Maro Akaji is a Japanese actor, butoh dancer, and director born in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan. He is the founder of the avant-garde butoh group Dai Rakuda-kan. He is affiliated with the talent agency Camel Arts.

His mother, Yuko, suffered from mental illness following her husband's suicide, and Maro was entrusted to his uncle and aunt who lived at the foot of Mount Miwa in Sakurai, Nara, Japan, when he was in fifth grade. Around this time, he was hospitalized with pulmonary tuberculosis, where he was influenced by another patient in the same room and became interested in literature and theater.

He graduated from Nara Prefectural Unebi High School and dropped out of the Philosophy Department of the First Faculty of Literature at Waseda University. During middle and high school, he was a member of the drama club and performed in plays. He joined the theater group "Budou no Kai", but became disenchanted with the political discussions of the upper echelons of the group and left. He then studied under the butoh dancer Hijikata Tatsumi.

In June 1964, he joined the theater group "Jokyo Gekijo". He left the theater group in 1970. In 1972, he founded and directed his own butoh group, "Dai Rakuda-kan".

In 2006, he became an advisor to the Japan Outdoor Journalists Association and a visiting professor at the Ando Momofuku Memorial Nature Experience Activity Instructor Training Center.

His eldest son is film director Omori Tatsushi, and his second son is actor Omori Nao.

(Source: Japanese = Wikipedia || Translation = kisskh) Edit Biography