Yoshi Oida has appeared in many works by the famed Paris-based English director Peter Brook, and in 2013 the Japanese actor who has, like him, also lived in the City of Light for more than four decades, was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.
Looking back over his career in a recent conversation we had in Tokyo, the 81-year-old veteran who left mainstream theater in Japan to perform in Brook’s “The Tempest” in Paris in 1968, explained, “During my childhood, kabuki troupes would put on koshibai (short plays) at little theaters, which I loved and watched every week. Then, when we were evacuated during the war, I enjoyed watching the village plays.
"But when I was 12 or 13, I got interested in Shakespeare, Chekhov, Beckett and the like, and I never looked back — though I've got nostalgic in my old age about three dreams I've had since I was a child: To perform in taishū-engeki (theater for the masses) and also kabuki — and to play Harpagon in Molière's 'L'Avare ou L'École du mensonge.'