1. Noboru Ando was a Japanese actor, writer, singer and former yakuza.
13 Facts About Noboru Ando
1. 2.
Noboru Ando is known for utilizing his experiences as a criminal in his many roles in yakuza films.
3.
Noboru Ando had a large knife scar on his left cheek, the result of a brawl with a Korean gangster as a young man.
4.
Noboru Ando was born in Higashi, Okubo, Tokyo, the oldest of four children to a father of samurai descent.
5.
Noboru Ando was expelled from another school after only three months and began running with other delinquents, before being sent to a reformatory school for theft.
6.
Noboru Ando entered the military for pilot training in December 1943 and in June 1945 volunteered for a suicide frogman unit, though the war ended before he saw action.
7.
In June 1958, a hitman sent by Noboru Ando shot businessman Hideki Yokoi.
8.
Noboru Ando was arrested in Hayama after 35 days on the run and served six years in prison.
9.
Noboru Ando had his first acting role in 1965's Blood and Rules, a film about himself.
10.
Noboru Ando appeared in a total of 51 Toei films including Teruo Ishii's Abashiri Bangaichi: Fubuki no Toso and Gendai Ninkyoshi as well as Kinji Fukasaku's Japan Organized Crime Boss, Sympathy for the Underdog, Street Mobster, New Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Graveyard of Honor.
11.
Noboru Ando occasionally served as producer, such as on 1988's Bruise by Shunichi Kajima, and wrote novels.
12.
Noboru Ando resumed acting in 1997, this time in straight to video films.
13.
On 16 December 2015, Noboru Ando died of pneumonia in a Tokyo hospital at the age of 89.