Satô Makoto

Satô Makoto was a Japanese actor notable for his strong features and prominent lips. He was frequently cast as gangsters and thugs before action films became vogue in Japan.

Satô's father died when he was four years old, and he was raised by his mother, a school teacher. He entered acting school at the age of eighteen, graduating alongside fellow young actors Nakadai Tatsuya and Nakatani Ichirô. The trio went to work for director Okamoto Kihachi, who would affectionately refer to them as the "Kihachi family" due to their frequent ongoing collaborations.

In his youth, Satô's screen persona was often compared to American actor Richard Widmark, earning him the nickname the "Japanese Widmark." Later in his career, the comparison shifted to Charles Bronson, and he became affectionately known as the "Japanese Bronson."

Satô worked with Toho from 1956 until 1970. During this prolific period, he appeared in a variety of pictures, from thrillers and action films to fantasy and sci-fi. His most prominent roles in the genre are as the gangster villain Uchida in The H-Man (1958), and as Mifune Toshirô's respective rivals in both The Lost World of Sinbad (1963) and The Adventure of Kigan Castle (1966).

Much later in his career, he provided a brief one-line cameo as the cursed boar god Nago at the beginning of Studio Ghibli's animated epic Princess Mononoke (1997).