King's Kung-Fu& Tai Chi

Eiji Okada

Japanese actor (1920-1995)

Born
13 June 1920, Chōshi
Died
14 September 1995
Citizenship
Japan, Empire of Japan
Occupation
actor, film editor, film actor
Films here
4

Eiji Okada (岡田 英次, Okada Eiji; 13 June 1920 – 14 September 1995) was a Japanese film actor from Chōshi, Chiba. Okada served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and was a miner and traveling salesman before becoming an actor.

Internationally, his best-remembered roles include Lui ("him" in French) in the 1959 film Hiroshima mon amour, directed by Alain Resnais. In this film, Eiji Okada had to learn the screenplay phonetically because he did not speak French. He is also known for playing the entomologist Niki Junpei in Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1964 film Woman in the Dunes, an adaptation of Kōbō Abe's novel. He was also second billed under Marlon Brando in the 1963 political thriller The Ugly American.

Okada was married to Aiko Wasa, with whom he ran a theatre company in Japan. He died on 14 September 1995 of heart failure, at the age of 75.

Filmography (martial arts films)

Frequent collaborators

External links

Facts from Wikidata Q139253 (CC0); quoted introduction from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Data retrieved 2026-10-22.

Data: Wikidata (CC0 1.0); Wikipedia (English) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.