Yutaka Nakajima. Photo by Brett Homenick.
On Saturday, November 23, I was privileged to meet actress Yutaka Nakajima. She has nothing to do with monster movies, and most movie fans associate her with her work at Toei Studios in the 1970s. Despite having no involvement with sci-fi films, Japanese cult movie fans nonetheless should be familiar with her films.
Born on October 5, 1952, Yutaka Nakajima (a.k.a. Doris Nakajima) co-stars alongside Sonny Chiba in The Street Fighter (1974) as Sarai Chuayut. She also can be seen in Teruo Ishii's The Executioner (1974) and The Executioner 2 (1974) as Emi, The Killing Machine (1975) as Kiku Sakamoto, and Detonation! Violent Games (1976) as Akemi.
I saw The Street Fighter (along with several other classic Sonny Chiba actioners) in my early 20s, so I was quite enthusiastic about meeting Nakajima-san. It was a true joy to spend some time in her company.
