Japanese actor makes a living out of on-camera deaths

KYOTO, Japan -- Seizo Fukumoto has died 20,000 agonizing deaths. He's been gored by samurai and gunned down by gangsters. His bloodied body has slammed into trees, tumbled down stairs and crashed through sliding paper-and-wood doors.

As Japan's top "kirareyaku," which translates into "sliced-up actor," Fukumoto dies for a living. When Japanese directors need somebody to kill, he's the man they call.

"My job is to make the good guy shine," Fukumoto said in an interview. "The more spectacular my on-screen death, the better he looks."

It's a specialty that doesn't bring stardom.

Though he's highly respected by his fellow actors, and widely acknowledged by his peers as the best in the business, Fukumoto is virtually unknown to the public. At 61, he has no agent, and his bit parts in films frequently fail to even make the credits.

Still, Fukumoto is all over the screen -- literally, at times.

For decades, the Japanese movie industry has been dominated by two genres: samurai period pieces and gangster movies. Both have lots of violence, bloody fights and high-profile killing, and that kept actors in Fukumoto's line of work busy.

But with film studios and TV networks opting increasingly for low-budget, modern dramas over feudal and gangster scripts, Fukumoto has found himself the practitioner of, well, a dying art.

"There are only a few other full-time actors like me left at Toei studios. When I joined, there were hundreds," he said.

Fukumoto reckons he's been killed more than 20,000 times, but he can't say for sure. Scripts often crammed in several killing scenes, which meant Fukumoto would die as one character and reappear as another to get slain again.

After being scouted by a casting director, he appeared last year in the big-budget Hollywood movie "The Last Samurai" as the Silent Samurai, a taciturn warrior who shadows the former American Civil War captain, Nathan Algren, played by Tom Cruise.

Toward the end of the film, he sacrifices his own life to protect Algren -- by throwing himself in front of a bullet.

Being around so much bloodshed -- albeit staged -- hasn't made Fukumoto immune to the prospect of his own end.

"I stage death for a profession. But, like anyone else, I'm afraid of death," he said.

Although others in the profession have died or suffered career-ending injuries, Fukomoto has rarely been seriously hurt.

He got slashed in the face once, and has limped away after stunts. In one airborne samurai fight scene, he crashed into the camera crew. In another, he mistimed a trampoline jump, bounced off a rooftop and landed on his head.

The abuse, he admits, has taken a toll.

"There have been times recently when I've fainted during a fight scene," said Fukumoto. "But I plan to keep working as long as directors keep casting me."