Hasegawa Kazuo was a Japanese actor born in Rokujizo, Horiuchi-mura, Kii-gun, Kyoto Prefecture. His old stage names are Hayashi Chomaru and Hayashi Chojiro. He entered Shochiku from the Kabuki world and became a leading actor in the Shochiku period dramas. After that, he moved to Toho and Daiei and appeared in more than 300 works. He has been very active on stage and in TV dramas, and in his later years, he directed the Takarazuka Revue "The Rose of Versailles". He received the first National Honor Award for his acting after his death.

His first wife is Hayashi Tami, the second daughter of the first Nakamura Kojiro. He later divorced her and remarried Iijima Shigeru, a prostitute in Shimbashi. Actor Hayashi Naritoshi is his eldest son, and actresses Ono Michiko, Hasegawa Kiyo and Hasegawa Kazuki are his daughters.

In 1913, he made his stage debut by playing Suga Hidetoshi in "Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami: Terakoya" by Nakamura Tsurunosuke, as a substitute for a child actor who couldn't act his role due to a cold.

In 1935, when Kinugasa's "Yukinojo Henge" was released, his popularity reached its peak.

On November 12, during the filming of "Minamoto no Yoshitsune" he was attacked by two men and his face was slashed, due to which he could not continue shooting.

In 1953, Hasegawa starred in "Jigokumon" directed by Kinugasa. The film won the Grand Prix of the Cannes International Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In 1983, the Toho Kabuki New Year's performance "Hanshichi Torimonocho" was his final stage performance, and he was hospitalized in the fall of the same year due to worsening diabetes. He died on April 6, 1984, at the Jikei University School of Medicine Hospital due to an intracranial abscess, at the age of 76. After his death, he received the National Honor Award. Edit Biography