Kanichiro

Kanichiro works under his given name alone, though his legal name is Kanichiro Sato.

He plays Itsuki Hasegawa in The Boy and I Who Will Break Up in 100 Days, and the single name on the credit is the one he has used since his 2017 start.

His first film, Kiku to Girochin, was shot in 2016 and released in 2018, so the prizes from the Takasaki Film Festival, the Japan Movie Critics Awards and Kinema Junpo all followed within a few years of his entry into the industry.

The two Japan Movie Critics Awards on his list fall in consecutive editions, the 27th and the 28th, and they sit in different categories: Newcomer Actor first, Supporting Actor one edition later. That is a quick change of category for the same body of work to be measured in. His credits also move across formats, from feature films such as Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda and Namiya Zakkaten no Kiseki to the television drama Grand Maison Tokyo, and then to a boys’ love series broadcast on MBS. The family background of Koichi Sato and Rentaro Mikuni runs through film and stage acting, and his own route began in cinema before it reached a weekly drama slot.

In my view, his list reads like a young actor choosing films over easy visibility. Kiku to Girochin was a demanding first role, playing the anarchist Daijiro Furuta, and within a few years he was in Takeshi Kitano’s Kubi as Mori Ranmaru. I would start with Kiku to Girochin, then move to Gekijo to see how his screen presence settles.

I find it telling that an actor from such a well known acting family works on screen under the single name Kanichiro. That is my reading as an editor, a viewpoint and not a statement about his reasons.