Mako (actor)

Makoto Iwamatsu (岩松 信) was a Japanese-American actor, credited mononymously in almost all of his acting roles as Mako (マコ).

In 1939, his parents, who were political dissidents, moved to the United States, leaving Mako in the care of his grandmother.

Because his parents lived on the East Coast, they were not interned during the Second World War; instead they opted to work for the U.S. Office of War Information and were later granted residency.

His parents were able to arrange for him to join them in 1949, when he was fifteen years old.

Iwamatsu's father owned an art studio in New York City, and as a teenager he became acquainted with painter Hiroshi Honda.

Though he faced racial discrimination, Iwamatsu bonded with his high school peers over baseball, and was even scouted by the Cleveland Indians.

Though he had an interest in dramatics, Iwamatsu did not believe an artistic career was financially viable, and enrolled in the Pratt Institute School of Architecture while working in his father's print shop.

He later enlisted in the United States Army in November 1953 and served until October 1955.

He was in Korea and Japan with the Special Services division performing in plays for his fellow soldiers.

It was during his military service that Mako discovered his theatrical talent; he then trained at the Pasadena Playhouse.

He would adopt the mononym Mako, as he found most people had difficulty pronouncing his full name.

He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1956.

His career in film, on television, and on stage spanned nearly fifty years and 165 productions, from 1959 to 2007.

He was an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Tony Award nominee.

Born and raised in Kobe, Mako moved to the United States after the Second World War, where his dissident parents had moved to escape political persecution.

After serving with the United States Army during the Korean War, he trained in acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and later co-founded the East West Players.

Mako's first film role was in Never So Few (1959).

In 1965, frustrated by the limited roles available to Asian-American actors, Mako and six others formed the East West Players theater company, first performing out of a church basement.

His role as Po-Han (his second credited role on film) in the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles saw him nominated for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as engine-room worker Po-Han in the film The Sand Pebbles (1966).

Other roles include the Chinese contract laborer Mun Ki in the epic movie The Hawaiians (1970) starring Charlton Heston and Tina Chen; Oomiak, the Inuit guide, in Disney's The Island at the Top of the World (1974); Yuen Chung in the film The Killer Elite (1975) directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Caan, Robert Duvall, and the martial artist Takayuki Kubota; the sorcerer Nakano in Highlander III: The Sorcerer; Jackie Chan's uncle/sifu in Chan's first American movie The Big Brawl (1980); the wizard Akiro opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the two Conan movies Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer; the confidant to Chuck Norris' rogue cop in the thriller An Eye for an Eye (1982); the Japanese spy in the comedy Under the Rainbow.

Other various roles included Kichijiro in the 1971 film adaptation of Silence, Oomiak "The Fearless One" in The Island at the Top of the World (1974), Akiro the Wizard in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), and Kungo Tsarong in Seven Years in Tibet (1997).

He was part of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim's 1976 Broadway musical Pacific Overtures, which earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

Mako's Broadway career included creating the roles of the Reciter, the shōgun, and the Chicago-based inventor of the rickshaw, in the original 1976 production of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Pacific Overtures, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical.

Mako's landlord at the time, Jerry Orbach, was also nominated for his role in Chicago; both lost, however, to George Rose from the revival of My Fair Lady.

Mako recalled being awoken at 4:30 in the morning after the Tony ceremony by Orbach, who was shouting from the floor below: "Hey, Mako! What the fuck happened? I can't believe it; we lost to a fucking revival!".

During the company's 1981 season, to coincide with the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians' hearings on redress, Mako exclusively produced plays about the Japanese American incarceration.

He remained artistic director of the company until 1989.

In 1990, he had a minor role in the psychological thriller Pacific Heights along with Matthew Modine, Melanie Griffith and Michael Keaton; Yoshida-san in Rising Sun; Mr. Lee in Sidekicks; Kanemitsu in RoboCop 3 (1993); and Kungo Tsarong in Seven Years in Tibet (1997).

He also appeared in some Japanese television dramas and films, such as Masahiro Shinoda's Owls' Castle and Takashi Miike's The Bird People in China.

Mako reprised the role and directed the musical's production with the East West Players, and further reprised the role in a production at the San Jose Civic Light Opera in 1991.

He also starred in the limited run of the play Shimada in 1992.

Later in his career, he became well known for his voice acting roles, including Aku in the first four seasons of Samurai Jack (2001–04), and Iroh in the first two seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005–06).

Mako was cast as the historic Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in the epic drama Pearl Harbor (2001).

He also had a role in Bulletproof Monk (2003).

In 2005, Mako had a cameo role in Memoirs of a Geisha.

Mako's last leading role was in the film Cages (2005), written and directed by Graham Streeter.

He died on July 21, 2006, at the age of 72 from esophageal cancer.

Mako was born Makoto Iwamatsu in Kobe, Japan, the son of children's authors and illustrators Tomoe Sasako and Atsushi Iwamatsu, better known by their pen names Mitsu and Taro Yashima.

He voiced Master Splinter in the film TMNT, released posthumously in 2007 as his final credited role.