Japanese comedian Ken Shimura also popularly known as Kaissa among Bangladeshi viewers died on Sunday evening from the coronavirus, the Japanese media reported Monday. He was 70, and immediately before his illness had been set for his first starring role in a feature film.
Shimura entered a Tokyo hospital on March 20 with fever and pneumonia and tested positive for Covid-19 on March 23. He is the first prominent Japanese entertainment world figure to die of the virus.
Born Yasunori Shimura in Tokyo in 1950, Shimura joined the Drifters, a comedy band, in 1974. The Drifters were already kings of Japanese television for their highly-rated variety show “Hachijidayo Zeninshugo!” (“It’s 8 O’clock, Let’s Get Together Everybody!”), but Shimura injected a youthful energy and impudence that kept their popularity soaring.
A rubber-faced comic who took inspiration from Jerry Lewis, Shimura was hardly subtle – one of his characters, a middle-aged pervert, wore a swan’s-head strap-on for laughs – but he smoothly survived the cancellation of the Drifters’ show in 1985 and the group’s subsequent break-up. Before he came down with the virus, Shimura had been cast in his first-ever feature starring role in the Yoji Yamada comedy “God of Cinema.” He was also a regular on two network shows.