Kōtarō Yoshida (actor)

Yoshida spent six years in Osaka during his grade school days, and later grew up in Hino, Tokyo. While a student at St. Paul High School, he saw the Shakespearean comedy "Twelfth Night" by the Kumo Theater Company and decided to become an actor. While studying at the Department of German Literature in the Faculty of Literature at Sophia University, he made his debut by performing Twelfth Night in the Shakespeare Study Group. He later dropped out of the same university.

After working with the Shiki Theatre Company for six months, he worked with Shakespeare Theatre, Lyming Theatre Company, and Tokyo Ichigumi before forming Performance Unit AUN with director Yoshihiro Kurita in 1997, which he also directed. He was valued as an actor capable of performing the roles required of foreign classics such as Shakespeare and Greek tragedies, and was a regular in Yukio Ninagawa's productions. He is a close friend of Tatsuya Fujiwara and Shun Oguri, who often appeared in Ninagawa's works. Starting in 2010, he expanded his activities into television dramas and films on the advice of Oguri.

Yoshida played Hanzawa's boss in Hanzawa Naoki in 2013 and Densuke Kanō, who was modeled after businessman Den'emon Itō, in Hanako to Anne in 2014. These performances attracted attention, which led to an increase in his appearances in films, his first starring role being in Tokyo Sentimental.

He got married on January 1, 2016 (his fourth marriage, including one de facto marriage) and hosted a wedding in February 2017. In October 2016, he succeeded Yukio Ninagawa as the second artistic director of the Sai no Kuni Shakespeare Series.

Stage

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes	Ref.
1985	Twelfth Night		Harumi Nakashima
1997	Othello	Othello	Yukio Ninagawa
1998	The Merchant of Venice	Shylock	Norio Deguchi
2001	Hamlet	Hamlet	Norio Deguchi
2008	King Lear	Earl of Gloucester	Yukio Ninagawa
2014	Julius Caesar	Cassius	Yukio Ninagawa
2015	Death Note: The Musical	Ryuk	Tamiya Kuriyama

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Film

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
2010	Surely Someday	Kitō
2015	Assassination Classroom	Kensaku Ōno
	Shinjuku Swan	Amano
2017	To Each His Own	Mamoru Yamagami
	Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High	Jōsuke Akaba
	The Third Murder	Daisuke Settsu
	Mixed Doubles	Seiichirō Yamashita
	Shinjuku Swan II	Amano
2018	The Lies She Loved
	Love × Doc
	Over Drive	Issei Tsuzuki
2019	Doraemon: Nobita's Chronicle of the Moon Exploration	Diabolo (voice)
	Ossan's Love the Movie	Musashi Kurosawa
	Brave Father Online: Our Story of Final Fantasy XIV	Akio's father	Lead role
	Dragon Quest: Your Story	Ladja (voice)
	Lupin III: The First	Lambert (voice)
	Shinkansen Henkei Robo Shinkalion the Movie: Mirai Kara Kita Shinsoku no ALFA-X	Ohanefu (voice)		[1]
2020	Kaiji: Final Game	Yoshihiro Kurosaki		[2]
	From Today, It's My Turn!!	Ichirō Mitsuhashi		[3]
2021	Cube	Kazumasa Ando		[4]
	Last of the Wolves	Yōzō Watafune		[5]
2022	The Way of the Househusband	Kondō		[6]
2023	Yudō	Critic		[7]
	We're Millennials. Got a Problem?: The Movie	Iwao Aso		[8]
2024	Love You as the World Ends: The Final	Saijō		[9]
	Hey Handsome!!	Gentaro Ito	Lead role	[10]
	Maru	Akimoto		[11]
	Oshi no Ko: The Final Act	Ichigo Saitō		[12]
2025	Showtime 7	Shōji		[13]
	Stigmatized Properties 2	Kioshi Fujiyoshi		[14]
	Scarlet	Voltemand (voice)		[15]
2026	Goodbye My Car	Atsushi Miyake		[16]

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Television

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
2013	The Brothers Karamazov	Bunzō Kurosawa
	Hanzawa Naoki	Hiroshi Naitō
2014	Hanako and Anne	Densuke Kanō	Asadora
	Mozu	Jin Nakagami
2016	Sanada Maru	Oda Nobunaga	Taiga drama
	Totto TV	Hisaya Morishige
	Yuriko-san no Ehon	Hiroshi Harashima
	We're Millennials. Got a Problem?	Iwao Aso		[8]
2018	From Today, It's My Turn!!	Ichirō Mitsuhashi
2018–24	Ossan's Love	Musashi Kurosawa	3 seasons	[17]
2019	Ieyasu, Edo wo Tateru	Gotō Tokujō
2020	The Yagyu Conspiracy	Yagyū Munenori	Lead role; TV movie
	The Sun Stands Still: The Eclipse	Tōru Nagashima
2020–21	Awaiting Kirin	Matsunaga Hisahide	Taiga drama
2021	Nakamura Nakazo: Shusse no Kizahashi		Miniseries	[18]
	Japan Sinks: People of Hope	Mamoru Amami	Special appearance	[19]
2022	Hey Handsome!!	Gentaro Ito	Lead role	[20]
2024	Oshi no Ko	Ichigo Saitō		[12]
2025	Anpan	Kamaji Asada	Asadora	[21]

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