Hideyo Amamoto

I'll be honest, Hideyo Amamoto's face lived rent-free in my nightmares as a kid before I had any idea who he was. That gaunt, hollow-cheeked look with the sunken, knowing eyes made him the perfect tokusatsu villain, the kind of mad scientist or shadowy schemer who made Showa-era kids hide behind the couch. But grown up, I see what a gift that was. He never played the leading-man game; he was the consummate character actor, the guy who'd slink into a scene and quietly steal it. There's a real gravitas under the menace too, a flicker of refinement and intelligence that hints at the war-generation man underneath the makeup. Born in Wakamatsu, Fukuoka in 1926, he gave that whole era of Japanese film and TV its eerie, lived-in depth. One of one, and I still can't forget him.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Hideyo Amamoto (January 2, 1926 – March 23, 2003) was a Japanese actor born in Wakamatsu-ku, Fukuoka Prefecture. He was known for his distinctive screen presence and worked primarily in Japanese film and television throughout the Showa era. From the 1970s he moved mainly into television, where his role as Doctor Shinigami in the 1972 series Kamen Rider made him a popular villain. He passed away on March 23, 2003.

Name (English)

Hideyo Amamoto

Name (Japanese)

天本英世

Reading

あまもと ひでよ

Born

January 2, 1926 – March 23, 2003

Origin

Wakamatsu-ku, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Height

180 cm

Occupation

Actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Tiger

Active years

1954 - 2003

Works summary

Appearances

289 (1954–2005)

By year (titles with a known year)

1954: 2, 1956: 3, 1957: 1, 1958: 3, 1959: 6, 1960: 10, 1961: 6, 1962: 7, 1963: 8, 1964: 5, 1965: 4, 1966: 7, 1967: 10, 1968: 8, 1969: 5, 1970: 7, 1971: 16, 1972: 11, 1973: 12, 1974: 11, 1975: 13, 1976: 11, 1977: 5, 1978: 7, 1979: 3, 1980: 2, 1981: 2, 1982: 2, 1983: 2, 1984: 5, 1985: 1, 1986: 1, 1987: 5, 1988: 3, 1989: 1, 1990: 6, 1991: 6, 1992: 4, 1993: 6, 1994: 5, 1995: 2, 1996: 6, 1997: 2, 1998: 3, 1999: 3, 2000: 7, 2001: 2, 2002: 4, 2005: 1, year unknown: 27

Debut work

The Garden of Women

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A9%E6%9C%AC%E8%8B%B1%E4%B8%96
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q938317

Tags

• From Fukuoka Prefecture
• Actor

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.