Senda Koreya

Senda Koreya (born Itô Kunio) was a revered Japanese stage and film actor. He adopted his stage name as both a parody and a tribute to the victims of the cruel Korean massacres following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 ("The Koreans in Sendagaya").

Senda traveled to Germany in 1927 to study theater at the renowned Reinhardt School of Drama. While there, he joined the German Communist Party and later helped form a Japanese chapter of the party in Germany alongside Kunisaki Teihora and Kobayashi Takiji. In 1931, they returned to Japan and formed a left-wing theater company. The company was forcibly disbanded following their arrests in 1942, when Japan began severely cracking down on communists. Fellow party founder Kobayashi Takiji suffered a particularly brutal death at the hands of the police, an incident that has been the subject of much controversy and historical mourning ever since.

After the war in 1944, Senda formed the Haiyuza theater troupe with fellow actors Tôno Eijirô, Ozawa Eitarô, and Aoyama Sugisaku. Senda continued to successfully represent the theater for nearly fifty years until his death.

In the film world, Senda appeared in three Toho sci-fi films during the 1950s, typically playing scientists and mentors in a manner similar to Shimura Takashi's legendary characters, albeit with distinctly less charm. His role as Dr. Adachi in Battle in Outer Space (1959) is apparently the exact same character that Shimura played in The Mysterians (1957).

Senda is the uncle of actor Jerry Ito (of Mothra fame) and the grandfather of actress Nakagawa Anna (of Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah fame).