (初春狸御殿 Hatsu Haru, Tanuki-goten), featuring (l-r) Raizō Ichikawa VIII (八代目市川雷蔵), Ayako Wakao (若尾文子) and Shintarō Katsu (勝新太郎).
context_page_description: Ichikawa Raizō VIII was a Japanese film and kabuki actor. His birth name was Akio Kamezaki, and his name was legally changed several times, first to Yoshio Takeuchi, and later to Yoshiya Ōta, separate from his performing name.
  Six months after his birth in Kyoto he became the adopted son of Ichikawa Kudanji III. He made his kabuki acting debut at the age of 15 under the name Ichikawa Enzō. In 1951 he was adopted by Ichikawa Jūkai III and was renamed as Ichikawa Raizō VIII. In 1954 he began a career as a film actor. He received breakout acclaim for his performance in Enjō and received several awards for the performance including the Blue Ribbon Award and the Kinema Junpo Award, both for the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. Among his fans he was referred to lovingly as "Rai-sama." In June 1968 he was diagnosed with and underwent surgery for rectal cancer, but it metastasized to his liver and he died the following year.
  Ichikawa Raizō appeared mostly in period dramas. He is best known for the Sleepy Eyes of Death series, Ninja series and Nakano Spy School series. Raizō worked many times with director Kenji Misumi.
context_section_description: Raizō, as written above, was the son of Ichikawa Kudanji III, a supporting actor by trade, and for a time was known as Ichikawa Enzō II. Shintarō Katsu was the son of Kineya Katsutōji, a nagauta performer and shamisen player, and for a time was known as Kineya Katsumaru II. Both Raizō and Katsu signed on with Daiei in 1954, and joined the company in the same term. Both born in 1931, having made a hurried transition from kabuki to the new world of film, there were many similar circumstances about the pair of young actors.
  As previously mentioned, Daiei's management intended from the start to position Raizō as a successor to the star Kazuo Hasegawa, and it “proceeded smoothly along the tracks.” Tokuzō Tanaka shared the opinion that Katsu, who was the first of the two to make his debut, was “like a second helping of Hasegawa” when he played an attractive young man in his white-faced film makeup; but as the director and supporting cast could hardly be described as first-rate, it was a long time before Katsu managed to become a real success.
  It wasn't until the 1960s and the release and success of the Akumyō and Zatoichi series that Katsu became widely discussed and surpassed Raizō in earnings. Akinari Suzuki said of Katsu, “It wasn’t until after shooting 70 or 80 films without a single real hit, that he finally became of use with the release of Akumyō.” According to Tokuzō Tanaka, audience reception to Shiranui Kengyō, released in 1960, was particularly terrible, despite Katsu's highly acclaimed performance, to the point that Tanaka received complaints from movie theater owners about his constant use of Katsu in his films. Reflecting on the state of things in 1959, Katsu said “The banzuke was totally different,” referring to the document listing sumo wrestlers’ ranks before a tournament. “We already knew that Raizō was an ōzeki or a yokozuna. I still hadn’t entered the san’yaku,” meaning that Raizō could be considered to be among the very highest regarded stars, while Katsu was still a relative unknown.
  Eventually the pair became treated as a unit, with the name “KATSURAISU,” taking Katsu's surname and the first half of Raizō's given name to create a name which happened to sound like the food dish “katsu rice.” When the two appeared on movie posters and in films together under this slogan, they were often made to appear in contrast to one another in their appearance and style, and it was widely believed that there was a strong rivalry between them. However, their usage of friendly nicknames like “Rai-chan” and “Katchan” for each other indicates that their relationship certainly wasn't bad, and in fact might even have been quite friendly. In fact, Raizō had a close friendship with Katsu's wife, Tamao Nakamura, from childhood, as her father, Nakamura Kanjirō II, was a Kansai-based kabuki actor like Raizō's adopted fathers.
  The author Tomomi Muramatsu indicated that for Raizo, who had “worriedly spent his days in the world of kabuki, which is so dominated by lineage and ceremony, without ever receiving a large role,” and Katsu, whose father had been involved in the backstage world of kabuki, shared “the same complex, this large problem to be solved,” and that they were both equipped with “a similar factor which served as a sort of energy source” for them.
  Acting Style and Ability
  Raizō was known for constantly offering all manner of suggestions during the pre-production process, and thus acquired the nickname “Goterai,” seemingly a pun on goteru, a Japanese word meaning “to fuss about, to harp on.” However, once he was satisfied in his understanding, he never complained or grumbled, and once filming began he would stop making these sorts of suggestions altogether. On the other hand, Katsu would go through the entire pre-production phase without saying a word, but start making suggestions and impromptu changes as soon as filming began which was a frequent source of trouble for the staff of his films.
  According to Akira Inoue, Raizō was quite capable of working together with the methodologies of various directors when acting. For
caption: Raizō, Ayako Wakao, and Shintaro Katsu (1959)
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