Akira Emoto (Rental Family) Rental Family
Akira Emoto plays Kikuo Hasegawa, a retired actor with dementia whose daughter hires Rental Family to provide him companionship. Emoto is one of Japan's most prolific and decorated actors, with a career spanning five decades and over 150 film and television credits. His casting gave the Kikuo storyline an authority that a lesser-known actor could not have provided -- audiences watching Kikuo mourn his forgotten career are watching a real Japanese screen legend. (wikipedia, imdb)
A five-decade career anchored in character work and stage training
Born November 3, 1948, in Ginza, Tokyo, Emoto began his career in theater, studying at the acting classes of Nobuo Kaneko's company Marui. He won the Japan Academy Prize for Best Actor in 1999 for Shohei Imamura's Dr. Akagi, and the Best Supporting Actor prize at the Hochi Film Awards for Dotonbori River. His filmography includes work with many of Japan's most prominent directors: Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi (2003), Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters (2018), Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla (2016), and Takashi Miike's Lesson of Evil (2012). (wikipedia, asianwiki)
He is the patriarch of an acting family: his sons Tasuku Emoto and Tokio Emoto are both working actors in Japan. His late wife Kazue was also an actress. (wikipedia)
Kikuo is the film's most devastating role because Emoto plays lucidity as borrowed time
The Nerdist review called the Kikuo storyline "the best surprise of the film," praising how the character shifts from charming raconteur to a man losing the thread of his own sentences. Emoto's performance makes Kikuo's lucid moments feel precarious -- every sharp observation, every vivid memory of his first love, is shadowed by the knowledge that it could be his last clear thought. (nerdist)
The structural parallel between Kikuo and Phillip is the film's richest -- both are actors whose careers peaked early and who spent decades in the shadow of a single success. Phillip's professional failure mirrors Kikuo's cognitive decline: both men are losing the ability to perform, and both find something more valuable in the connection they build through a lie.
His casting adds a meta-dimension the film never states explicitly
Emoto's real stature in Japanese cinema creates an unspoken layer in the Kikuo scenes. When Kikuo tells Phillip about his career, about the roles he played, about the fear of being forgotten, audiences familiar with Emoto's body of work are watching a genuine screen legend inhabit a character terrified of obscurity. The film never breaks the fourth wall or asks the audience to make this connection -- but it is available to anyone who recognizes the actor.