Masato Hagiwara

Masato Hagiwara (萩原 聖人, Hagiwara Masato, born August 21, 1971) is a Japanese actor, voice actor, narrator and professional mahjong player. When Hagiwara was three years old, his parents divorced and he was taken in by his father. However, his father died when he was in the fourth grade, and was then raised by his paternal grandparents in Chigasaki until he was 15 years old. As a result, he spent most of his younger life without his mother.After graduating from Chigasaki Shiritsu Umeda Junior High School, Hagiwara moved to Tokyo. He enrolled in the part-time program at Toyama High School, but dropped out after only one week. Later on, he went to the United States for a short period of time and was impressed by the movie audiences he saw in New York City, which led him to become interested in acting as a career. After returning to Japan, when he was helping out at his mother's bar in Shinjuku, he caught the eye of the casting staff for the TV drama Abunai Deka who had come in as customers, and was recruited. Then, in 1987, he made his debut as a young luggage thief in episode 32 of Abunai Deka. He continued to appear in many films as a minor role, but it was his role as Naojirō Matsuoka in the 1990 TV drama High School Rakugaki 2 that brought him to prominence.In 1991, he formed the theater group "Early Timelies" with Shōgo Suzuki, Kō Watanabe and Tetsu Sakuma. They performed six shows over a period of seven years. He later established a fanclub in 1993, which disbanded three years later in July 1996.In 1993, one of the suspects in an assault case at Chūō-Rinkan Station on the Odakyu Line was accused of resembling Hagiwara. Hagiwara claimed to have an alibi, saying that he was meeting someone at the time of the crime, but refused to reveal the name of the person who could prove it, because it would be a nuisance to the person. This case damaged Hagiwara's public and private life, and for a while his appearances in dramas and other events were drastically reduced. Later, however, the case was dismissed on the grounds that the accuser's testimony contained many inconsistencies and it was just an accusation that Hagiwara resembled the killer.In November 1995, Hagiwara married actress Emi Wakui, with whom he co-starred in the TV drama Natsuko no Sake. They had a son in October 1999 and divorced in July 2003, with Wakui taking custody of the son.