Actor Daijiro Harada Celebrates His 79th Birthday in Style!

Daijiro Harada (left) and Masaharu Sato. Photo by Brett Homenick.

Earlier tonight, I attended a performance by actor Daijiro Harada and musician Masaharu Sato at Minami-Aoyama Mandala. Harada-san narrated Ango Sakaguchi's short story "In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom," a rather timely story for this season, while Sato-san performed some avant-garde electronic music in accompaniment. 

Today, April 5, also happens to be the birthday of the star of the show, Harada-san. While I knew it was his birthday going into it, I didn't realize how old he was! Would you believe he turns 79 years old today? I thought he was younger. That's probably because I largely associate him with his most prominent role (at least among Godzilla fans worldwide) -- G-Force Captain Takuya Sasaki in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993), which doesn't seem like it was that long ago to me. 

He certainly seems much younger than his real age, which is a blessing. Naturally, Harada-san was in great spirits and read the story with gusto. But I must admit that the most entertaining portions for me were when Harada-san lost his place and joked with the audience about it.

In fact, with maybe about 20 minutes left in the performance, there was apparently a computer issue -- Harada-san read the story directly from a laptop onstage -- that prevented him from continuing his performance. This went on for quite a while, perhaps five minutes. A couple of different staffers went onstage to try to resolve the issue while Sato-san kept played music in the interim.

Eventually, the issue was fixed, and Harada-san was able to finish narrating the story. After the show, Harada-san's son came onstage and presented him with the bouquet and the "Happy Birthday" hat that you see in the photos of this blog post. The audience was then allowed to snap photos of the two performers, which is when I took mine.

I was hoping to say a few words to Harada-san, but there just wasn't an opportunity. After posing for the above photos, he immediately switched to autographing the goods that attendees bought from his table. So, if I really wanted to talk to him, I could have done that, but I elected to call it a night instead. I was cool with what I had.

Happy birthday, Harada-san!