Kōji Hashimoto, known professionally as Kōji Yakusho, is a renowned Japanese actor, and film director.
He was born in Isahaya, Nagasaki, as the youngest of five brothers. After graduation from Nagasaki Prefectural High School of Technology in 1974, he worked at the Chiyoda municipal ward office, or kuyakusho, in Tokyo, from which he later took his stage name.
In the spring of 1978, he auditioned for Tatsuya Nakadai's Mumeijuku (Studio for Unknown Performers) acting studio and was one of four chosen out of 800 applicants.
In 1983, he landed the role of Oda Nobunaga in the year-long NHK drama Tokugawa Ieyasu and was catapulted to fame. He also appeared in a TV version of Miyamoto Musashi from 1984 to 1985. For several years, he played Kuji Shinnosuke (or "Sengoku"), one of the title characters in the jidaigeki Sambiki ga Kiru!. He played a major character in Juzo Itami's 1986 Tampopo.
In 1988, he was given a special award for work in cinema by the Japanese Minister of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture and continued to appear in films and in a number of TV shows through the '90s.
In 1996 and 1997, Yakusho enjoyed several major successes. The Eel, directed by Shohei Imamura, in which he played the eel-loving lead, won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Lawrence Van Gelder in the New York Times called his performance "unerring."[3] A Lost Paradise, about a double suicide, was second only to Princess Mononoke at the Japanese box office.
He is especially known for his starring roles in Shall We Dance? (1996), 13 Assassins (2010), The Third Murder (2017), The Blood of Wolves (2018), Under the Open Sky (2020) and The Days (2023). He is best known internationally for his role in Shōhei Imamura's The Eel (1997), Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006).
In 2023, he won the award for best actor at the Cannes Film Festival. In the same year, he was selected as the filmmaker in focus at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.
