Suzunosuke

Suzunosuke (鈴之助; born 14 April 1984) is a Japanese actor who works under a mononymous stage name. To BL audiences he is known as Urabe Kengo (浦部健吾), a senior colleague at Adachi’s company, and a character created for the screen adaptation rather than carried over from the manga, in TV Tokyo’s Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (2020) and its sequel film Cherry Magic! THE MOVIE (2022).

He was born in Tokyo. His legal name is 田中鈴之助 (Tanaka Suzunosuke), which is also the name he was credited under earlier in his career, so the mononym he now uses is his own given name detached from his surname.

He began working as a child actor in the mid-1990s, taking the lead role of Tetsushi Kanamori in Jigokudo Reikai Tsushin (地獄堂霊界通信) in 1996 at the age of twelve. His career has since spanned roughly three decades of television, film and stage work.

His credits run heavily to hard-edged and character parts: Rokuhira in Devilman (2004), Chuta Tamura across the Crows Zero films (2007 to 2009), Rookies: Graduation (2009), Taira no Norimori in NHK’s taiga drama Taira no Kiyomori (2012), Masahiro Ogawa in 11.25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate (2012) and Kirifuji in Mob Psycho 100 (2018), alongside recurring appearances in long-running procedurals such as Tokuso 9, Kasouken no Onna and Keiji 7-nin. At 186 cm he is the tallest member of the Cherry Magic supporting cast, and his agency lists stage combat and hypnotism among his special skills.

He is represented by Tristone Entertainment, the same agency as his Cherry Magic co-stars Eiji Akaso and Kodai Asaka. He is credited as supporting cast on both the twelve-episode TV Tokyo series and the 2022 film sequel.

Crows Zero reached Japanese cinemas on 27 October 2007, directed by Takashi Miike from Hiroshi Takahashi’s manga Crows. It is set at Suzuran All-Boys High School, where the transfer student Genji Takiya, played by Shun Oguri, sets out to bring the school’s rival factions under one banner while Takayuki Yamada’s Tamao Serizawa gathers a faction of his own. Suzunosuke plays Chuta Tamura, and Miike directed the sequel as well.

Cherry Magic! aired in TV Tokyo’s MokuDra 25 slot from 9 October to 24 December 2020, twelve episodes led by Eiji Akaso as Kiyoshi Adachi and Keita Machida as Yuichi Kurosawa. Kodai Asaka plays Masato Tsuge and Yutaro plays Minato Wataya, and Suzunosuke fills out the office as Urabe. The film sequel opened on 8 April 2022 and entered the box office chart at number six.