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TOKYO, Japan / The Japan Times / Life in Japan / July 5, 2009
CLOSE-UP
Putting foreigners on screens in Japan has given Motoko Inagawa insights aplenty to share
By Edan Corkill, Staff writer
In need of a couple of Portuguese missionaries? How about a boatload of Dutch traders — or a platoon of World War II U.S. grunts?
Launch party: Motoko Inagawa with foreign children in 1985, when she opened her Tokyo agency at the age of 51. MOTOKO INAGAWA
Meet Motoko Inagawa. It's not that the sprightly 75-year-old's network of foreign acquaintances metaphysically extends to the long dead, but it's just that she's very dedicated to her chosen profession — which is supplying Japanese television and film companies with foreign extras and actors.
For 24 years, her company, known as Inagawa Motoko Office, has been the dominant force in the foreign-talent business in Japan. When the TV broadcaster TBS struck gold with their late 1990s prime-time show "Koko ga Hen da yo Nihonjin" ("This Is What's Strange About Japanese People"), which featured foreign residents debating the quirky minutiae of life in Japan, it was Inagawa who was supplying the controversial casts.
Such populist stuff apart, though, Inagawa's bread-and-butter was always TV dramas. To meet their unending demand for foreigners to act as missionaries, 19th-century traders, U.S. servicemen and other archetypal visitors to these shores, she would often spend her evenings lurking observantly in foreigner haunts such as discos in the Roppongi district of Tokyo.
Inagawa says her interest in things foreign was instilled at a young age. Her well-traveled father worked at the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, and she tells how it was an encounter with MacArthur himself that contributed to her own recovery from a life-threatening illness.
On the bridge: At 75, Motoko Inagawa is still at the helm of her foreign-talent agency, Inagawa Motoko Office — even during her JT interview, as pictured here. Yoshiaki Miura Photo.
That early awakening to her own mortality continues to inspire Inagawa, who is astoundingly energetic for her age. It wasn't until she was 51, in 1985, that she started her company after an earlier chance encounter had transformed the then-housewife into talent scout. At 70 she finally graduated from university — which illness had prevented her from doing in her youth — and at 72 she embarked on a postgraduate degree in social and international studies at the University of Tokyo.
Inagawa is still in command of her company's day-to-day affairs, though changes in production budgets, technology and public tastes mean the market for foreign talent these days is a mere shadow of what it was during the mid-'80s bubble economy when she started out in the business. Even so, she currently represents around 5,000 gaijin (foreigners) from 142 countries. [
rc]
You were 51 when you started your company. Why did you get into this business?
Find the answer and continue reading by clicking here
(C) The Japan Times
Launch party: Motoko Inagawa with foreign children in 1985, when she opened her Tokyo agency at the age of 51. MOTOKO INAGAWA
Meet Motoko Inagawa. It's not that the sprightly 75-year-old's network of foreign acquaintances metaphysically extends to the long dead, but it's just that she's very dedicated to her chosen profession — which is supplying Japanese television and film companies with foreign extras and actors.
For 24 years, her company, known as Inagawa Motoko Office, has been the dominant force in the foreign-talent business in Japan. When the TV broadcaster TBS struck gold with their late 1990s prime-time show "Koko ga Hen da yo Nihonjin" ("This Is What's Strange About Japanese People"), which featured foreign residents debating the quirky minutiae of life in Japan, it was Inagawa who was supplying the controversial casts.
Such populist stuff apart, though, Inagawa's bread-and-butter was always TV dramas. To meet their unending demand for foreigners to act as missionaries, 19th-century traders, U.S. servicemen and other archetypal visitors to these shores, she would often spend her evenings lurking observantly in foreigner haunts such as discos in the Roppongi district of Tokyo.
Inagawa says her interest in things foreign was instilled at a young age. Her well-traveled father worked at the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, and she tells how it was an encounter with MacArthur himself that contributed to her own recovery from a life-threatening illness.
On the bridge: At 75, Motoko Inagawa is still at the helm of her foreign-talent agency, Inagawa Motoko Office — even during her JT interview, as pictured here. Yoshiaki Miura Photo.
That early awakening to her own mortality continues to inspire Inagawa, who is astoundingly energetic for her age. It wasn't until she was 51, in 1985, that she started her company after an earlier chance encounter had transformed the then-housewife into talent scout. At 70 she finally graduated from university — which illness had prevented her from doing in her youth — and at 72 she embarked on a postgraduate degree in social and international studies at the University of Tokyo.
Inagawa is still in command of her company's day-to-day affairs, though changes in production budgets, technology and public tastes mean the market for foreign talent these days is a mere shadow of what it was during the mid-'80s bubble economy when she started out in the business. Even so, she currently represents around 5,000 gaijin (foreigners) from 142 countries. [rc]
You were 51 when you started your company. Why did you get into this business?
Find the answer and continue reading by clicking here
(C) The Japan Times
