Bunta Sugawara, born in Sendai in 1933, was one of Japan's defining tough-guy stars, the gravelled voice of Toei's 1970s yakuza cinema. He immortalized the role of the honorable gangster Shozo Hirono in Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973) and its sequels, then reinvented himself as a working-class trucker in the long-running Torakku Yaro comedy series. Later generations know him as the boiler-room master Kamaji in Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001). He worked into his eighties and died in 2014. Read more