Hyō Kitazawa

Hyō Kitazawa is one of those figures who makes you stop and think about how much a single lifetime can hold. Born in Tokyo in 1911, he lived through the tail end of Meiji, all of Taisho and Showa, two world wars, the rise and fall of the silent film era, the golden age of Japanese cinema, and the arrival of television — and he did it all as a working actor. I never got to see his performances firsthand, obviously, but there's something quietly impressive about anyone who planted a flag in such an unstable industry during such a turbulent century and just kept going. He passed at 69, having witnessed basically everything. Leading the very first NHK morning drama and voicing the hero of the radio classic Kimi no Na wa, he earned his place in the record.

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.

Hyō Kitazawa (born May 18, 1911, Tokyo; died August 4, 1980) was a Japanese actor from Koishikawa, Tokyo. He co-founded the Theatre Comedie troupe in 1931, joined the PCL studio (the forerunner of Toho) in 1937, and after the war played the lead in the first NHK morning drama serial, Musume to Watashi. He passed away at the age of 69.

Name (English)

Hyō Kitazawa

Name (Japanese)

北沢彪

Reading

きたざわ ひょう

Born

May 18, 1911 – August 4, 1980

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

Actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Boar

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E6%B2%A2%E5%BD%AA
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11402314

Tags

• From Tokyo
• 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. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.