Keiju Kobayashi

Keiju Kobayashi was a Japanese actor. In a career that spanned 65 years, he appeared in over 250 films. He won many awards for his acting. Kobayashi appeared in films made by such notable directors as Akira Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse, and Kihachi Okamoto. He continued to give powerful performances after largely moving to television in the late 1960s.

He also portrayed the voice of the "Shirō Nishi" in the original Japanese version of the Studio Ghibli anime film Whisper of the Heart in 1995.

He died on 16 September 2010 of heart failure at the age of 86.