Shoes

Personal Info

Known For

Acting

Gender

Male

Birthday

1949-09-21

Place of Birth

Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan

Yūsaku Matsuda

Biography

Yūsaku Matsuda was a Japanese actor. He was born in Shimonoseki, to a Japanese father and a Zainichi Korean mother. He became an actor when he was 23 as a rookie police officer for the 1970s Japanese TV detective drama called Taiyō ni hoero! Apart from this role, his other defining role on television was in Tantei monogatari. He featured in many other TV shows and movies. He won the award for best actor at the 8th Hochi Film Award for Detective Story and The Family Game. He specialized in physical action movies. The 1989 movie Black Rain — directed by Ridley Scott and starring Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia— opened the door for Matsuda as an international actor. However, shortly after he made this movie, he died due to bladder cancer. He was survived by his second wife and three young children.

Known for

Black Rain

Black Rain

Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.

Big City: Days of Struggle

Big City: Days of Struggle

In the big city where loyalty is rare and justice comes hard, a stoic detective (Tetsuya Watari) and his old friend, a sharp-eyed reporter (Yujiro Ishihara), forge a quiet alliance, uncovering brutal truths in days of relentless struggle.

Detective Story

Detective Story

After five years of service as a cop in San Francisco, Shunsaku Kudo becomes a private detective in Tokyo.

Zoku zoku jiken

Zoku zoku jiken

Daisaburo Kikuchi (Tomisaburo Wakayama), a skilled lawyer full of humanity, thrillingly depicts the process of stepping into the background of the case step by step.

Fushoku no kōzō

Fushoku no kōzō

A powerful trading company uses all means to obtain the uranium enrichment technology.

Judo Icchokusen

Judo Icchokusen

Based on the manga by Ikki Kajiwara, with art by Shinji Nagashima and Yuzuru Saito. After his father dies following defeat at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Naoya Ichijo meets the mysterious judoka Shusaku Kuruma and becomes his disciple, mastering special techniques such as the "Jigoku-guruma" (Hell Wheel) and "Ebi-guruma" (Shrimp Wheel) while fighting rivals and foreign judoka on the way to becoming a top judoka.

Roar At The Sun!

Roar At The Sun!

The detectives of Nana-magari station investigate a wide variety of crimes in 70s Japan, ranging from the mundane to the absolutely bizarre.

Red Maze

Red Maze

A psychiatrist whose wife is murdered tracks down the culprit. Psychiatrist Masato Yuki returns to Japan after three years in the United States, where his beloved wife, Taeko, and daughter, Akiko, are waiting for him. However, Masato becomes suspicious of his wife's behavior. At Masato's homecoming party, he receives a mysterious phone call and his wife, Taeko, disappears. The next day, Taeko's gruesomely mutilated body is discovered in a motel. Masato tracks down the murderer. However, the secret of his daughter, Akiko's birth, is hidden in convoluted web of lies and agony.

Proof of the Man

Proof of the Man

When an American is murdered in a Japanese inn, Tokyo police detective Munesue follows the trail of the killer to New York. There he is joined by a New York City detective named Shuftan and together they sort out the crime.

Nettaiya

Nettaiya

It is a hot and humid summer in Tokyo. Eiji (Yusaku Matsuda), armed with a modified gun, breaks into a salaryman's finance company in Shinjuku and makes off with nearly 40 million yen and Sachiko (Kaori Momoi), the receptionist. The two, a young man from the countryside with a perverse personality and an unattractive office worker, plan a fugitive journey without a guilty conscience with a large sum of money in their hands.

The Most Dangerous Game

The Most Dangerous Game

The first movie of Tôru Murakawa’s “Game” trilogy, in which an assassin hired to recover a kidnap victim becomes embroiled in a vicious power struggle between two large corporations over a sizable government defence contract.

Kagero-za

Kagero-za

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.

The Beast to Die

The Beast to Die

A Nietzschean journalist who covered the Vietnam War, Lebanese Civil War and other conflicts becomes mentally unstable and goes on a spree of robbery and murder.

The Family Game

The Family Game

A sendup of the stereotypical Japanese family: dad is a salaryman jerk, unable to relate to anyone; mom is a hopeless housewife; the older son is a moderate academic success; but the younger son is a rebellious goof-off for whom a tutor must be hired. The tutor proceeds to blow the entire family apart.

And Then

And Then

Daisuke is supposed to be out looking for a respectable job and equally respectable wife. He is 30 years old and devotes his attention to music and literature; his family is wealthy and can support his interests. When his friend Hiraoka returns with his wife Michiyo, problems arise.