Yuzuru Kume

Born in 1899 — the last year of the nineteenth century — Yuzuru Kume lived through the entire sweep of Taisho modernism and the convulsive early Showa era before passing away in 1945, just as the war was ending. He started as a child actor and eventually moved into kabuki, which is a fascinating path for a Tokyo kid; it speaks to how porous the performing arts world could be back then, before everything got neatly siloed. What I love most is the wig story: he designed a wig with a natural-looking hairline, was mocked for it as a madman, and yet the idea later spread from a small independent studio until it became standard practice. He died of tuberculosis in 1945 at 45 and didn't get to see the peace. That stings a little.

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.

Yuzuru Kume was a Japanese actor born on November 29, 1899, in Tokyo, Japan. He worked across multiple performance disciplines, beginning as a child actor and also establishing himself as a kabuki actor. He passed away in 1945, the final year of World War II. Born Toraji Saijō in Asakusa, he began as a child actor in 1908, played female roles in kabuki, and from 1920 appeared in films for Shochiku, Nikkatsu, Shinko Kinema and Daiei, his last recorded role coming in 1942.

Name (English)

Yuzuru Kume

Name (Japanese)

久米譲

Reading

くめ ゆずる

Born

November 29, 1899 – 1945

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

Actor / Child Actor / Kabuki Actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Boar

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B9%85%E7%B1%B3%E8%AD%B2
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11369637

Tags

• Tokyo
• Actor
• Child Actor
• Kabuki 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.