was a Japanese actor, comedian, singer, and guitarist. He won six awards for acting.Hitoshi Ueki - Awards
IMDB Retrieved June 21, 2008 His film credits stretch from 1960 to 1995. Ueki came to fame through the comic jazz-band The Crazy Cats led by Hajime Hana. His major appearances were in the ''Musekinin Otoko'' film series, the comedy variety show ''Shabondama Holiday'', the prime-time television series ''The Hangman'', and the ten 2-hour television shows in the ''Nagoya Yomeiri Monogatari'' franchise. He appeared in the

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dy ...

epic ''

jidaigeki is a genre of film, television, video game, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning " period dramas", they are most often set during the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868. Some, however, are set much earlier—'' Portrait o ...

'' film '' Ran'' in 1985, receiving a nomination for the Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and earned the Japanese Academy,

Kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ...

,and

Mainichi The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English language news website called ''The Mainichi'' (prev ...

film awards for best supporting actor for his role as the eccentric grandfather in '' Big Joys, Small Sorrows'' in 1987. On stage, he portrayed Billy Flynn in the musical ''

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

'', voiced the

Roddy McDowall Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 4 October 1998) was a British actor, photographer and film director. He began his acting career as a child in England, and then in the United States, in '' How Green Was My Valley'' ( ...

role in the Japanese market release of ''

Planet of the Apes ''Planet of the Apes'' is an American science fiction media franchise consisting of films, books, television series, comics, and other media about a world in which humans and intelligent apes clash for control. The franchise is based on Frenc ...

'', and served as the narrator in the Japanese version of

Tom and Jerry ''Tom and Jerry'' is an American animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series centers on the ...

. His hit song with Hana Hajime and the Crazy Cats, ''Sūdara-bushi'', placed in the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in N ...

top ten, and landed him an appearance on the

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestri ...

annual music spectacular

Kōhaku Uta Gassen , more commonly known simply as ''Kōhaku'', is an annual New Year's Eve television special produced by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. It is broadcast live simultaneously on television and radio, nationally and internationally by the NHK ne ...

. Ueki received the Purple Ribbon Medal of Honour in 1993 and the 4th Class

Order of the Rising Sun The is a Japanese order, established in 1875 by Emperor Meiji. The Order was the first national decoration awarded by the Japanese government, created on 10 April 1875 by decree of the Council of State. The badge features rays of sunlight ...

in 1999. Currently, new technology is being used to create a

Vocaloid is a singing voice synthesizer software product. Its signal processing part was developed through a joint research project led by Kenmochi Hideki at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, in 2000 and was not originally intended to b ...

voicebank using his voice.link
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Discography

Albums

* , 1966 * , 1971 * , 1990 * , 1991 * , 1992 * , 1995

Partial filmography

Films

* '' Tattoo Ari'' (1982) * '' The Crazy Family'' (1984) * '' Ran'' (1985) as Nobuhiro Fujimaki * '' Ora Tōkyō sa Iguda'' (1985) * '' Big Joys, Small Sorrows'' (1986) as Kunio Sugimoto * '' Aitsu ni Koishite'' (1987) * ''

Maiko Haaaan!!! is a Japanese comedy film released in 2007. Hitoshi Ueki made his final film appearance in the film. Plot Kimihiko Onizuka (Sadao Abe) is a salaryman infatuated with maiko (apprentice geisha) and whose greatest goal in life is to play a party gam ...

'' (2007)

Television

* ''

Momotarō-zamurai ''Momotarō-zamurai'' (桃太郎侍) or ''Samurai Momotarō'' is a Japanese novel by Kiichirō Yamate (1899–1978). Published in 1946, the novel centers on an Edo-period ''rōnin'', Shinjirō, the younger twin brother of a ''daimyō'' who was cau ...

'' (1976–77) as Saruno Inosuke

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ueki, Hitoshi 1926 births 2007 deaths Japanese male actors Japanese comedians Japanese jazz guitarists Recipients of the Medal of Honor (Japan) Vocaloid voice providers 20th-century guitarists Recipients of the Medal with Purple Ribbon Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th class 20th-century comedians 20th-century Japanese male singers 20th-century Japanese singers Male jazz musicians Crazy Cats members