He is known for his roles as Dragon Eye Morrison in Electric Dragon 80.000 V, Kakihara in Ichi the Killer, Mamoru Arita in Bright Future, Hattori Genosuke in Zatoichi, Kenji in Last Life in the Universe, A man in Survive Style 5+, Ayano in The Taste of Tea, Temujin in Mongol, Captain Yugi Nagata in Battleship, Lord Kira Yoshinaka in the 47 Ronin, and Hogun in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, based on the Marvel Comics character. In 2016, he appeared as the Interpreter in Martin Scorsese\'s Silence.\n', '

Asano was born in the Honmoku area of Yokohama to artist Yukihisa Satō (佐藤 幸久, Satō Yukihisa) and mother Junko (順子) whose father was Willard Overing, a U.S. citizen, whom Asano never met. He has Norwegian and Dutch ancestry through this maternal grandfather. Asano has an older brother, Kujun Satō, born in 1971, who is a musician and a partner in Anore Inc., a talent agency Asano and their father Yukihisa Satō founded.\n', '

His father, an actors\' agent, suggested he take on his first acting role in the TV show Kinpachi Sensei at the age of 16. His film debut was in the 1990 Swimming Upstream (Bataashi Kingyo), though his first major critical success was in Shunji Iwai\'s Fried Dragon Fish (1993). His first critical success internationally was Hirokazu Koreeda\'s Maboroshi no Hikari (1995), in which he played a man who inexplicably throws himself in front of a train, widowing his wife and orphaning his infant son. He also worked with Koreeda in the pseudo-documentary Distance in 2001. His best known works internationally are the samurai films Gohatto (aka Taboo, 1999) and Zatoichi (2003), as well as the critically acclaimed Bright Future.\n', '

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