Asuka Kudo
BIOGRAPHY
Asuka Kudo (Japanese: 工藤阿須加, born 1 August 1991) is a Japanese actor and presenter from Tokorozawa in Saitama Prefecture, signed to Papado. He also farms.
He grew up in a sporting household. His father is Kimiyasu Kudo, the pitcher who later managed the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, and his sister Haruka is a professional golfer. He is the eldest of five children. He played tennis seriously enough to aim at turning professional, but a shoulder injury in high school ended that. He has never played baseball.
Food interested him early, partly because the household ate around an athlete’s diet. In his final year of high school he read Akinori Kimura’s book Miracle Apples, was moved by it, and enrolled at the Tokyo University of Agriculture intending to farm. He left before finishing, because acting had arrived in the meantime.
His debut came in 2012 in the NTV drama Risou no Musuko. In 2013 he appeared in the NHK taiga drama Yae no Sakura as Yamamoto Saburo, the heroine’s younger brother, and in Shomuni 2013. The following year he was picked from around a hundred auditionees for TBS’s Sunday Theatre drama Roosevelt Game, playing Kazuya Okihara, a pitcher on a corporate baseball team, the same position as his father. That May he threw the ceremonial first pitch at Seibu Dome wearing his father’s old number 47, and clocked 114 km/h without ever having played the game.
He took his first leading role in 2018 in The Black Company, and between October 2018 and March 2021 was the Wednesday personality on NTV’s morning programme ZIP!. In 2021 he started farming on land in Hokuto, Yamanashi Prefecture. He has said the pandemic convinced him that waiting until he had the money or the time would mean never starting.
His screen credits include Asa ga Kita (2015), Your Home Is My Business (2016), Radiation House (2019), Kyojo (2020), Burn the House Down (2023) as Kiichi Mitarai, both Golden Kamuy productions (2024) as Hajime Tsukishima and The Right to Judge (2025).
He plays Shinya Kubota in The Boy and I Who Will Break Up in 100 Days.
Asuka Kudo plays Shinya Kubota in a six episode drama based on a novel by Asahara Naoto.
Shinya Kubota is his part in The Boy and I Who Will Break Up in 100 Days.
His television work spans NHK’s taiga drama in 2013, a morning programme on NTV and the two Golden Kamuy productions of 2024.
In my view, Kudo’s story is built from things he did not plan: a tennis player who turned to acting after an injury, a would be farmer who became a television regular, and a pitcher on screen who had never played baseball. What stayed with me is that the farm in Hokuto began in the same year his morning programme ended. Roosevelt Game is where I would start, because it puts his family’s sport on screen with him as the pitcher.
The farm is the part of his life that has grown most visibly. He works the land in Yamanashi organically and grows about fifteen kinds of vegetable in a year. He has also taken part in agricultural symposiums and food related advocacy. Away from the fields he has appeared in commercial campaigns for Toshiba, Kirin and Taisho Pharmaceutical, and he takes narration work as well. In my view an actor who keeps a working farm alongside screen work earns his say on food, since the vegetables are a daily fact rather than a talking point.
PROFILE DETAILS
- Native Name
- 工藤阿須加
- Real Name
- Asuka Kudo (工藤阿須加)
- Born
- (Age 35)
- Birthplace
- Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan
- Gender
- Male
- Western Zodiac
- Leo ♌
- Chinese Zodiac
- Goat 🐐
- Height
- 180 cm
- Profession
- Nationality
- Debut
- 2012 · Risou no Musuko (理想の息子, NTV, 2012); first leading role The Black Company (2018)
- Agency / Label
- Papado (パパドゥ)
- Years Active
- 2012-present
- Skills
- Screen acting, Television presenting, Tennis, Farming
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