Watching some of the especially older guys on "Uta Con"（うたコン）today had me somehow remembering the late actor, musician and comedian Frankie Sakai（フランキー堺）. And he is not to be mistaken for Mood Kayo master Frank Nagai（フランク永井）who has also left this mortal coil. For those outside of Japan, perhaps the only example of film or television that he was known for was through his scenes as the ultimately treacherous Lord Yabu from the very first televised version of "Shogun" in 1980.
Much earlier in life, he also had his fame as a jazz drummer. However, I first got to know him when my parents took my brother and me to one of his comedy movies at the original Toronto Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre. His humour was on the somewhat bawdy side as I saw him use a few everyday objects to molest his wife in the movie. Sakai was in a ton of movies, television dramas and commercials.
His J-Wiki profile doesn't mention him being a singer although even he has a short Kohaku Utagassen list when he appeared on the NHK New Year's Eve special for four straight years from 1958 to 1961. But none of the songs he sang there belong to this article since I found one that isn't found in the profile. In October 1956, he recorded a light and lovely kayo kyoku titled "Ikina Unmei no Kamisama" (The Courageous God of Fate) in which he took on the voices of a man, a woman and the titular god overlooking the two lovebirds. The song was written and composed by Touroku Takagi（高木東六）. Sakai is quite smooth in his transitions and I'm surprised that he didn't consider going a little further with his singing which is actually quite good.
Sakai passed away in 1996 at the age of 67 due to liver failure.
I have the DVD set of the Shogun miniseries! I loved that the Japanese actors and actresses could do the majority of their lines in Japanese, thus shining by showing their true talents rather than being forced to use English or broken English.
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect, I do appreciate that.
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