Aoki, Tomio

He was a five-year-old baby when he first crossed the threshold of the Kamata studio of the film company “Shotiku” and was approved for one of the roles in the film “The Life of an Employee” ( 1929 ) that has not survived until our days. He was so funny that he drew the attention of director Yasujiro Ozu , who would come up with the plot of his next film, The Immediate Boy , shot in the same 1929, especially for him. The scenario, inspired by the motives of the story by O. Henry “The redemption of the leader of the Redskins”, which Ozu with three other co-authors would write literally overnight, spent by the company in a pub and pub ^[1] . Aoki plays a tomboy-boy who so much gets his kidnappers that they have already regretted their wrongdoing and do not know how to get rid of the kidnapped child. It is after this picture that Aoki’s baby will become a star, will call himself nothing more than Tokkan Kozo (after the film’s name) ^[1] and will then play repeatedly under this pseudonym in Yasujiro Odzu’s subsequent works.

The partnership between the director and the child-star will continue in ten more films, including the unforgettable “ Born I Am Born ... ” ( 1932 ), “ The Story of Floating Algae ” ( 1934 ) and the first sound film of the master “ The Only Son ” ( 1936 ). Looking at Aoki’s filmography, it is also clear that Ozu was not the only director with whom the actor repeatedly worked in the 1930s . The names of directors Hiroshi Shimizu and Hiromasa Nomura appear even more often, 17 and 14 times respectively. From 1929 to 1940, the young actor starred in 98 films.

When the war began, Aoki, sixteen, disappeared from the screen in 1940 and returned only fourteen years later, having signed a contract with Nikkatsu studio (which explains why Aoki never appeared in Odzu films anymore, since the master director was always faithful to Sötiku ). An actor accustomed from a young age to star glory in Nikkatsu has to start from scratch, since he is offered only episodes, at best, secondary roles. Thus, in the film The Beauty of the Underworld ( 1958 ), he played the small role of a master sculpted from plasticine for female breasts for dummies.

Although sometimes he got in “Nikkatsu”, albeit small roles, but in outstanding works of major directors, such as his appearance in the classic military drama of Kon Ichikawa “The Burmese Harp ” ( 1956 ), in the drama Masaki Kobayashi scripted by prominent prose writer Cobo Abe “ Behind a thick wall ” ( 1956 ), in the early works of Shohei Imamura “ At the station of West Ginza ”, “ Stolen Desire ” (both - 1958 ), “ Pigs and Armadillos ” ( 1961 ), “ Insect Woman ” ( 1963 ), “ Red thirst for murder ", ( 1964 ). In 1960, played a major role in the crime drama Koreyoshi Kurahara " Bullying ".

Like many of the actors who worked in the Nikkatsu in the 1960s , including the stars Tetsuya Watari and Meiko Kaji, Aoki left the studio in the early 1970s when the crisis years began. The actor began acting in erotic films. After his participation in the 1972 porn film “White Skin Appearing in the Dark,” directed by Sogoro Nishimura, a year before the former director of the first Japanese porn, “Wife’s Apartment: Intimate Relations in the Afternoon”, the actor left the profession prematurely ( only once in a small episode of the film "Family" of 1974 ).

It was his second long break in work, but much longer in time than in the 1940s - 1950s . Tomio Aoki will return to the screen only two decades later in the mid -1990s , starring in the film “Welcome Home” by the writer, journalist and director Makoto Sinozaki ^[2] . Then it will be removed in several films, the last of which is “Tamura and Tirori: Walking the Dog”, which was shot by the same Sinozaki will be released in May 2004, after Aoki’s death.

Tomio Aoki died on January 24, 2004, at the age of eighty, from lung cancer ^[3] .

• Tomio Aoki on the Internet Movie Database