Hiroyuki Nagato

His first movie appearance was in the 1940 film Zokushi Mizuminato (續清水港). He was a widely known child actor before World War II. During his school years he took a temporary break from acting but after the war he joined the entertainment company Nikkatsu where he resumed film-making. He starred in the first installment book-turned-movie Taiyouzoku series, Season of the Sun, with his co-star, Yujiro Ishihara who debuted with this movie. Combined with director Shohei Imamura, the movie left him with the reputation of having acting and gave him the nickname of "Nikkatsu's Billboard Star".

In 1961 Nagato married Yoko Minamida and the following year he left Nikkatsu. In 1964, together with his wife, he established the film company Ningen Production. In 1968 he produced and starred in the television drama Katsudoya Ichiyo on MBS. However, due to compounding issues with the series, it plunged him 200 million yen into debt.

From 1982 he also became known as a personality appearing on the KBS Kyoto's charity radio show Great Snail War. The show provided help and raise money for children who were orphaned because of accidents. His wife also participated alongside him starting from 1984. He and his wife continued appearing until the campaign's end in 2005.

He also worked together alongside other celebrities born in the same year as him (1934): Yujiro Ishihara, Kinya Aikawa, Koizumi Ohashi, Ichiro Zaitsu, Jiro Sakagami, Shunji Fujimura, Gorō Mutsumi, Shuichiro Moriyama to form the friendship association Showa 9 Nenkai (昭和9年会). The 9th year of the Showa era is the equivalent of 1934.

In November 1985, Nagato published an exposé called To Yoko(洋子へ); it was published by the publisher Datahouse.(データハウス) . It was a series of confessions to his wife, in which he wrote about his numerous infidelities without changing any names of those he had affairs with. It astounded the Japanese media. Junko Ikeuchi, who was among the people included in the book under her real name, voiced a strong objection in response.

Nagato and Datahouse recalled the first edition and issued a revised version in which the problem areas were re-written. Nagato also took out an ad in the Ikeuchi newspaper to apologize over the situation. Nagato argued that, "Because [I] used a ghostwriter, my true intentions were not conveyed.'' However the entire incident seriously damaged his and his wife's careers. They were forced to resign from all the programs and commercials they had currently appeared in. He went on numerous different celebrity gossip shows for interviews about the event and repeatedly slammed his book against the desk while disparaging it.

After a long time Nagato recovered from the incident and even went back to thriving, performing mainly antagonist or villain roles in television dramas.

In his last years, Nagato devoted himself to making amends with his wife for all his affairs (and the scandal caused by the book) and became her caregiver when she was diagnosed with dementia. At the same time, he also increasingly started co-starring more with his younger brother Tsugawa, who he had been feuding with for many years. He also appeared in works directed by Tsugawa who assumed the name of Makino Masahiko.

On 21 October 2009, Yoko Minamida, died of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) at the age of 76. At a press conference held at the Meiji Theater the day Minamida died, Nagato stated, with tears in his eyes, "From now on, I will step into a world without my wife. Yoko lives on in my memories. This is what eternity means. [...] These four years of caring for her has been my rebirth and has changed my outlook on life."