Hanging Out with a '70s Toei Tokusatsu Icon!

Go Takashina. Photo by Brett Homenick.

On Saturday evening, May 14, I had the opportunity to meet Toei actor Go Takashina for the first time.

Go Takashina, whose real name is Masahiro Takashina (which also used to be his old stage name under a different kanji spelling), began acting professionally in 1973. He has appeared in several movies, but he is mostly known for his decades-long career in television.

Since debuting as an actor, Takashina-san has appeared in episode 14 of Iron King (1972-73) as Phantom member Minazuki, episode 26 of Kamen Rider X (1974) as the human form of a GOD agent, episode 6 of The Kagestar (1976-77), episode 11 of Toho's Super Sentai-inspired series Enban Senso Bankid (1976-77) as a police officer, and (most notably) episodes 16 through 35 of Daitetsujin 17 (1977) as Tetsugoro Iwayama.

When I sat down across from Takashina-san, he said that I had a nice face. Later on in the evening, he was looking at a poster for the James Dean epic East of Eden (1955). I asked him who directed it, but he wasn't sure. I got up to look at the poster and found the name of director, Elia Kazan. But then I quipped that it was actually "Alien" Kazan, which is a play on the katakana spelling of the two names. Well, at least he seemed to appreciate it!

All in all, Takashina-san didn't have many memories about his tokusatsu work. He was surprised to find out that I was familiar with Iron King and knew that he was in it. When I asked him about the infamous Starfish Hitler character from his episode of Kamen Rider X, he had no memory of it. But he was a lot of fun to hang out with and talked a lot about his enthusiasm for driving.

It was great to meet Takashina-san, who was quite a friendly chap to converse with.