Kataoka Hidetarō II

The file I have on Kataoka Hidetarō II is almost empty: born in Osaka in September 1941, died in May 2021, kabuki actor, decorated with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette. That is nearly all. I find that gap instructive rather than disappointing. Kabuki is an art measured in decades of daily repetition, in a name inherited and carried, in a presence that audiences feel but databases cannot record. A career like his does not generate the kind of debris — chart positions, box office, viral clips — that Western-style reference entries are built to catch. The state honor is the one hard trace of a lifetime's standing within the form. So I will not pretend to know more than I do. An Osaka-born kabuki actor who worked for roughly eighty years and was formally honored for it deserves at least an honest acknowledgment that the record here is thinner than the life was.

Name (English)

Kataoka Hidetarō II

Name (Japanese)

二代目 片岡秀太郎

Reading

にだいめ かたおか ひでたろう

Born

September 13, 1941 – May 23, 2021

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Snake

Origin

Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan

Height

162 cm

Occupation

actor / kabuki actor

Awards & achievements

• The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%89%87%E5%B2%A1%E7%A7%80%E5%A4%AA%E9%83%8E%20(2%E4%BB%A3%E7%9B%AE)
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11569767

Tags

• Osaka Prefecture
• actor
• kabuki actor

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.