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James Bond star became a medium
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TOKYO. In his role as dapper spymaster “Tiger Tanaka” Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba made a big impact in the West, starring (above, left) alongside Sean Connery, as James Bond, in the 1967 blockbuster You Only Live Twice. But he made hundreds of other films, in Japan and Hong Kong, working with the top directors and earning the justified description: “an insanely prolific actor”.
Tamba (real name Shosaburo Tamba), who died in Japan last week at the age of 84, made over 300 films, working until the end and specialising in roles as a hard-nosed detective or tough underworld boss.
In recent years he was managing not only to play such roles in an average of seven films a year but also to spearhead a Spiritualist organisation called Dai Reien Kai (or Daireikai in some translations) meaning Great Spirit World, a title he also gave to a feature film he made about Spiritualism and the afterlife.
 A sign outside his home read: “Afterlife Research Laboratory”.
Daireikai and other documentaries he produced were based on the 42 books he wrote on the subject – he was clearly as prolific an author as he was an actor. The film opens with him joking, in English, with foreign experts on the afterlife.
A tongue-in-cheek review by a Japanese-speaking Western critic in 1989 poked fun at many of Tetsuro Tamba’s afterlife concepts, but they would be recognised by most Spiritualists. The storyline is built around a bus which collides with a car and falls into a ravine, killing many of the passengers, including a Japanese man (played by his actor son, Yoshitaka Tanba), his dog, and a solitary American woman.
The film, with Tamba as narrator, follows what happens to all three of them in the next world, where it seems each country has a spiritual region, about 1,000 kilometres immediately above, but from which its spirits are free to travel to other countries’ regions.
 In a sequel, No Daireikai II, released in 1990, he was not only the executive producer but also the principal actor. A movie guide explains that a man (played by Tamba) did not commit the murder he is executed for, but he did murder in a previous life, so karmically his death is a fitting punishment. The film follows his adventures in the afterlife and his visits to still-living relatives.
Tamba, who was an interpreter for General MacArthur’s Occupation forces in Japan after World War II, won the Japanese Academy Award in 1981 for Best Supporting Actor in the film 203 Kochi.
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Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006
Category: Mediumship
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