Biography
Atsushi Watanabe (渡辺 篤) was a Japanese film actor. Born on 9 April 1898 in Asakusa, Tokyo, he began his career in Asakusa Opera before entering films in 1921 at Makino Educational Pictures. He became established as a comic performer at Shochiku's Kamata studio and starred in Japan's first talkie, Madamu to Nyōbō (1931).
After the war he worked as a freelance actor and appeared in numerous films by Akira Kurosawa, including One Wonderful Sunday (1947), Ikiru (1952) as a patient, Seven Samurai (1954) as the bun seller, I Live in Fear (1955), The Lower Depths (1957), Yojimbo (1961) as the cooper, Red Beard (1965) and Dodes'ka-den (1970) as Mr Tanba. He appeared in more than eighty films between 1921 and 1970 and died on 27 February 1977 in Tokyo.
