Yūkichi Iwata

Yūkichi Iwata was born in 1887 in Ogaki, Gifu — and if that city name rings a distant bell, it should, because it's where Matsuo Bashō ended his famous journey along the narrow road to the deep north. There's something poetic about an actor coming out of a place so steeped in that kind of quiet, wandering spirit. He lived through the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras — war, defeat, reconstruction, the economic miracle — all of it — and kept working as an actor through most of it. He came from the shinpa stage, became one of the early leading men at Shochiku's Kamata studio opposite Sumiko Kurishima, and later settled into supporting roles, and to me 92 years of living in Japan across that particular stretch of history is itself a kind of performance, and the fact that he was there on stages and screens while the country was literally reinventing itself around him is just staggering to sit with.

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.

Yūkichi Iwata (1887–1980) was a Japanese actor born in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture. He spanned three imperial eras — Meiji, Taisho, and Showa — over the course of his career. He began on the shinpa stage, became a leading man at Shochiku's Kamata studio in the early silent era, often paired with Sumiko Kurishima, and later moved into supporting roles. He died on January 18, 1980, at the age of 92.

Name (English)

Yūkichi Iwata

Name (Japanese)

岩田祐吉

Reading

いわた ゆうきち

Born

March 23, 1887 – January 18, 1980

Origin

Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Boar

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B2%A9%E7%94%B0%E7%A5%90%E5%90%89
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11475525

Tags

• From Gifu Prefecture
• Actor

Last updated

November 2, 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.