Honshu's James Dean

Buck teeth, a flat nose, eyes like two razor slits, mousy ears and a fuzzy, black Jerry Lewis haircut. That is Japan's 28-year-old Yujiro Ishihara, the adored symbol of Japanese youth, and easily the most popular movie star in the nation that produces more movies than any other country in the world.

Yujiro is a Japanese giant--5 ft. 10 in., 152 Ibs.--who has starred in 57 films, and is universally known as Yu-Chan. Yu-Chan is an idol in more than the usual sense. To some degree, he is almost a religious figure. He always plays a contemporary youth, romantically flaming, challenging established authority, and winning the girls against brutal odds. In one picture inspired by John Steinbeck's East of Eden, he had the same kind of rebel role played in the American movie by James Dean.

Cars Galore. Japanese women say that Yujiro appeals to them because of his long legs (32 in.). On the wooden fences around Yujiro's home, girls write

LOVE ME, LOVE ME, LOVE ME. They sneak into his garden and peep through a window to see him taking his bath. Males bother him too. They say he strides like "a supercharged sports car parading." He once found an eager young fellow lying flat on his back under one of his automobiles, refusing to budge unless Yujiro would hire him as a chauffeur.

But Yujiro drove away in another car. He has a Mercedes 300-SL, a Japanese Cedric, a Chevrolet and a Fleetwood Cadillac. He also owns two racing sloops, a twin-engined powerboat, and controlling interests in Tokyo businesses with assets totaling $5 million. And, Fujiyama Mia, he is an executive in a firm that plans to bring trading stamps to Tokyo. He formed his own film company last January, and has just completed My Enemy, the Sea, shot on location in Japan, Hawaii and California, and based on the adventures of a

Japanese boy who recently sailed across the Pacific in a 19-ft. sloop.

Early Beer. Yujiro, the son of a wealthy businessman who died in 1950, actually started his film career as a sailor. A motion-picture company was making a movie of a novel by Yujiro's brother, who arranged for Yujiro to work as an extra because he could handle a sailboat. Within a year, he was starring in a beach-bum opera called Love Affair at Kamakura. He had been a law student but he abandoned that, began to drink, and was soon in the 800-fan-letters-a-day class. Instead of dried seaweed and rice, he preferred beer for breakfast--and whisky in the evening. With two other working lushes, he once killed two fifths of whisky and eight quarts of sake in six hours.

Now he is married to Mie Kitahara, who was his co-star in 22 pictures, and they live in a rich suburb. This has steadied Yujiro, and he now works hard at his acting, his business enterprises and his weekly prime-time TV show. "A man must do things," he now says, flashing a Western value earned with much pain and much recompense. "Action is the rule of man."

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